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And he worked in a tough logging camp throughout his whole life and he was tormented by the trauma that he endured. I'm sure working in that those kind of conditions where it was also hard on him as well. And he wasn't the best father to my grandmother, Jackie and took a toll, you know, on my grandmother growing up in the depression with a father like that. And by the age of five or six, I think she I think she was six she contracted scarlet fever from just basic not having good nutrition, you know, if you don't eat well, and timiskaming was hit hard by the depression. And you know, my grandmother grew up in that and so my grandma Clara came and grabbed my my grandma Jackie and took her back to the to the reserves, and nursed her back to health. But it was such a severe affliction with scarlet fever that she she developed a hole in her heart. And so that's my family's. Some of the intergenerational trauma on my grandmother, Jackie side, Jackie Mackenzie. And, you know, I don't think she my grandmother really learned good parenting skills from her father, simply because he grew up in a loveless environment really, away from his family. And that led to my grandmother, not really being equipped to raise my father, who was a boomer, he grew up, he was born in the 50s and grew up through an age of great experimentation. You know, so a lot of drugs, a lot of like rock and roll out of like, the nation itself was transforming. And here's my grandmother, coming out of the backwoods of temiskaming into Toronto as a young girl trying to raise her newborn son, and it was just hard on my dad. And that led to a lot of alienation issues with my father, and experimentation, and he left home early and became kind of like a, I've called him an outlaw, but he was more like a small time, hustler, you know, and just made a series of bad choices and then eventually disappeared. In 1982, people, police no think he was murdered. But before that, he met my mom who was in northern Saskatchewan. And they tried to have a family with me and my three brothers as their sons. But I was born my brother Josh is born in 1974, Jerry 75, and me 76. And by 1979, my mom kind of didn't, wasn't a good environment with my dad and his addictions. And she did what she had to do to survive. And that meant leaving my father and she had us for a while. I just recently learned this. And then my dad went away to try and sober up and he came back. And he promised her that he was going to take care of us and give her a break. And then he took us and he in turn lost us to the system, in Sudbury, and so that's how I was taken out of my northern Saskatchewan, matey community, and then ended up in Ontario. And we were lost to the system for a couple months. And my grandparents heard what happened with my dad and how he lost us to the system. And then he went and robbed a store and went to jail. And he, they came and took us and raised us in Toronto, and they tried their best to raise us in a loving environment, but they didn't really give us any background information about our indigenous heritage. It was just something that we lived without, or I don't know if they were trying to, like hide it from us or what, but we just grew up like every other kid in suburban Brampton, right. Like, Iron Maiden and Jamaican. Yeah. Yeah. beef patties, you know, and just frozen pizza pockets. And that's what I grew up with. Right. So like any other kid, but questions of who I was, and where I fit in, always came up. And it was difficult because, like, I don't look that native, but my brother Josh does. And he was always proud of it. And he would go and tell the other kids that we like, lived in a teepee in Saskatchewan, and we got beat up like he was such an idiot, and he shouldn't have done that. But

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yeah, so we had to fight all the time. Right and growing up. That's just the way it was. And I grew up angry, not knowing where my parents were, like my mom was around sometimes. She called periodic And she did visit twice. Yeah, twice throughout the time that we're with my grandparents but she was always kind of far away. When we didn't know that's okay. I didn't have a good relationship with her, you know, or we just weren't close. I can't say it wasn't a good relationship. We just weren't I didn't know her right. And so I led to a bunch of bad choices growing up.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai