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Overview
The cop who blew the whistle on Saskatoon's notorious "Starlight Tours," Ernie Louttit is the bestselling author of two previous "Indian Ernie" books. He demonstrates in this latest title that being a leader means sticking to your convictions and sometimes standing up to the powers that be. One of the first Indigenous officers hired by the Saskatoon Police, he was an outsider who became an insider, with a difference. A former military man with a passion for the law, he was tough on the beat, but was also a role model for kids on the streets.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780889776371 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Regina Press |
| Publication date: | 01/26/2019 |
| Pages: | 212 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SWEET TEA AND WOODSMOKE
I used to visit Mooshom, or Grandfather in Cree, at his tiny one-room log cabin on a rocky Canadian Shield hill that overlooked the graveyard and had a view of the Oba River. He was not my grandfather, nor was he Cree like me, but rather Ojibway, but that didn't seem to matter to either of us. My grandfather was killed in the Second World War. I was named after him. My grandfather on my mother's side died when I was young. We were actually on the train going to visit him when the conductor told my mother he had died. The town where I grew up in northern Ontario had about 120 people. Most people lived in the townsite, which was on both sides of the railway tracks, and there were only five occupied cabins or houses down by the river.
The river was a frequent destination for young people to fish or swim. Mooshom lived across from an older trapper who kept a dog team chained all around his property. He used those dogs right up until the early nineties and kept a couple even after he stopped using them as a dog team. The trapper's dogs were scary, straining at their chains and growling every time they scented you. When I was a boy, they scared me so much I always loaded up on rocks and carried a big stick in case they broke their chains.
The grandfather on the hill was a quiet man with a weathered face and dressed in heavy pants and shirts, regardless of the season. He had a gentle smile and a sadness about him that made me want to talk to him every time I saw him. Eventually, I worked up enough courage to take two pickerel I had caught to his cabin, braving the walk past the trapper's dog team. My heart pounding, I arrived at the safe zone in front of his cabin. He smiled and took the fish. He told me in his quiet voice that the trapper's dogs knew I was scared and that is why they barked like they did. He made tea for us in tin cups with evaporated milk and lots of sugar without ever asking if I wanted any. I supposed it was a given.
He didn't say much as we drank our tea. I was talking quite a bit, asking questions about what Oba was like when he was young. Finally, I stopped asking questions because his answers were so short. We sat in silence for a while and I thanked him for the tea. He told me quietly that I talked too much. I wasn't offended and left with a belly full of warm, sweet tea and a big smile. I wasn't as afraid as I walked past the trapper's snarling dogs. It was one of the most memorable visits I had with an Elder. We didn't use that term when I grew up, as I grew up off reserve. But I instinctively knew he was a special man.
I went back several times over the course of that summer and into the fall. I would bring fish or sometimes just a can of Carnation evaporated milk. We would drink tea in near silence, with the air rich with the smell of woodsmoke and the river. It was almost like I was absorbing his patience and wisdom without knowing it. I always felt wiser and braver when I left, and those damn dogs held no sway over me anymore. I strode down the hill on confident legs.
Unfortunately, I turned twelve during this period and discovered girls, even if they had not discovered me. I started working at a fishing camp and making money. My visits grew farther and farther apart until, except for the nod of my head as I went past his cabin, I didn't see him anymore. Of course, I didn't realize it then, or for many years afterwards, but I had lost my closest connection to learning traditional ways and had let so much knowledge slip away. I had lost touch with a man who could teach with an economy of words and simple knowing glances. I went on to go away for high school and eventually joined the army. He passed away while I was away, and there was so much I did not know about him. I suppose I could have asked other people about him, but in the end would it have changed the way I felt? Probably not.
A knowledge keeper maybe not in the strict traditional sense, the grandfather had taught me patience and to seek knowledge. There were others like my mother and regular teachers who encouraged me to learn and especially to read. None of them provided such a classroom, sweet tea, or a view of the river.
When I think of what was lost and what can still be gained or even recovered in traditional learning, I like to think our young people will be the champions of this new learning. Our Oral Tradition of storytelling is not threatened by the many new means of passing on traditions. It is, in fact, enhanced by all the new forms of media. It is faster, and the choices are vast. What we take from it will challenge how well we are grounded in what we value and believe.
There are many experiences we as First Nations people can pass on through our stories. There is no clear definition of who can be a storyteller, for that matter. There are periods of our time that can be divided into experiences, good and bad. There is no one alive who can pass on real time stories from pre-contact with Europeans; any stories from then have passed through many variations depending on the storyteller, so a grain of salt is necessary for our interpretations. Some storytellers colour those days as idyllic and free of troubles, while others paint a realistic gritty picture of the day-to-day struggles to survive. The truth lies somewhere in between, I would suspect.
The next period is the most difficult and spans several hundred years. The attempts by Europeans to dominate, eliminate, or assimilate First Nations present the biggest challenge to the keepers of our stories. So many have passed and many who remember are scarred and bitter. The past ten years have seen attempts at reconciliation and expressed regret, which our storytellers have to interpret somehow for the young people. I have never been much of a traditionalist. I can point to the army and my police work for this because we were so mission-driven in what we did. It doesn't mean I didn't listen to the stories. I knew their importance to all of us. There will always be new issues arising, but we will get there. We will emerge strong as always.
The next period is the present, when our storytellers are not defined as much by our age but rather by our experiences and our modern methods of telling our stories. I think I am on the edge of this last period and the start of the new one. I am getting closer to ordering from the senior's menu than I am to skipping over it.
I have always taught others by telling stories based on my experiences and observations. I am also utterly ruthless when I take positive leadership examples from others to tell stories and hopefully make people look to the future while respecting the past. I am putting my hand up to be considered a storyteller and keeping my ears open to hear others. For all young people my first words of advice are do not let the stories of the people who lived through the challenges you will eventually face get away without at least hearing how they coped and what they learned. What you take away may surprise you.
CHAPTER 2WHERE THERE'S SMOKE — THE POWER OF FIRE
I grew up in a small town called Oba in northern Ontario. Oba is on the northern edge of the Canadian Shield, sixty-four kilometres from the next community and surrounded by forests. Two railroads and a bush road connect it with the rest of the world. In the early 1970s there were about a hundred people living there in mostly wooden houses, heating them with either wood or oil. Many of the homes were built in the thirties and forties with no government inspections or fire safety standards utilized. Any sign of smoke coming from anything other than a known source would immediately fill you with apprehension. There was no firefighting equipment, and as a teenager I never asked if there was any kind of plan in the case of a fire. Forest fires seemed to be the biggest threat, but no one ever spoke about them and it seemed never uttering the words was the best prevention.
There were several businesses in Oba: two hotels, the railway station, and the flagship general store. I don't know when it was built. I suspect it was in the thirties. It was a beautiful, solid, three-story structure with hardwood floors throughout. When I was a boy, I would marvel at all the beautiful things the store owners displayed. It had just about everything you could want. A post office, clothing, food, and a meat counter. The post office was my favourite place. It was my connection with the outside world. Behind the store was a large warehouse. Even back then in the seventies, the warehouse had so many antiques it would have been a dream find for the pickers you see now on various television programs. Behind the warehouse was a diesel generator housed in a small shed. The diesel generator provided electricity to the store in the years before the government built a power generating station. In the expansive yard of the store, barrels of gas, oil, and propane tanks were stacked and ready for sale. The store also sold guns and ammunition. The store went through a couple of owners when I was growing up, but it always seemed viable and an anchor in the community.
In 1976 the store was sold to a new owner who moved there with his wife and three children. Shortly after they took over, on a beautiful summer day, a plume of gray smoke emerged from the area of the diesel shed. Several people spotted it at the same time, including me, and we all went forward to investigate. The diesel shed had been saturated with lubricants, spilled diesel, and other flammables over the years, and it quickly became fully engulfed in flames. I ran to the hotel to tell everyone and to the railway station to see if there was anything there to fight the fire with.
At the station there was a single fire hose the station agent used to clean the tractor and baggage wagons, but the water pressure was so inadequate it was useless. It has been forty years since the fire, yet many of my memories are still quite vivid — I knew I wanted to help. I don't remember who suggested it, but someone said to start rolling the barrels of gas out of the fire's path. In retrospect, a near suicidal undertaking at fifteen years old, although it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The fire quickly spread to the old wooden warehouse and sparks and embers were flying up into the air and landing all over the tinderbox town and surrounding forest. The yard where the gas and diesel barrels were piled had long ago been saturated by spills and leaks. One of the men told me to get the hell out of there. The intense heat had reached one of the many propane tanks and caused one of the melt plugs to go. Melt plugs are safety values that melt to prevent a propane tank from exploding like a bomb. The gas shoots out like a flame-thrower, and it makes a terrifying screech like a constant high-pitched scream.
The mournful sound increased as the heat and flames reached other propane tanks. Soon the fire had the store and it began to burn. The barrels of gas and oil had no such safety features and began to blow up, flying through the air and landing across the railway tracks, starting a fire in the bush. The look of dismay and shock on everyone's faces was something I will never forget. Through the smoke and haze I could see people crying and standing helpless, with no equipment to fight the fire at all. I don't remember any clear leader emerging while the fire took the heart of the town, but I was just a kid, so I might have missed it.
The forest fire prompted the Ministry of Natural Resources to send a water bomber to start attacking the flames. A couple of hours into the fire, a ministry truck and firefighters arrived. They didn't stop at the store fire and went to fight the forest fire. My brother and I were given the task of standing guard on the roof of our house with buckets of water to extinguish any embers that landed there.
In frustration, my mother went to the river and took one of the pumps the ministry firefighters were using to fight the forest fire. The firefighters came back to the site of the store and recovered it. No charges were laid because the firefighters understood the theft of their pump was an emotional response to the tragedy. My mother was always a leader, though a bit of a rebellious one during this incident. Eventually, the store and all the outbuildings were consumed by the flames and the most intense period of danger passed. Miraculously, no one was killed or seriously injured during the fire, and as the day ended everyone was thankful for that one small mercy.
The town recovered from its shock and sadness. The owners built a new store and carried on until Oba shrank so much it was no longer a workable venture. By then, I was long gone and in the army. The Oba general store fire was my first date in a reluctant relationship I have had with fires and arson.
My next date with fire occurred when I was in the army. One summer it was announced we were going to do a ceremony known as troop the colour. Basically, it was a public parade where we marched the regimental colours or flags to celebrate our regiment's anniversary. An old tradition from the days when the colours or flags of a regiment were the rallying points on a battlefield, the trooping of the colours was performed so every soldier knew what to look for in the smoke and haze. It was a big deal. We had to practice drill for several weeks before the occasion. The whole thing was a lot of work, but it was part of instilling pride in ourselves and in the regiment. Part of the celebrations required us to fill thousands of sandbags and recreate bunkers in the drill hall. The bunkers were ordained with camouflage nets and dim lighting. It was to recreate what it was like in the First World War trench system without all the mud and blood. It was to be a 24/7 bar. As we were hosting veterans and former members of the regiment, it was meant to be a social centre of the week-long celebration of the trooping of the colours. It was called the "Better 'Ole," named after an expression from the First World War when soldiers complained about their trench and the reply would be, "If you know of a better hole, go to it."
The parade took place in Assiniboine Park, in the heart of Winnipeg, and seemed to go off without a hitch. After the parade was over, the battalion and our guests deployed to the Better 'Ole. The beer was cheap and flowed freely. After a while it began to look like a First World War battlefield as soldiers passed out over sandbags and slept in corners. We were in about the thirty-sixth hour of our deployment and it was very early in the morning when our NCOs (noncommissioned officers) came in and told us we were deploying to fight forest fires in northern Manitoba and to be ready to go in two hours.
There was a mad rush to shower, pack our kit, and drink as much coffee as possible before reporting to our respective companies. We were deploying to a town called Bissett, Manitoba. During all the celebrations we obviously had not been keeping track of the local news. The forest fire situation in northern Manitoba was getting out of hand, and the fires were threatening the town. We were loaded up in the back of 2 1/2-ton trucks, where we sat on wooden benches. My platoon slept most of the way in the back of the deuce and a half, stinking of stale beer.
When we arrived at the town and deployed, I marvelled at the smoothness of the operation. The battalion that had been totally dedicated to party for the remainder of the week had sorted itself out in a couple of hours. We were cohesive and committed. The smell of burning forests always made me apprehensive and created a feeling of uncertainty. My job was to mostly fight spot fires with a metal tank of water strapped to my back and a shovel. It was hot and sweaty work. Your throat and eyes were always irritated. There were a couple of operational firsts for me: deploying from a helicopter to fight spot fires, and driving armoured personal carriers in the forest. The front line-trained firefighters took on the main fires and we had the manpower to deal with everything else.
Within a couple of days, the fires were under control and we redeployed to garrison. While we were gone, the rear party had taken down our Better 'Ole and we resumed our normal duties. We used to practise bug out drills. When the unit was in garrison, periodically they would practise short notice deployment. The forest fires were the first real ones I had taken part in. If there was a worst-case scenario for a rapid deployment, this was it. A 24/7 bar and the majority of the battalion being off duty and encouraged to celebrate did not make for the most deployment-ready unit. It was a good lesson for me. For all of the fun I was having in the army, it could at any moment get serious.
When I was a police officer, people would often say to me, "I could never do your job. It's too sad." I would say the same thing to firefighters. I know all the jokes and banter about the relationship between firefighters and the police. I have even made a few snide remarks over the years about firefighters and their workload. The experiences I have had over the course of my career have imbedded a deep respect for firefighters and fire investigators. The training and discipline required to be a firefighter is as intense as any trade I've seen. When it is go time, and a fire is in progress, these men and women give it their all.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Unexpected Cop"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Ernie Louttit.
Excerpted by permission of University of Regina Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Chapter 1 Sweet Tea and Woodsmoke 1
Chapter 2 Where There's Smoke-the Power of Fire 6
Chapter 3 The Value of Women on Policing's Front Line 19
Chapter 4 Brinksmanship-the Use of Force, Part 1 34
Chapter 5 Making Police 46
Chapter 6 What Would You Tell a Young Constable? 55
Chapter 7 Street Checks, Court Orders, and Community Policing 61
Chapter 8 Brinksmanship-the Use of Force, Part 2 75
Chapter 9 Police and the Survivors of Sexual Assault 80
Chapter 10 You Are Off Duty…So What Should You Do? 87
Chapter 11 Policing and Paying the Ultimate Price 98
Chapter 12 The Media and the Police 106
Chapter 13 Dealing with PTSD 118
Chapter 14 Walk a Kilometre or Thirty-My New Life on the Street 137
Chapter 15 Getting Past "I Don't Like Cops"-My Life as a Writer 145
Chapter 16 The First Time My Father and I Hunted Together 160
Postscript Enough Said? 169
Appendix 1 Leadership Everywhere 177
Appendix 2 How Indigenous Youth Can Stay Out of Trouble 181
Appendix 3 Indigenous Self-Reliance and Resilience 189