Billy Jackson’s earliest family memories are warm and positive. His dad was away a lot, working in other places, tending his trapline, hunting food for his family, or working, either on somebody’s farm or in the Fort McMurray Tar Sands. The little family farm boasted a cow which kept the Jacksons supplied with milk, a few chickens, and occasionally a few pigs. The family also had a couple of small fields on the reserve where they grew oats to feed the animals. For family use, Irene kept a huge garden, so there were always chores for the children to do. They always had something to eat, good plain nourishing food that helped the Jackson children thrive and grow strong. 

      But somehow it didn’t work that way for Billy. Always smaller than other children his age, he finally came to the attention of the doctor who visited the reserve a couple of times each year. Nobody seemed to know what, If anything, was actually wrong. There was certainly no shortage of energy. From his earliest years, Billy threw himself into games and activities. He and his cousin Louie Cardinal, who went on to become Billy’s close lifelong friend, spent their preschool days inventing ways to fill the hours with fun. Too young to be permitted the use of live horses, they took turns at being the horse, making reins and bridles to add to the fun. 

      The two boys also had their share of mischief. One day, upon finding some empty beer bottles, they swallowed the last few drops and pretended to be drunk. As they staggered around, Billy’s mother came on the scene. She wasn’t at all pleased with what she saw. Louis managed to escape up the hill, but Billy was taught with a willow switch that this was not funny. 

      There wasn’t a tree on the reserve too tall for Billy and Louis to tackle. In fact, each tree was a Mount Everest, existing for no other reason than to be conquered. Still, the doctor decided that something must be done about Billy. It was a decision with which Billy strongly disagreed. 

      “I remember this doctor coming into the house. I was five or six years old. I had to take my shirt off. I was kind of scared because I didn’t know what he was going to do.” Billy grins at the memory. “My Mom said he just wanted to listen to my inside. Then this cold thing hit my back. I can still remember how that felt.” 

      The doctor prescribed a daily dosage of cod liver oil which, Billy discovered, is not the world’s tastiest tonic. Along with some other kids from the reserve, he started the nasty routine. Unfortunately, he had to continue for some years, long after the other kids got a reprieve. 

      For a while, it seemed the ‘white man’s medicine’ wasn’t helping so somebody decided to call in the local ‘man who knows medicine.’ Again, the six year-old boy didn’t like it. He was scared. It didn’t help when this man took a sharp instrument and made a small incision on each side of the boy’s forehead. Taking a horn, the man then sucked some blood out of the incision. Then, probably to stop the bleeding, he rubbed in some stuff which really burned. For a boy who was supposedly ‘sickly,’ Billy showed surprising strength. His mom and other adults bad to hold him down while the ‘man who knows medicine’ did his thing. Some half a century later, he still has scars on his head from the experience. 

      Billy had problems with chronic eye infections and sensitivity to light. He was easily recognized by the characteristic way in which he pulled his cap down so the peak sat right above his eyes, protecting them from sunlight. Fearing that he was anemic, and anxious to do what they could to help, Thomas and Irene decided to follow the advice of the ‘man who knows medicine,’ and set up a sweat house. Because it was winter, the little lodge was built inside Grandpa Jackson’s house. Billy was not a willing partner in the plan.

     “I don’t want to go in there,” the young boy objected. He didn’t really know much about sweat lodges, but he was sure that if this was going to be like the other things the ‘man who knows medicine’ tried, then it wasn’t going to be pleasant. However, after his seven year-old cousin Francis 

            “One day the threshing machine and tractor owned by the reserve was operating in our yard,” Bill recounts. “I was pretty young and my mom didn’t want me near the machine because of the broad canvas belt which ran from the tractor to the thresher. It was noisy and dusty and very interesting. Mom told me to sit on the corner of the porch farthest from the machine. I moved to the corner of the porch closest to the machine. She saw me and ordered me back. As soon as her back was turned, I got up close again. But I didn’t actually leave the porch. I think I was testing her limits because the thrill of having such huge machinery working in our yard of all places was just too good to resist getting close to.” 

      As it turned out, the broad belt didn’t come off the pulley, which was Irene’s major concern. A woman of strong personality and efficiency, she could foresee dangers and always sought to protect her children from them. Billy remembers his mother with respect and affection. 

      “My mom was a strong lady. She didn’t boss Dad but she didn’t let people boss her around.” Even today, Bill remembers the way in which his mother taught him some spiritual truths, communicating important concepts of Christian theology. She taught her children about heaven and hell. She told them that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. She tried to explain the triune nature of God Who exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For a woman who could not read herself, she had absorbed and arranged in her mind deep spiritual truths which she herself had learned from somewhere, perhaps from her mother. 

      “She lived out what she believed, too,” Bill hastens to add. “I was only a boy of four or five when something happened which taught me that my mom really lived what she knew to be God’s will.” Going back to early memories, Bill recounted how a man who lived on the reserve wanted to involve his mother in immorality. 

“Of course, I didn’t know anything about these things then,” Bill points out. “But I vaguely remember this man coming to the house during the day when my dad was away on the trapline. The man was on his way to town and said he’d  buy my mom something or other. Very late that same night,  there  was  a  knock  on  the door and Mom  didn’t answer. It was the same man saying he had bought something nice for her. When she still wouldn’t answer the door, the man said he’d leave his gifts on the porch.”       When Billy woke up next morning, his mother was busy unwrapping a parcel and depositing its contents into the stove. “Look here, son,” she explained quietly. “The man who was here yesterday wanted to do something which God says is evil. These are the things he wanted to give me for doing this evil. It’s called adultery and God doesn’t like it. That’s why I wouldn’t let him into the house. That’s why I'm burning this stuff. I will tell your father about it when he gets home from the trapline.”

Bill, Clifford, Irene (Bill’s Mom), Victoria.