The Gathering - La Cultivation

"She had to reach up high to gather the sticky buds of a willow tree, before they opened in early spring, when there was still snow on the ground. She would boil these down to make ointments or medicine." My mother, Thérèse Gadbois Fraser's observation, as a young girl in the 1930's, of Madame Laboucane, an indigenous woman in St. Paul des Métis, Alberta.

"She was petite and had to stand up on her toes to reach some of the branches...she always wore a black shawl over a black dress..." My mother had many things to say about Madame Laboucane over the years. I became more conscious of the passing of time and with this evident progression, the stories struck a different tone and grew ever more beautiful in my mind.

From one time to the next, one year to another year, a decade to another, a quick jotting on note paper while talking to her over the phone, an offer to research online for her, more jottings on paper grabbed off the scanner, entries in "favourites" files on my laptop, and more notes scattered everywhere like leaves from my august years. I have not gathered them all yet. Despite that, I feel I have come to know this long ago woman. She has become a part of my life. She is a friend who speaks to me of things that matter. "She didn't say much. She kept to herself." I ask my mother if she and Monsieur Laboucane had a family, had there been any children. " No, I didn't see or ever know of any children. She was usually alone."

More recently, I have become more organized and have started to record my mother's stories and her songs. I now refer to these recordings and I am also able to compare them to the material I have accumulated over the years, my trail of paper, to gather more details to round things out. It's a slow process, a slow but wonderful journey. As the author, Carol Shields once said, "Time stretches. "

Populus balsamifera L. The Balsam Poplar, also known as "Tacamahac" according to my Audubon Field Guide to North American trees.

I spent hours and days researching about willows in my books. I also went to two different libraries, searching specifically for willow trees of Alberta. Unfortunately, the information I had at home was more extensive than the libraries' very limited section on trees. I tackled the internet and hunted down blogs about First Nations basket weaving, and medicines etc. I tried to find images and descriptions of trees based on my mother's account. It was at times very frustrating. I was ready to pack a suitcase and hop on a plane to confront the Alberta winter.

I have come to the conclusion that willows are super trees. There are more than 350 species in the Salix family world-wide. In another account, the estimate was 450 species. They can be very difficult to identify due to hybridization. In North America alone there are 35 native and 5 naturalized tree species and about 60 native shrub species. About 100 in total . Most of them I believe can be found in Alberta. Some of these trees look like shrubs and some of the shrubs look like trees. The genera Salix encompasses Poplar, Cottonwood (a poplar) and Aspen.

All of these trees were very important to our First Nations peoples. Their uses were multifold. They also sustained the wildlife ranging from small birds to moose. Willows in some countries like Sweden have been grown as biomass for energy since the 1970's. Fortunately, Camrose, a small town in Alberta, has followed suit and recognized the value of what some probably consider persistently pervasive useless "scrub". They started putting their heads together in 2007 and this is what they came up with : http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/blog/poop-growing-willows-energy-crop

The Salix family yields salicin which is related to the chemical Aspirin. Bisabolol, which is active in treating tubercle bacilli, has been discovered in the young shoots of Balsam Poplar.

After gathering all of this information, I finally felt confident in my choice of illustrating what could be a stand of Balsam Poplars to represent my mother's recollection of a tall willow tree. This decision was primarily based on the Balsam's sticky resinous buds in early spring. The little red shrub on the left of my painting could be a young Salix Pyrifolia- Balsam Willow or more likely the beautiful Cornus Stolonifera- The Red-osier Dogwood "Kinnikinnik".