When we reached Thunder Bay, we headed to Community Spokes, a co-operative that is committed to providing accessible resources and skills training for people using bicycles in Fort William and greater Thunder Bay. They’re based out of The Hub Bazaar, a collective of different vendors and pop-up shops contributing to and leading the revitalization of Fort William’s historic downtown.
Which is where I met Lori, the owner and facilitator of The Hub’s space. We talked about the city, its history and her life as an entrepreneur in this part of Ontario.
She’s engaged in the revitalization of the Fort William downtown. “People view this community in downtown Fort William as being very rough, that there’s more crime than the rest of the city. I don’t buy into that. But we have a larger First Nations population down here, and with the racism we have, there’s a negative connotation.”
“But we’re a community. We’re a community of diverse people, and although it may not be a community you’d want to live in, it’s still a community. It’s our community.”
Lori challenged the perceptions of Fort William that are held throughout Thunder Bay. “It’s a safe community,” she said. “I’ve been here doing business for over four years, I’ve lived in Fort William and close to downtown for almost thirteen years. If you want to listen to what other people have to say about it and buy into that, you have to come down and experience it. Experience the diversity of the community.”
“Poor does not equal bad, you know, unmonied does not make you a bad person. Addiction does not make you a bad person, it makes you a person who makes bad choices.”
“Things are starting to happen in downtown Fort William. It started four years ago. We can’t forget to give a big thank you to the people who’ve been down here twenty, twenty five, thirty years who’ve kind of held down the fort, until these younger entrepreneurs decided to go down there and give it a shot.”
She talked about the changes that Thunder Bay has endured in the last several decades, from the decline of the railway and Great Lakes shipping industry to the crash of American tourism following the 911 crisis and the consequent increased border security. She didn’t pull any punches in describing the challenges that the city had faced and continues to face, but she also spoke proudly about the people around her.
“The people of Thunder Bay are forward-thinking people. There’s lots of good things happening here. It has things you wouldn’t see in other cities this size because the people here are just forward-thinking and they work really hard and they don’t give up.”
“That’s really admirable about this town. Will there be prosperity in the future? Absolutely. It’s just going to be a little while. But they don’t give up. This town does not give up and that’s what’s amazing about it.”
In the 2012 census, Thunder Bay became the homicide capital of Canada. In the last several years, there have been a number of unsolved deaths of Indigenous youth in Thunder Bay—either unrelated tragic accidents or the manifestation of racist violence and hate crime, depending on which side of the city you belong to. At the start of July, Macleans published a high-quality article about the River of Tears and the racial divide of Thunder Bay. The whole article is powerful to read, but of it all I wanted to share the ending of a poem written by a member of the Fort William First Nation in response to the death of 14-year-old Josiah Begg.
“And as the moon shied away because she couldn’t bear to watch
He felt his life leave his young fragile body
And the river hid it, he shook and shivered
I just keep imagining him yelling
help me please I can’t breathe
help me please I can’t breathe
And a mother came to face her worst fears
A little boy replaced every ounce of water in that river with her tears”
As Lori said, Fort William has a significant Indigenous population. The entire city has a problem with racism. It’s important, therefore, to have people like Lori who are immersed in it yet also standing against it. “Unless you understand their culture you’re not going to get them,” she said. “You’re not going to get it, you know. We’re just very quiet and we just wait and engage and try to learn. You know, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get it all. And that’s okay. But you can’t judge without knowledge.”
“And even then can you judge?”
“At some point I think what we have to do, what has to be done is really basic stuff. We need to really get to know each other.”
The last thing we talked about was Lori’s collaboration with a younger generation of entrepreneurs. The young men of Community Spokes asked her to come out of semi-retirement in order to provide leadership and guidance to The Hub’s role in the revitalization of Fort William’s downtown. “None of this would be happening if there wasn’t a reaching out to me,” she said simply, “and I reached out to them.”
“Together we’re so strong. Like if we were separate, yeah we’d be okay. But put the young people with the older people, and you’ve got strength. We are unbelievably strong because of that.”
As I young person myself, I see something immeasurable in that recognition of intergenerational strength. We all have so much to learn from each other. I can vouch for that based on this single conversation. “That’s what I say to this municipal council,” said Lori. “There needs to be some young thinking, because a lot of their thoughts are amazing, if it’s intertwined with that wise stability. These young people have figured a lot of things out that we just never did.”
In the context of Thunder Bay, there’s a lot of multifaceted history, politics and intercultural relations. There’s racism and systemic oppression and intercity division. In enterpreneurship, there’s hard work combined with vision, risk meeting reward—and sometimes, failure.
What I’m trying to say is, the things that Lori talked about were complex issues. It was powerful, then, to hear them put so simply. Poor is not bad. We do not give up. We need to learn about each other. Together we’re strong.