•A National Treasure •Tame Your Temper •Diet Mistakes

Circles:
Carving Out Community
By Vicki Pinkerton
There's often a day, an hour, or moment when in hindsight you can point your finger and say, "there, that is
where my life changed forever." For Alfie Fishgap, artist, wood carver, and musician, that is particularly true.
He grew up in a Scottish, Italian, immigrant family in Toronto. Life at home didn't suit him so at thirteen, he
panhandled enough money to take a train to the West Coast. There he worked at odd jobs to get by. A couple
of years later he found himself in Clearwater BC, a tiny northern village. He was working to provide summer
activities for the local kids. Just a kid himself, hung out with the native teens and then their parents. He found
that he could sit for hours listening to their stories and teachings.
At seventeen, homesick, he came back to Toronto, reunited with his parents, and pursued a career as a
musician. He also took on an assortment of "real" jobs to support the artist within. Life rolled along. He got
married, settled in Holland Landing and had a daughter. Things seemed to fall into a comfortable routine.
Multi talented, he picked up carving tools to try carving duck decoys. He didn't have the time to take courses
but the knives felt good in his hands and it was fun.
Then in his early 40's, although he didn't recognize it at the time, Alfie had his moment. His life was about
to change. On that particular night he woke from a dream of incredible clarity. In it, he saw a woman's face.
It was grotesque but appealing in a way he didn't understand. In the morning the image lingered. He couldn’t
get rid of it, so he picked up his tools and began to carve. He was obsessed by it carving whenever his
schedule gave him a few free minutes, driven to get her right. To finish he painted her and used horse mane
and tail to give her thick black hair. When he was done he hung the carving on the wall. As he stared at her
in awe, she seemed familiar. A quick Google search revealed several Coast Salish "Wild Woman of the
woods" masks that looked remarkably similar. Alfie stood wondering at the coincidence. "Cool," he thought,
and it seemed like the end of the story.
Not long after, his parents phoned. They urged him to come for a visit. They had something to tell him. On
his way he was worried that one of them might be sick, but no, their news was much stranger. After several
false starts they told him that he was not their child. They said that he had been adopted as a toddler. He sat
in shock as they explained that he had come from the Coast Salish Nation on the coastal mainland of BC.
They knew little else about his birth except that his mother had been Native and his father Scottish. He had
been one of the many babies bought and sold by unscrupulous adoption agencies in the 1950's and 60's.
He was stunned. His whole world shifted. Nothing was as it had seemed to be. He didn't know how to proceed
with his life. With his wife’s encouragement he headed back to the coast this time with a mission. He was
looking for clues about who he really was. His search seemed to be an exercise in futility. Those adoptions
left no paper trails. He needed good luck to help him along the way. Eventually he found it. He made his way
to a small village where an elder grandmother remembered his family. They had been fish trappers she said,
by the name of Fishgap, but they no longer lived in the village and no one knew where they had gone. That
was the end of the trail. In the three months he was away he would find no other clues. He turned around and
headed for home where he took the name Fishgap in honour of his lost heritage and began life as an estranged
Coast Salish man in East Gwillimbury.
32 “LIKE” East Gwillimbury’s Bulletin Magazine on FACEBOOK