Life In the Wind, a Musician, and a Tradesman (and an Artist)

Randy dabbles with paint as well

By the time Randy Dakota was well into his fifties, he had experienced the highs and the lows of life and come a long way to find the balance between. The highs came two ways, as a highly paid builder of infrastructure and professional pipefitter, as well as his skill as a musician playing in front of thousands of devoted fans. The lows found Randy living in streets (through two winters!) in Edmonton, Alberta, where his idea of home was found under a bridge or beneath a parking garage, where a feast became snared rabbit obtained in the river valley.

(“It is delicious!”) He made snares from broken guitar strings. He cooked rabbit over fire and on a barbeque. He used McDonald’s Restaurant condiments to spice up the meal.

Until landing in this peculiar estate, Randy was living a pure Canadian’s dream in Yellowknife, NWT, during the 1990s, earning large wages pipefitting for mining operations. On a given two-week break from the working life Randy would depart the north to join top-flight blues and country musicians to play lead or bass guitar and sing many of his own songs (for he is an accomplished songwriter). He played in Guam, Finland, and elsewhere in the world.

The life he made for himself in the north was percolating, and in it he was able to do most of what he wanted, including drugs and alcohol,. If life couldn’t get any better, well, a few turns of the screw would soon make it worse, then worse, then much, much worse progressively forming habits two or three. The slide onto an urban trap line began after his common-law wife in Yellowknife announced she was pregnant and hit him hard by announcing the child belonged to somebody else. This announcement caused him to depart job, city, and territory to live on the road.

He went south to find a band and live in a suitcase in hotels where he played across Canada. As time went by addiction grew into a ticking time bomb that threatened to blow away everything. And blow it did on New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 when a crisis occurred. They played in the band for the promise of a large New Year’s Eve paycheque and after the event members of the band awoke to find cheques that were worthless, while the leader of the band stole the entire hotelier’s payment. This loss was doubled by the tragic reaction of a close friend and band member when friend and fellow musician met desperation and betrayal by committing suicide.

Randy looks back and sees the picture clearly today, but at the time it was incomprehensible. Randy’s mental outlook sank into depression, which he vividly recalls was triggered by, “doubting if my dream of a life in music was anything but a nightmare.” His own crushing depression ensued and Randy decided to ‘step off’ stage. He abandoned the musical profession by selling an expensive set of Stratocaster guitars and amplifiers and all of his equipment and divesting of other worldly possessions. He checked out of society, not in stages, but like it was some kind of hotel; he left all at once. He leapt full-time into a life of triple addiction and burned through his will chasing cocaine, heroin, and alcohol.

He played a battered guitar on the mean street corners, and in the underground stations of Edmonton’s Light Rail Transit system, and arranged himself a cost-efficient accommodation under a bridge (says he became a troll), and later, a parking garage under the high-priced real estate of the valley, and got wrecked on everything he could lay his hands on while enduring all-Canadian seasons in the bare comfort of whatever hovel he managed to scrape together.

Perhaps the lonely years spent in hotels as a musician had equipped him for such a crash. At first he depended on friends by sleeping on their couches and supplying them with a share of the drugs, and as the clock turned backwards and backwards the need for drugs grew more selfish, and, as the rapidity of progression into addiction increased to terminal velocity he was mainly left alone to face his demons or escape them by getting smashed.

The 1990s became a faded memory of moments of glory on stage and a terrible sadness found in between. Life became an uphill struggle, trudging every step to the next, spending it all if possible within an inescapable ‘maze’ of addiction. Music has been a driving force in Randy’s life, “It is genetic,” ascribing this inheritance to Métis heritage, as he later learned, “My mother’s brother was a gifted player,” who became well known in Winnipeg as a singer songwriter and guitar player.

He learned about this lineage later in life, where he came from, including that his great grandfather had been Canadian voyageur, a courier de bois (runner of the woods). “I saw a picture of him and asked my grandmother why he had crease marks on his forehead and sides of his face. She told me the markings came from pulling York Boats upstream,” from the leather strapping to pull heavy watercraft upstream and portage over land. This true Manitoban Canadian had earned these distinctive facial markings by the work he did for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He carried mercantile trading goods from Winnipeg to Norway House and back, one long arduous voyage every year.

It turned out Randy has the purest form of Western Canadian heritage there is. Important details like family history were missing from his youth, by the fact he was adopted out by his biological mother, whom he did not meet until he was 37 old. And the close relationship with an adoptive family was interrupted by the period spent snaring rabbits in Edmonton’s river valley, and, before that, addictive behaviour.

Randy was raised by adoption into a family, and this wasn’t half bad. “My father gave me a trade as a pipefitter. He taught me a lot,” and was always generous to his adoptive son. His mother could not have children so they adopted Randy and his sister. It had been a normal childhood spent in a family environment and he felt nurtured far more than deprived, it was a good family environment and he feels he was blessed by it.

Later the nurturing away from addiction came from detox facilities and treatment centres and creating art as therapy, and the 12 step program that helped him to fill his medicine pouch used to form a powerful spiritual foundation, including later a faith in the Living God, his Higher Power.  SEE Angelique Merasty Levac

B.C. Justice system has specialized First Nation advocates

Patricia Jackson volunteers as treasurer on the board
of directors of the Northern BC Crisis Centre

 Patricia Jackson is a Youth & Family Advocate for the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia, and, as noted on the title (or index) page, Patricia was declared the Aboriginal Woman of Distinction by Today’s Woman for the 7th Annual presentation of the northern award. She received the honours during a banquet in Prince George, at the Coast North Inn, this fall. She won this recognition from tireless work at an urgent task.

 

“We are supporting clients who are facing an imbalance, and we advocate correcting injustice.” Patricia Jackson comes to the job with the correct set of personal experiences because, it is true she is young enough to have avoided residential school horrors (by falling outside an age demographic), but Patricia underwent her own disturbing experiences in concert with what Governor General Adrienne Clarkson (Ret.) calls systemic racism against First Nations in Canada.

 

Systemic racism causes people to land in precarious, severely prejudiced, government-legislated losses of human rights from which there is no escape by any means, because it is race-based.

 

Patricia was put into a system of foster care where she grew up in a system of policies under Bill Vanderzalm, renowned and renounced as a form of zealot as then-minister of families, and Patricia lived in one of those ‘foster’ homes filled with frightful encounters, in Valemount, BC.

 

She describes endless days filled with assault and battery, deprivation, and insane rants and dictates about the problems caused by Indian people. These actions were apparently foisted upon dozens of First Nation kids wrenched thousands of kilometres from home. She was, for example, born in Metlakatla, BC, and is a member of the Tsimshian Nation.

 

She said then-minister of government Vanderzalm issued specific orders for social workers to look the other way, which permitted wider and more longterm abuse. The former premier gained a reputation from a lot of bad decisions and poor judgement. This incident, according to Patricia, paints a very dark picture of his period, as a former BC government minister.

 

She survived to raise a family and turn to a profession that provides hope of retribution, in other words, a highly noble cause for the creation in society of behaviour that treats everybody with the same justice, where justice prevails more than here and there.

 

Systemic racism in Canada has been no less absurd, no less arbitrary, no less cruel, no less obvious, and equally as destructive as any system of racism the world has ever seen.

 

Canadians are fortunate to live in an evolving society that has been proving capable of bringing about change. Patricia Jackson is one of those people who is able to lead the way. She has co-workers at the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia www.nccabc.ca who cover the territory by following the circuit court, meeting clients and pursuing the cause of justice.

 

Jackson has toiled in a Quebec Street office in downtown Prince George to bring about change in one life or hopefully one family at a time, working to salve wounds suffered either by hook or by crook. She is happy to report the NCCABC offices are moving to new quarters.

 

She has worked at 154 Quebec Street, Prince George, in a historic property. It may well be one of the first commercial properties in Northern British Columbia, indeed, may have been a trading post. It is quaint, cramped, creaky, a false front, and they are moving.

 

A woman of this stature is too busy to pay attention to false fronts and antiquated notions. Jackson is building a place in society for people, and sometimes she delivers unexpected landings for kids. For instance, starting last year she worked with the business manager for the WHL Cougars, Brandi Brodsky, to build a program with businesses to put hundreds of kids in arena seats, fed, clothed, housed, and often over the moon with joy to receive an invitation to the spectacle of world class junior hockey.

 

Disadvantaged, at risk, handicapped, or just lucky for once, some kids might to turn a corner through heartfelt endeavours. She knows for a fact it is worth the effort. She has been mentored by others and Jackson speaks about Gloria George, a Hereditary Chief , who inspired a program to create retribution and healing in the Prince George Provincial Corrections facility. This program is presently underway dealing with residential school trauma.

 

“This program is entering another phase," said Jackson, "and the trauma workshops are being funded by the Anglican Church for this next round.” Jackson noted, “This is the first corrections facility in Canada to offer recovery assistance to residential school survivors,” and the program owes its existence, she said, to Gloria George. The United Church contributed the funding for the first phase.

 

Jackson points out another essential ingredient in the association’s success, the NCCABC is entirely First Nation operated and staffed. “My Regional Manager is Arthur Paul, and he works out of the 50 Powell Street, Vancouver BC office. He lets me do my job to the best of my ability.

 

"He has been responsible for making me a better employee,” where she has been at NCCABC for 2 years, "and on Dec 8, 2007, will be entering my third year of employment.   The NCCABC,” including Darlene Shackelly, Executive Director, “has empowered us," she said "by believing and supporting us.”