About this event
Join us for a 90 minute tour of Ross Bay Cemetary by Métis educators Mark and Fern Perkins. They weave together their own stories with the early Métis history of this place. We gather to listen and to learn, to engage in simple ceremony and to offer our prayers and gratitude for all who have stewarded this land for generations.
Fern Perkins is the Métis, great-great-great granddaughter of the Anishinabe woman, Isabella Mainville Ross, and HBC Scottish Chief Trader, Charles Ross. They were the parents of the first Metis family in Fort Victoria and on Vancouver Island. Fern is a professional educator who has taught in Canada and the US. Fern currently coordinates the Metis Education Enhancement Program for the Greater Victoria Métis Nation in local elementary and secondary schools. After retiring from the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, Fern discovered the truth about all her relations. She then returned to reach Indigenous Education at the University of Victoria, to learn with her students in this hopeful era of truth and education.
Mark Perkins is the great-great-great grandson of Peter Skene Ogden and his Cree-Dené wife of Ile å La Crosse, Saskatchewan. Their first Métis child, Peter Ogden Jr., was the Hudson’s Bay Company Chief Factor of the New Caledonia District, before it became BC. Mark did not know his hidden Cree-Dené-Métis and Shoshone history until after he retired from 33+ years as Battalion Chief with the Victoria Fire Department. Mark started his professional life as a teacher before he changed careers and became a firefighter. He and Fern met in elementary school and did not know about their parallel Métis history, until after they retired.
NOTE: tickets to this event are free. But we welcome donations towards a gift which Wild Church will be giving to the tour leaders - you can donate here: https://www.abbeychurch.ca/donate (Click the green "give" button and then select "emmaus community" on the dropdown menu in the popup/ diocesan giving site...) OR bring cash or cheques (made out to Emmaus Community).