Anishinabek Nation citizens honoured with an Anishinabek Lifetime Achievement Award
By Rick Garrick
CHIPPEWAS OF RAMA FIRST NATION—Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek’s Timothy Hardy and Fort William First Nation’s Leonard F. Pelletier were among 11 Anishinabek Nation citizens who were recognized with an Anishinabek Lifetime Achievement Award at the 20th Annual Anishinabek Evening of Excellence.
“I have always been a leader and worked in the communities for fire safety and my own drilling companies,” says Hardy, who also worked as community facilitator with the Anishinabek Nation.
“We worked on the governance and education agreements that are bearing fruit today. We actually have an education agreement that was signed last year.”
Hardy operated a water well drilling business, Hardy Water Supply, for about five years.
“It was a family operation,” Hardy says. “We did about 400 wells around the Thunder Bay area. We had 35-ton rigs; I had three of them going in the Thunder Bay area. We drilled all the way from Sault Ste. Marie to the Manitoba border.”
Hardy attended the Anishinabek Evening of Excellence with his wife and grandson. The Anishinabek Nation 7th Generation Charity held the awards ceremony on Aug. 15 at Casino Rama.
“We do have to recognize people from all our communities for whatever achievements they have accomplished in life,” Hardy says. “Mine has been a very wonderful life because I have done a lot of things, which I associated more with working with Native people all the time.”
Pelletier, who has been involved in coaching and playing hockey for most of his life, says the awards ceremony was “great.”
“It’s an honour to be nominated and it’s an honour to be selected,” Pelletier says. “It’s an honour to be recognized and it’s an honour to represent our First Nations people.”
Pelletier coached both minor hockey and junior hockey teams in Thunder Bay.
“I was part of the Junior A North Stars,” Pelletier says. “And I did play Senior A hockey and Junior A hockey.”
Pelletier, a defenceman, says his team won the All Ontario Championships in 1972.
“I’m a Montreal fan, my favourite defenceman was Doug Harvey,” Pelletier says. “Over the years, you see these defencemen that carry the puck, and I was sort of like that kind of a player also. I enjoyed the game. I just quit skating a couple of years ago. My knees starting giving away.”
Pelletier says he learned how to skate on Lake Superior.
“When I was a kid I never had a hockey stick,” Pelletier. “We used to have to chop something that looked like a hockey stick in a birch root. And you never had a puck, you had horse [droppings] — when it got hard, that’s what you played with.”
The Anishinabek Lifetime Achievement Awards have been held each year since 1999 to acknowledge and bring awareness to Anishinabek citizens who have made a lifetime commitment to improving the quality of life on First Nations.
The nine other recipients at this year’s awards ceremony included: Rudy Bressette Sr., from Kettle and Stony Point; John Mattson, from Alderville First Nation; Finian and Lynn Paibomesai, from Whitefish River First Nation; Denise Restoule, from Dokis First Nation; George Shawnoo, from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation; Ogimaa Shining Turtle, from Whitefish River First Nation; Elizabeth Stevens, from Nipissing First Nation; and Myrtle Swanson, from Michipicoten First Nation.