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CLIFF WOFFENDEN
1964 - Lemoyne D'Iberville
When I left Lemoyne, I
went to work for Northern Electric (now Nortel) where I became a
draftsman and later graduated to engineering department. I left and went
to work in the printing industry for a few years, then Bell.
In '72 I decided I had enough of the rat race and left Quebec to move
out into the bush near Quesnel, BC. I spent 5 years squatting in an
abandoned miner's tool shed (I fixed it up) with no running water or
electricity. I raised goats, ducks and rabbits and fished a lot. Life
was great and I was never sick and always well fed, clothed and warm.
I spent a lot of time reading. I was discovering that living in the bush
is very different from how I was brought up and there were things going
on that I had no points of reference to assimilate. I found that
aboriginal spirituality made a lot of sense in my circumstance. I met an
old native medicine man and he taught me his ways. I guess you can say I
became the equivalent of a Christian minister. For years I conducted
ceremony for the native people around Quesnel.
Eventually a bunch of us bought a piece of land to start an alternative
intentional community 33 miles out in the bush, up a logging road. We
all built our own houses and had community gardens and all that other
hippy stuff. It all came to crashing halt for me in 1980 when the
snowmobile I needed to get in and out of our farm was broadsided by a
logging truck doing 60 miles an hour.
Broke a lot of bones and suffered severe head trauma. My training as a
medicine man paid off as I recovered faster than any in the medical
profession thought possible. But my life in the forest came to an abrupt
end. I was no longer physically able to handle that life style. So
reluctantly I returned to civilization. But even after 30 years I am
having trouble integrating back into society.
What I learned from living in the bush does not sit well with the
mindless consumerism of today's socio/economic realities. So now I spend
a lot of my time writing books about my experiences. I have written
books on Log House construction, a humorous book about forestry, a
philosophical tome and a novel based on shamanism and prophesy. I have
now finished an historical book on the local natives who, though still
around, were declared extinct by the Canadian government in 1956, one
year before negotiations for Columbia River Treaty began. The flooding
of the Columbia effectively wiped out ten thousand years of history over
night. The government still refuses to recognize their existence.
There it is, the Readers Digest version of a very mixed up and
complicated journey. If anybody wants to contact me I am at:
cliffwoffenden@gmail.com.
Adios for now - Cliff |
