Open letter by Safaa Abdelmagid in support of Blueberry Creek

By Safaa Abdelmagid

Open Letter in Support of Blueberry Creek Forest School and Nature Centre

The pursuit of happiness in our times has become heavily contested- how do we each define happiness? Do we conflate happiness with success? And where in the world did contentment escape to? As a person of diaspora, these questions feel heavier under the steady stream of grief over loss of one’s place, peoples, identity and social positioning. We are forever- consciously or subconsciously- comparing and contrasting to different parallel lives we could have lived where we came from. What if there was never a war? What if our children grew up with Sudanese tongues, drinking the water of the Nile, caking in its mud and knowing all their grandparents, great aunts, uncles, cousins and the streets and neighbourhoods east and west of its banks?

I too am a child on this journey. I learn from and alongside my children what a Canadian childhood could be. From the intimate features of four temperate seasons, to the social expectations and passes as they move in and out of schools, birthday parties, playdates, libraries, playgrounds and lakes, I continue to be on a steep uphill climb of merging my standards and understandings with the context from which they draw their understandings. “It is okay Mom, everybody does that.” “Mama! I will open my gifts in front of everyone, that’s what kids do on their birthdays!” It is not easy to cross oceans and try to make a home of new lands and a new country. It is hard work- everyday- and assimilation, integration, belonging are daily strife. As a mother, the journey is painful at times, and the ambiguity of my children’s childhood- so vastly different from anything I know- makes me fervently seek out community for them; communities where they can learn, grow, be loved and belong to.

When I stumbled upon Blueberry Creek Forest School and Nature Centre, I was new to living out in the country, and did not know a single soul. I had heard about it in Ottawa before we moved, its reputation reaching far through families that had experienced it. Within weeks, the freedom, trust, choice and voice that was gifted to my child in her forest school days bloomed in our home. She would come home, brimming with anecdotes woven with negotiation, decision-making, autonomy, collaboration, creativity and joy. It was clear that this educational community would not only be accepting of my spirited and strong-willed child, but be a place where she can discover and mature into her full self. That she can be Sudanese-Canadian, Muslim, girl, loud, funny, clever, observant, impulsive, big-feeling, incredibly kind-when-least-expected, and be loved.

As the fabric of geographic and local community loosens, especially post-pandemic, our greatest hope may be in the institutional community. For many of the alternative schools intent on building community and remaining accessible, stability is a challenge, yet families continue to knock on the schools’ doors giving the impetus to move onwards and upwards.

It was alarming to learn that Blueberry Creek Forest School and Nature Centre has been under the litigious wrath of the Tay Valley Township since its founding. It is baffling to me how this honest work to create an alternative space for children could be so problematic that things needed to be addressed in a courthouse. What then, is the advantage of towns over cities, if matters cannot be discussed and compromises reached in living rooms and doorway discussions?

Coming across such a sour experience, as a newcomer with hopes to draw my peoples from the city into the country, was deeply discouraging. It was a recognition of patterns I know well, as someone who comes from a part of the world marred by colonial legacy. It is not that Blueberry Creek Forest School and Nature Centre ought to sit above permits or zoning, but the relentlessness of it all had the familiarity of law enforcement not with the intent to care for land and people, but as a way of suppression of certain individuals and groups.

In these eight years of the forest school’s history, a sprawling community connected by love of nature and children has grown, supporting each other through many joys, hardships, grief, and the rocky ride that is raising children. This forest school is an earnest and intentional invitation to not only imagine a better world in the distant future, but to create the conditions for children to make a better world today, emergent from their knowing, their voices and their dreams. It ought to be amongst the township’s treasures to have a school as such, and with that a willingness to pursue solutions and resolutions through dialogue, conversation and creative problem-solving. Perhaps most of all what is amiss, is that the children are watching and learning, what it means to be in relationship with those who represent and enforce the law.

I have no legal comebacks or arguments with which to challenge your claims, nor is that my place or knowledge. Instead, I write from my heart and mind, to implore the Tay Valley Township to move towards stewardship in its care for the land, people and community. Stewardship indeed upholds the law, but intertwines it with wisdom and seeks to maintain and flourish the interconnectedness of all creation.

Listen to our voices, understand our purpose and work with us, not against us.