How an indigenous-owned resort in Canada is healing old wounds

Woe, Canada.

Remember when vacationing to the Great White North was an easygoing, rated-G lark? An everything’s-good, everything’s-fine escape to a nicer, gentler place where the people dress like us, sound like us (more or less, eh?), but delightfully aren’t us?

Welcome to topsy-turvy 2022, where otherwise low-key Canada is currently embroiled in a scandal involving more than a century of racist and deadly child abuse, culminating with a reckoning in the form of lawsuits, protests, reparations and calls for the cancellation of its national holiday.

In other words, Canada’s doing its best imitation of America.

Even the pope had to jump into the mix earlier this month by finally apologizing (and you know how much the Holy See loves to do that) for the Catholic Church’s enormous role it played in the murderous and cringingly euphemized “residential school” system which committed a cultural genocide of Canada’s indigenous populations from the 1880s up through the mid-1990s.  

But in order to heal the deep societal wounds and pain in its wake, apologetic-to-a-fault Canada still manages to keep it unapologetically old-school Canada — spiritually, recreationally, wine o’clockually — for residents and visitors alike, at least in one small, largely indigenous pocket of British Columbia’s Southern Interior.

Half native Secwepemc (Shuswap, in English), half Norwegian blooded, Brittany “Britt” Bakken is a 28-year-old cultural interpreter and healing guide at the Quaaout Lodge & Spa at Talking Rock Golf Resort in Chase, roughly 260 miles northeast of Vancouver by car. 

Britt’s breadth of knowledge in history, spirituality, ethnobotany and especially linguistics is as bold and well-rounded as her nose ring — think Ferdinand de Saussure with a dash of riot grrrl. You could say she found il papa’s mea culpa a tad wanting. “To me, an apology alone does not do anything. There are reservations still dealing with dirty, untreated drinking water … brown sludge that children play in,” she says. “Do something about that or shove it. An apology without action is just manipulation.”

The savvy spitfire who hails from nearby Kamloops is shepherding our group of aspiring soul-searchers on a healing journey around the 70-room lodge’s densely forested land on the shores of Little Shuswap Lake. We’re talking 20 acres of prime, pristine Squilax Territory.

We start early in the morning under a cerulean sky by doing a 15-minute gratis smudge ceremony, or what Britt calls a spirit bath. She lights a bundle of sage in an abalone shell bowl, then either she, or the guests themselves, waves the smoke-billowing stick around the parts of the body most in need of cleansing. Hair seems to be the favorite of our group as it’s best at trapping the herb’s waft for all-day olfactory bliss. All of the four elements are represented in the smudge — abalone from the water; sage from the earth, and air to oxygenate the sage’s flame. The number four is kind of a big deal in Shuswap beliefs.

We then leisurely saunter through the Endor-like woodlands surrounding the lodge — a metropolis of giant cedars, firs and junipers carpeting the ground with their cones.

We stumble upon a grouping of, yes, four fir trees, one of which was not like the others. It had its barky bod blasted by lightning something fierce years ago, but still lives to tell the tale. 

That’s all I’ll say about “the Healing Tree,” lest I spoil all the many stories of miracles it and its pitchy goodness have since paid forward which Gordon “Gordo” Tomma will regale you with. As wise as he is wisecracking, Gordo is a half-Irish fiftysomething Shuswap knowledge keeper and fellow culture interpreter who often accompanies Britt.

“He excels at telling me when I’m wrong,” she jokes.

Gordo promises that while all of his Healing Tree tales start the same, they never end as such.

We emerge from the forest onto the shores of icy Little Shuswap Lake, grand Monashee mountains provide the backdrop. A short walk down the beach, we come upon a mysterious, red metal-doored structure.

“This is a sweat lodge, free to use,” Britt explains. “It gets blistering hot in there from the lava stones, so you shouldn’t wear jewelry. I would have to take out my nose ring.”

While owned by the same native band, the steam lodge is private and not part of Quaaout proper, and currently padlocked (possibly because of some bad weather, likelier because of some bad humans). In other words, it’s officially closed to John Q. Public like us. (But, if you happen to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a chieftain, you might just slip on past the proverbial velvet rope one day.)

The capper to our stroll to serenity is a stopover at the lodge’s kekuli, a traditional, semi-subterranean earth lodge with a fire pit as centerpiece, intended to spur storytelling, the sharing of sorrows, prayer or just meditation among its guests.

After learning about the initial 215 child graves discovered outside a residential school nearly a year ago (that number has since ballooned into the thousands), Britt visited the kekuli four days in a row, praying and giving her thoughts to the departed.

“I let them know they’re not forgotten and offered food to the flame for them to enjoy on the other side,” remembers Britt, who’s also a mother of two “kiddos” and an assistant teacher of linguistics at a local daycare.

When we return to the lodge, Britt gifts us with a small satchel of sage and bids us adieu. Intent on a little après-detox at the lodge’s restaurant and bar — helmed by local chef Chris Whittaker, it partners with local suppliers, farms and wineries (try Recline Ridge’s Riesling-esque Kerner) — the day of healing hasn’t ended just quite yet.

Enter five-treatment room Le7ke Spa. First off, this is totally justified as an authentic indigenous experience beyond just the First Nations-inspired décor and design. Its name, Le7ke, means “I am good” in Secwepemctsín and that “7” is not a hallucination, nor is it a stylized “V” a la the movie “Se7en,” nor is it the actual number — it’s just the best mouth-and-throat-looking pictograph a Qwerty keyboard can conjure up to indicate a glottal stop which occurs quite frequently in the awesomely alphanumeric language. But my nerd-self digresses.

In difficult and heartbreaking times such as these — and not just for Canada’s indigenous folk, but for all of its people — spiritual pit stops like Quaaout Lodge and its passionate crew of cultural guides are essential. Although, if you visit Quaaout’s website, an auto-playing promotional video on the homepage shows an entirely different cultural experience: sunglasses-wearing, beer-tossing, hot dog-scarfing bros, with golf clubs slung over one arm, a stand-up paddleboard under the other, hitting the lake’s sandy beach with their dog.

Each of us grieves in their own way.

Rates at Quaaout Lodge start at $175; Daily 15-minute smudge ceremony is free for guests at 9:30 a.m., space is limited; 75-minute Walk the Land Tour is $32/pp; 75-minute Kekuli Storytelling Experience is $36/pp. The author was a guest of the hotel.