Cecil Vizena

My Grandmother Vivian was born in Chapleau, a small French Canadian town in northern Ontario. This area was historically occupied by the Cree Nation. Her father, Cecil Vizena, was a known criminal in the area, although in a more romantic sense of the word. Instead of stealing, extorting or killing, my great grandfather was known primarily for one thing: Dynamite fishing. Which is just as it sounds, using high powered explosives to blast large quantities of fish out of the water. The dead fish would then float to the surface due to remnant air pockets in their bodies; to be easily collected at the fisherman’s leisure. While the use of dynamite on its own brings a general danger and menace to the public, it is not the only thing that put my great grandfather on the wrong side of the law. In the 1920s, during the time he operated, vagrancy laws (which essentially criminalized drifters and the homeless) were rampant. Cecil operated as a criminal, risking his life to feed the vagrant population of Chapleau. Interestingly, my grandfather’s escapades did not just extend to the downtrodden white population of Chapleau but involved feeding the aboriginal populations that surrounded it. Cecil was an outlaw who defied the Canadian government by directly offering aid to the Cree Nation.

I am not caught up enough in my own family’s legacy to completely ignore the irony in this. A white man, using a violent, unnatural weapon to plunder the natural resources of the lake - it would be impossible to see this without at least acknowledging that the method is a mirrored copy of the colonialist tactics that put the Cree population in this position. My grandfather was only able to assist because previous white settlers had done so much to hurt.

However, I feel proud of him nonetheless, and yet saddened; my great grandmother, Jean Seymour, was later forced to remarry. It was no divorce; she survived my great grandfather after he lost his life through the pursuit of his criminal ventures; Cecil Vizena lost his life on October 2nd, 1935, at the age of 27, killed by dynamite which he hadn’t thrown far enough away from his boat.

That would be the unfortunate legacy that Cecil Vizena would leave behind. A short-lived criminal career, punctuated by a punchline some generically ok comedian would make about northern fishermen, but a legacy that is only carried on by his direct descendants. There exists few published accounts of Cecil, the most prominent would be a brief mention in the obituary of his firstborn Son, Barry. Even my grandmother Vivian would barely have known her father; nonetheless, it persists.

It is difficult to cite sources proving my family’s story; the only documented account exists in library archives in Chapleau itself. My father had dug through them while we were visiting my grandmother’s hometown and found a singular book that details the misadventures that I have just relayed to you. Chapleau, not seeing fit to digitize its records, is the only place in the world where you can find information on Cecil - limited though it is.

Strangely my grandmother harbored no ill will towards her father. Despite an untimely demise, she seemed to have had nothing but positive feelings towards the brief memories she has of him. I would love to have interviewed her for this assignment; she had a sharp wit about her that always lit up my face and engaged my mind. Her feelings about her small hometown were always genuine and sweet, and the one time She and I went to visit seemed like a happy reunion.

She passed away very recently and very suddenly.

The quarantine prevents me from going to retrieve the physical record of my great grandfather, and the immutable march of time has prevented me from speaking to either my grandmother or her aforementioned older brother, Barry.

I feel this strange draw to him. I was shocked to discover how young he was when he died. He was 27 and likely had never been outside of the confines of Chapleau; he had never seen the world, and yet there he was, living his life like an urban legend. Indirectly I owe my life to this strange wonder of a man, but there are so few opportunities remaining for me to understand him. Vagrancy is no longer a punishable offence and the Cree nation that exists there today is just as unlikely to remember him as any other person living in Chapleau.

It is likely that no one is left who remembers Cecil personally, and his deeds seem too small to have been noticed by the larger world around him. But in some small book, in that one small town, there was someone willing to risk their lives to make a small difference in the existence of those far less fortunate than him.