57 years later, Bobby Bird’s journey home finally completed

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By then, it was too late to search for Bird’s remains, and they wouldn’t get found until 1976. Furthermore, DNA identification technologies and practices didn’t catch up until 1999, meaning Bird wasn’t officially declared deceased until 30 years after he died. 

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Fast forward to this past weekend, Bird’s journey was finally completed by community members in La Ronge. The ‘Remembering Bobby Bird’ walk was put on Oct. 1-2 by both Roberts and Chuck MacKinnon. 

Roberts said the idea came from Bobby’s cousin Don Bird. 

“[Don] recently passed, and one of his wishes before he passed was to finish the walk for his first cousin, Bobby Bird. So that’s the thing, people don’t know about that story very much. So we’ve been trying to get it out to many people as we can.” 

The walk started from the site of the old Timber Bay Children’s Home, then to the new Timber Bay school where they stopped for some food and ceremonies with local elders. They then trekked north to where Highway 969 crosses over Bull Moose Creek, where Bobby’s remains were found in 50 years ago.  

From there, most of the elders and other walkers went home, but Roberts along with his two kids, Theron and Blake, and a close friend in Harry Charles were the crew of four that planned to finish the rest of the walk. According to Google Maps, following the highway from Timber Ridge to La Ronge is about 127 km, but luckily Roberts and his crew had others joining along the way and let his crew of four rest in the pilot truck. 

“We had people come and go every now and then till we had one group stay with us till about 2:30 in the morning, which was a counselor from Montreal Lake Cree Nation, Carol Naytowhow, and a survivor, Rachel Henderson. She stayed with us until about 2:30 in the morning and then the four of us continued on until we got to the highway. Then another survivor, Alan Morrow and his sister, Allison I believe her name is, they joined up with us and they gave us kind of like a rest while they kept on.” 

Roberts said it took a lot of preparation to get the walk to go forward, including preparations in case they ran into any aggressive wildlife, food and water donations for the trip itself, and fundraising for the meal and ceremonies at Timber Bay. Even with all that planning, they still had to rely on the local community to help them out. 

“We actually had lots of setbacks. Our bus broke down that morning, and graciously, we knew a local bus lines owner, she graciously lent us her a bus, no questions asked, within 30 minutes of us meeting her, which was great. Everything worked out just how it should have been. Yeah, it was great.” 

This isn’t the first story about important Indigenous people local to the La Ronge area that Roberts has tried to raise awareness around. He’s helped add proper headstones to the graves of First Nations veterans in the area, and also has plans to add more names to the First Nation Lac La Ronge area Veterans Memorial Banner Project. 

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com