Page 39 - Chippewas of Rama First Nation

Our Stories

Moon Bread

Iryna Denysova/Shutterstock

82 -year-old Myrna Watson tells the story When we were kids, we would be playing

around outside, us kids and our cousins, Muriel
of her grandfather making moon bread.
and Barbara Ingersoll, and others, and my
“When I was a younger woman and
lived in Orillia, I always had Rama kids grandfather would make moon bread. In the
ashes of a fire, he’d put the dough, then make a
come to my house. They’d leave school and
fire on top of it. Pretty soon, we could smell the
come to my house. I would get into trouble
delicious aroma of it cooking and he’d invite
with their parents, so I would make them go
us to have some. He would pull it out of the
back. I found out they’d often leave because
fire with gloves on and pull it out with a tray
of their lunch, they didn’t like bringing moon
he had, brushing all the ashes off. After all the
bread. As it was, once the other kids tried it,
ashes were gone, there would be a great big
they’d be trading their sandwiches for moon.
golden moon of bread. He would have a pail of
My grandfather was stubborn. He lived in honey and he’d break the bread in big pieces,
a tent by the lake, and sometimes lived on slathering the bread with honey. We would
Chiefs Island by himself. One winter, my dad, enjoy it, getting all sticky with honey. When we
Ryerson Snache, went and got him, telling got home, my mother would shoo us to the
him it was snowing so he could not live in a lake to wash off.”
tent. My grandfather stubbornly came into the
house, insisting he would sleep on the floor.
My dad insisted he would sleep in a bed like
everyone else.

Chippewas of Rama First Nation 37

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