The following is the second column submitted by Rev. Michael Tutton.
Blessing Pat’s mittens
When the cool, wet winds of late fall turn the skin on my fingers red and uncomfortable, I think of Pat Pictou and the blessing of her mittens.
Mrs. Pictou, a Mi’kmaq elder who lived near Sipekne’katik First Nation, passed away at the age of 93 on Nov. 22, the day after the original version of this article was published.
I met her on my first Sunday morning presiding at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church in Oakfield. She was sitting quietly in a pew beside her daughter Sue Morrison, a few metres from the 69 pairs of mittens she’d made for school children in the Annapolis Valley.
The mittens were pinned to a wooden drying rack, forming a collage of bright colours framed by the light streaming through stained glass, altar windows.
Each pair included a contrasting stripe around the wrist, at the point where ribbing stitches trap the heat.
Do you remember the relief, as a child, of pulling on mittens when your hands were cold? The beauty of those woolen mittens was that you could wiggle your fingers, so the movement and the knitted wool conspired to create warmth.
For a child in Canada, mittens are essential.
The story of this gift began when a non-profit group that supports two elementary schools asked if the St. Margaret’s prayer shawl group could knit five dozen pairs for school children, some of them from families of migrant farm workers unused to the cold.
Lynn Morrison, the sister-in-law of Mrs. Pictou’s daughter, recalled the elder had earlier provided her with 47 pairs of mittens for Ukrainian children, shortly after the war began in 2022. The request went forward for another delivery.
A few weeks after the blessing on Sept. 7, I was visiting Mrs. Pictou and she explained that she started knitting after her mother taught her as a small girl.
However, at the age of seven, when she was taken to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, it was an obligation. “When we went there, we had to do it. (The nuns said) ‘idle fingers are the devil’s workshop’ … It was something you had to do and whatever we had to do, we did it. You didn’t question the nuns, or they’d hit you,” she explained.
The saying may indeed have some roots in the epistles of St. Paul, who warned a Christian community they were idling their time away, “minding everyone’s business for their own” (2 Thess. 3).
But this was addressed to “busy body” adults, urging them to use their time to better purpose. Its logic never applied to children required to live in a residential school. In fact, the kind treatment of children is a major concern to Jesus, who rebukes his disciples for refusing to allow them to receive his blessing.
Mrs. Pictou stayed in the residential school until she was 16. She says her brothers were kept far from her on the other side of the school.
“You were alone,” she said.
After she left the school, Mrs. Pictou looked after her aunt’s children until she married Leonard Pictou. She had four children, adopted a daughter and cared for a foster daughter and son. She told me she was willing to provide a home to anyone who needed it.
And Mrs. Pictou didn’t stop knitting mittens.
Her daughter said about 13 years ago, when her mother moved in with her, she was continuing to make at least one pair every day.
“They built up in the basement, and we started giving them to schools and then branched out into other places, like the fire department,” said Sue Morrison.
At the heart of the faith Mrs. Pictou retained — despite hard memories from the residential school — is the possibility of transformation and healing. But sometimes it’s a person such as herself, who steadily perseveres, who is changing many of us in ways we barely notice at the time.
From the hands of a woman who was displaced as a little girl, the wool is formed into a protective shape and sent on to children in need of warmth.
Recently, I was attending a priest retreat day where the speaker was the Rev. Rosalyn Elm, an Anglican priest from Oneida First Nation.
But the portion of the talk that struck me most strongly was her view that the sacrament of unction is vital to today’s world. This is the sacrament offered for the healing of the soul and the body and for the forgiveness of sins. It normally includes an anointing with oil.
Healing also happens in other ways, she taught, particularly from elders speaking to the young. “Their teaching was around the kitchen table; it was in the garden. Their teaching was in their grieving over their lost grandchildren. This is what moulded me,” she recalled.
“I take what I have learned, and I bring it to you,” said Elm.
As I reflect on Mrs. Pictou, I realize when she was there on my first day, she was healing us and moulding me. As the saying goes: “Blessings abound.”