Kettle & Stony Point First Nation History Culture Stories
Tidal Wave Story
by Carole Pelletier
“Okay. We were just, I was probably about six years old and I could barely remember it, but your grandma and grandpa lived over there at the time. Of course, we lived over here, right next door. My mom said to me, ‘Hey! You kids! There’s a tidal wave, there’s a tidal wave coming!’
‘Carol,’ she said, I was the oldest, ‘Carol, you run over there and tell Geraldine there’s a tidal wave coming1’ and I don’t know what’s happening. ‘Tidal wave? What’s a tidal wave?’ Then I looked out at the water ‘cause that’s where she was looking, out the water, and all I could see was this huge wall of water coming in.
First of all, the water went out. I didn’t see that part, but my mom told us after all the water went out, you know, it has to go out to come in -- to make this great big wave. So this huge wall of water, I was really petrified. I was wondering, ‘why is she sending me?’ ‘Cause I seen the water. ‘Why is she sending me next door?’ You know, Wes, his great grandma Geraldine Wolfe, ‘cause that’s who lived next door to us.
So I went over, and it was something else! It was so scary and of course Wes’ grandma, she was really afraid of storms -- very afraid. We used to have to go over to the root house every time. I don’t know if your mom ever told you about that story, but we used to have some pretty bad storms here.
But we went anyway, and the water came way up, way up to the houses, and it was scary. And it took a long time to recede, because you’d see sometimes those ditches along there, they were like totally full, but that was so scary when that happened. Excuse me; I still can’t understand why we had that tidal wave, because this is a lake. It’s not supposed to happen on lakes, you know. It’s not the norm but that was a real scary thing back then.”
