'It's just all black soot': Fire destroys well-known Innu elder's tent
Elizabeth Penashue fights back tears as she stares at the charred ground where her tent once stood.
Earlier this summer, the well-known Innu leader set up her tent in a wooded area near Goose River Lodge, just north of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador.
She had been making traditional Innu donuts in the tent and selling them on the side of the road.
But an early morning fire last week destroyed the white canvas tent, leaving little more than a blackened wood frame and the burned remains of Penashue's belongings.
"That's where she was making donuts and she had her table there, and that's her chair," said Penashue's daughter, Kanani Davis, pointing to a corner of burnt ground previously occupied by the tent.
"Right now, it's just all black soot. Like, ashes. Burned wood."
Sentimental value
As Davis spoke with CBC News Monday, Penashue walked slowly around the rectangular patch of scorched ground, reaching out to touch the burned wooden posts that anchored her tent to the ground, and stopping to pick up the frame of a metal folding chair.
Penashue, speaking in Innu, described items that she lost.
"That chair, she had kept that for a long, long time because she had bought it years ago before my dad passed away," Davis said, watching her mother inspect the damaged frame.
"She bought that specifically for when she travelled, or when she was in a tent and she could use that. And I think she kept it for memory of my dad. And now it's all burnt."
Family members first noticed the tent was missing last Thursday while Penashue was out of town, working with a youth program.
They initially thought someone must have stolen the unoccupied tent, until Davis received a tip from a man in the line-up at the local Tim Hortons.
"He said, 'I heard that there was a fire up there; the tent was on fire,'" said Davis. "And I was like, 'Oh, that's news to me.' Then we did call the police after that and they said that there was a fire truck here."
'She'd like to find out what happened'
Brad Butler, Happy Valley-Goose Bay fire chief, confirmed that crews responded to a call at the location of Penashue's tent in the early hours of last Wednesday morning.
Unfortunately by the time a fire crew arrived, he said the outer shell of the tent had already been ruined.
"It was not a big fire, but it most likely consumed the tent," he said. When asked what may have caused the fire, Butler said crews could not determine a "guaranteed starting point or source."
New tent donated
Tuesday night, Davis posted to Facebook that someone had donated a new tent to Penashue and they had set up a new camp site.
Davis also said that someone had been in touch with them about the fire, and the police have been contacted.
"It's now out of our hands," she said in the post.
When speaking with CBC earlier on Monday, Davis said Penashue just wants answers.
"She says she'd like to find out what happened here," said Davis. "Find out who did this to her and why they did this to her.
"Somebody knows something and she was never informed."
