Snowy owl a 'peaceful' messenger for First Nations woman

A woman originally from Pic River First Nation says spotting a snowy owl this winter was a life-changing moment.

The owls have flocked to the province in huge, rare numbers for the second year in a row.

Melissa Desmoulin (Luce) said she was driving with her mom east of Marathon a few weeks ago, when she saw the majestic white bird, which she says holds significant meaning in Anishnaabe culture.

“My mom's first reaction was, ‘oh, oh, what does that mean?’ And you start to kind of get scared, like, ‘who is going to pass away?’ because usually [that is] what it means.”

But Desmoulin said she took a different meaning from her few moments with the owl. She said it acted as a messenger for her, comforting her about a recent loss in her life.

Daytime sightings rare

Desmoulin, who currently lives in Marathon, noted that owls usually aren’t spotted during the day.

That’s why, when she saw an owl on a hydro pole on an early December afternoon driving back to Pic River with her mom, she turned the car around, parked, got out and went to see it.

The feeling that I got from the owl, the peacefulness of it, brought a good feeling to me.- Melissa Desmoulin (Luce)

"Its wing span was remarkable and it had the black or brownish speckles around and its head was beautiful and it was white as snow,” she said.

"Owls in my culture have significant value when you see them. A lot of people fear the owl because most of the time it represents the death of a family member or somebody close to you."

But she said she believes the owl is not meant to be feared.

“It's a communicator. It depends on how you look on it. It can be the death of, not necessarily a person, but of something. For me it represented ... a death of something that I cherished and, for me, my message was that it is going to be OK. That's the way I took it."

Desmoulin regards her encounter with the owl as a teaching moment.

"The feeling that I got from the owl, the peacefulness of it, it brought a good feeling to me. It wasn't an unsettling feeling to me. It was basically telling me that a hard time in my life was over and something good was coming,” she said.

"I find that there are so many teachings out there on the land and that we can learn from the animals and from the birds. They're always teaching us. We just have to be quiet and still enough to listen and to hear them. For me that's what that day was."

She said she spoke to the owl in Ojibway.

"Because I believe that when you speak in Ojibway as much as you can, it's ancient, and I believe that my ancestors, the animals and the spirits understand that language. It's a universal way of communicating,” she said.

“I believe that the owl spirit heard that and understood when I said thank you."

Another chance encounter

For Kerry Berlinquette, who works at a bar in Marina Park in Thunder Bay, she wishes her recent encounter with a snowy owl had been longer.

Just before Christmas, a snowy owl perched on a light stand just outside the bar's window.

“Everyone in the bar was quite excited and getting out their phones to take a picture,” she recalled.

“He was really quite large and looking right in at all of us. [He was] quite as taken with us as we were with him.”

But the flash on someone's camera scared the owl away, she said, much to the frustration of other patrons.

Below is a recent photogallery of snowy owls from our colleagues at CBC Windsor