Mr. Thomas Maccagno - son of Michael Maccagno
- n. 1939-02-16
- m 1961-08-26 Lac La Biche, AB
- d. 2012-01-12 Lac LaBiche, AB
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In 2001, I received an invitation from Thomas Maccagno to meet members of the committee for the Museum "Musée de la Mission du Lac la Biche". It turned out to be an enjoyable meeting and an opportunity for me to get to know Tom Maccagno. I knew his father, Mike Maccagno; he and his son are trilingual Italians: they speak Italian, French and English,
Tom, a lawyer, continued the work of the Lac la Biche museum which his father had begun.
One day, Tom and his wife, Annette, who had a chalet on the other side of the lake and by chance found an arrowhead. It was a real nice surprise, and they started to look more seriously using a certain digging tool for other arrowheads. Now, after about twenty years, Tom had a collection of 70 arrowheads. As you may suspect, this is a rather large collection when one stops to realize that even finding one is quite difficult. According to those who hve examined Tom's collection, scientific researchers have told him that this is perhaps one of the nicest they had ever seen.
One day he brought his collection to the Provincial Museum in Edmonton to get the opinion of those in charge there. He wanted to know the age of the arrowheads and also to evaluate the collection. The museum archivist was very pleased to see such a large collection. The museum curator/custodian told Tom that within a few years, some experts from Ottawa were coming to Edmonton and they could possibly answer Tom's questions. So Tom left his collection there.
Many weeks later, Tom received a call from the museum custodian so he went right away to see the custodian and the scientific researcher. After various hours examining the arrowheads, they told that the arrowheads were probably 12,000 years old. Obviously the arrowheads were not too recent! I then asked Tom if it was possible that they belonged to the people who had come from Asia (China, Mongolia, elsewhere), who had come towards the end of the last Ice Age across the Bering Strait, and Jules Laberge who was standing nearby said "That's what Petitot believes." The belief that where the people who made these arrowheads came from is surely important, but for me, the number 12,000 years is fascinating. I think of the First Nations people on the shores of the Red River in Manitoba who have lived there 10,000 years, as well as those of Sault Ste. Marie who have dwelt there 7,500 years according to research done by Sister Annette Potvin with whom I have worked. One must admit that the First Nations people discovered Canada thousands of years ago, and this question has not been solved.
P.S. I recall that one day my Grandfather Vanderaegen (my mother's father) had said to my mother with a bit of a challenging smile, "Edouard, he has a darker skin complexion; he must have Indian blood." And my mother answered him immediately," If you can prove that my husband has Indian blood, I'd be a very proud woman to know that I had married a true Canadian."
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