This passage depicts an important scene for the character Saul, because it is where one life ends and an other begins. Physically a life is lost, the life of his grandmother, who was frozen to death, while on their trek to Minaki where they would have resided for the winter months. This is understood in the first two lines where he talks about the ‘what if’s’ of his situation: “If our canoe hadn’t […]”(Wagamese, 42) “We would have found[…]”(Wagamese, 42). Her death marks the end of Saul’s life as an Ojibway, as his life of living off the land, with his family, who are now all either dead, missing or taken away. The way she died also marks an important detail to the plot of the story. It is ironic that something frozen (ice) is what killed her