Downstream: Bestemor & Me

When Vangie Bergum retired, she and her husband purchased five acres along the Salmo River, in the midst of British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains, near the town of Ymir. There, they discovered the property had seen a tragedy a few years before— the murder of a child, and the suicide of a father. The deaths on her new home place mirrored the murder of Bergum’s own Grandmother and her aunts by her Grandfather. Although this tragedy took place in the 1930’s in northern Saskatchewan, the connection between the two events allows Bangum to travel downstream through the currents of suffering within her family. Downstream tells the story of the deaths of Bergum’s grandmother Inger Marie (Bestemor, means grandmother in Nowegian), and two of her daughters, Jennie and Tina. And she tells the painful story of her grandfather, Lauritz (Bestefar), who killed them, and himself. It is a story of the silence surrounding her family’s tragedy which left her with no skin, no protection against its sorrow and shame.In her retirement home, near a mountain river, and surrounded by trees, animals and birds, Vangie Bergum found the supportive environment to address the generational pain and loss that had been shadowing her whole life. In poetic language, Bergum gives us moments that that lift us into understanding, recognition and empathy for her powerful story. A grandmother herself, Bergum has written a book that will allow her own grandchildren to know the true story of love and loss within their family.