Soon after the Long Dance in October, 1996, the inspiration came to find out who owned the meadow up the road from our farm. I had been eyeing it for about twelve years. Negotiations began with the neighbors who owned the meadow, and we signed an agreement. Several days later I was doing an all night ceremony with Beautiful Painted Arrow in the Bernalillo chamber. During the ceremony, the spirit of that chamber came to me and told me it was now time to build a chamber in Canada. The Spirit showed me where on the land it was to go, its size, and most of its form. He showed me an opening in the forest that I was not aware of , and two large guardian trees about twenty feet into the forest. With the natural opening there, very few trees would have to be cut. I was amazed when I returned to the farm and walked the land. Everything appeared just as the Spirit had described it. We closed the contract for the land in May.

On Friday, June 20, 1997, Joseph came to bless the new land where the Peace Chamber was going to be built. It was summer solstice and the beginning of the Sun-Moon Dance. Joseph left the house early in the morning to start his ritual. By the time most of the dancers and friends had arrived, the hole at the center of what was to be the chamber was already half full of corn, soil, water, and other sacred blessing herbs. We formed a large circle in the forest and spontaneously took hands. There was a profound feeling of respect for the ritual that Joseph was conducting and a wonderful feeling of being part of this new creation. Joseph asked for three stones and people went off in various directions to find the "right" ones. Marla remembered one she saw up the hill on the edge of the forest a brought it back. Soon we had the stones. The group gathered back into the circle before the final blessing was bestowed. As Joseph performed the final prayer, a beam of brilliant white light descended into this blessed spot, as if a White Light Being arrived for the first Canadian Peace Sound Chamber. Most of the group burst out in tears from the unexpected sight and the feelings of intense gratitude for this fortuitous blessing just before the Sun-Moon Dance.

By the middle of September I had cut down all the trees that stood in the building area. They all agreed to be cut down with no objection. Except for one. The last tree, the largest of the pines to be cut, did object. When I asked it if I could cut it down, it said, "No". "Now what?" I thought to myself. I slowly became aware of this great spirit in the tree and I explained to it that to build the chamber I needed it to move to another tree in the forest. I waited many minutes until I became aware of a great wind starting at the base of the tree. With a whoosh sound this great tree spirit began to leave the top of the tree. It was huge and moved up the hill into another tree. We have been in regular communication ever since. After we cut the tree we counted its rings. It was 75 years old. All the trees cut down were used to finish the inside of the chamber.

September saw the hillside dug out and in October, Joseph helped us pour the footings for the walls. This was the day before the Long Dance and I was very grateful that Joseph could be there to help us pour the foundation. A few weeks later, Bob Douith and his crew began the block wall. In two weekends the walls were up and parched. Pamela Friendly put out a call to everyone she could think of to donate crystals. A wonderful assortment came in. These were put inside the blocks, creating spirals from the cardinal directions with a row of herkamer crystals along the whole top of the cricle of blocks. Each step of the building process brought many people to help, watch, do ceremony, sing to the spirits in the trees, and generally enjoy the wonder of the chamber going up.

Many surprising spirits choose to join us!