Progress: 14/30 - #18. read 30 texts that will aid in my teaching

This appeared in my school library around the same time as Gord Downie / Jeff Lemire's Secret Path. It is a novella by Joseph Boyden, author of Three Day Road, centered around the same subject as Secret Path - Chanie (Charlie) Wenjack's attempted escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario.

I am grateful to my school library, and our lovely school librarian, for all attempts to remain relevant with contemporary literature and social issues. I am also grateful for her genuine knowledge and teaching ability, which annually leaves me with little to attend to for three days, while she educates our grade 10 students on the inquiry process, research sources, and chosen multimedia. As such, I sat in a comfortable chair and read this novella in entire, between brief student questions.

It's so beautiful. It takes on the form of twelve manitous - spirits, neither good nor evil, inhabiting various creatures  - who share narration with Chanie, following him on his journey, granting both treachery and comfort. At merely 100 pages in length, pocket-sized, with wide margins and medium-sized text, it is a quick (albeit richly layered and complex) read.

My only criticism is that I wish more credit was given on the cover page to indigenous artist Kent Monkman (whom I have long admired), as I feel that his illustrations are almost as large a contributor to the text as the narrative itself.

This novella, and its large overlaps with Secret Path, left me desiring to investigate commonalities that I didn't at first understand: the matchsticks, the windbreaker, the map, the other boys running. This left me reading a wonderful series of articles that brought a great deal of cohesion to this narrative for me.

Firstly, this interview with Boyden discusses this subject as a secret inter-artist Canadian collaboration to honour the 50th anniversary of Chanie's death this year. At Gord Downie's suggestion, it included himself, Joseph Boyden, Métis filmmaker Terril Calder, and Boyden's contribution to spoken word tracks on a Tribe Called Red's latest album.

Next, I managed to find the actual article from 1967 which inspired the works of Downie, Boyden, and Calder. I was amazed, actually, that something of this nature was written on the topic of residential schools almost 50 years ago. I feel like it's taken this long for the rest of Canada to catch up. This article left me seeking out the author who was daring enough to report. His name is Ian Adams, and he's now 79 years old. Sadly, and unsurprisingly, as a result of his 1967 article and the resultant letters of complaint, he was told that his writing was not a proper fit for Maclean's magazine. He sought out freelance work, eventually transitioning into filmmaking.

I've been posting all these articles for others to read. I've written this blog in hopes that others, still, may. Sometimes I feel like I am just shouting into the wind. I'm sure Adams felt the same.

As so perfectly, hilariously encapsulated in this meme, however, I will keep on keeping on:

[Original goal list posted here.]

Progress: 12/30 and 13/30 - #18. read 30 texts that will aid in my teaching

Someday, I want to teach in one of many schools that utilizes and celebrates indigenous studies - instead of dismissing course proposals with the systemic racism evident in the comment: "I mean, this is probably meant more for Northern schools; we don't have First Nations kids here." Little do they know - and, little should it matter. 

As Gord Downie writes in his rationale for "Secret Path", an album with an accompanying graphic text by Jeff Lemire, meant to increase Canada's awareness as to the enduring trauma of residential schooling through illustrating the death of Charlie (Chanie) Wenjack: "Chanie haunts me. His story is Canada’s story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were. History will be re-written. We are all accountable."

I agree with Downie, and I remain committed to reading texts that will continue to inform both myself and my teaching, with regard to indigenous issues.

I preordered a special edition of the above text and LP record. I grew up listening to Downie - my sister's choice, not my own - though I was always enamoured with his lyrics and subsequent poetry.

Jeff Lemire has been one of my favourite graphic novelists for a few years now.

I have been addressing residential schooling with grade 10s for the past three school years, anchoring the study to a cultural short story unit.

This purchase only made sense.

Opening it was a sort of a personal Christmas day. The text I read first - hardly any words, save for interspersions of Downie's lyrics. A visual narrative, really. "Harrowing," I called it. First impression.

The following week, I watched the hauntingly beautiful animated version on CBC: a fusion of Lemire's moving images, set to Downie's music. This, I want to show to classroom audiences. I would have done so a couple weeks ago, had my classroom computer not been down for repair for two weeks. The moment passed - and so it goes, but there will be another.

Watch it here:

The second text, Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American Voices, arrived unannounced in my school mailbox one day this September.

I have only two guesses of where it could have come from - and, either way, well, it's noted and appreciated.

This entire short text is an arresting visual collage of stories, artwork, poetry, photographs, comics, articles, and anecdotes. It features the likes of author Joseph Boyden, visual artist Christi Belcourt, model/actress Ashley Callingbull, and throat singer Tanya Tagaq. These artist discuss topics of identity, re/appropriation, teenagerhood, bullying, suicide attempts, resistance and change. These are many stories I hadn't heard, from many names I had. Additionally, this text includes submissions from indigenous peoples, young and old, throughout the United States and Canada - identified by cultural and place associations of their own choosing.

This has been a busy month and - like many Novembers - not without its stresses. As such, these texts are short, but nonetheless important.

Thank you to everyone who contributes a voice to these causes: from the writers who write, the artists who draw, the educators who teach, the musicians who sing, and the publishers who say: "Yes, this is important."

Maybe someday, wherever I teach, a school where I belong will echo the same.



In the words of Louis Riel, whose importance we are to celebrate tomorrow: "My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they awake, it will be the artists who give them back their spirit."

[Original goal list posted here.]

Progress: 11/30 - #18. read 30 texts that will aid in my teaching

For those of you who do not know, I was blessed with an extraordinary talent for sleeping. I can fall asleep in bright light, to a backdrop of noise, on a bed barely comfortable. I often sleep for 16 hours at a time. I sometimes sleep for close to an entire 24. I fall asleep in minutes flat, and can easily fall back again if woken suddenly. I have fallen asleep on airplanes, buses, and suitcases; I have fallen asleep at the movies, baseball games, lectures, and tutorials. I once fell asleep on a computer keyboard and woke up with 90 extra blank pages on my assignment. I once fell asleep at the dinner table and my whole family just quietly ate dinner around me. I once fell asleep standing up in an elevator. Ad infinitum.

Therefore, it may surprise you to know that - save for the last one - the endless anxiety of summer's too-much-time-to-think has often brought me boughts of insomnia. I am not proud to admit this, but I went through a phase where I tried to remedy this with wee hour YouTube Dr. Phil marathons.

This is where I first encountered this memoir. Amanda Lindhout was the interviewee. As the former ransom-held prisoner of a militant group of young boys in war-torn Somalia, she has spent her time since being released writing this memoir and establishing a non-profit that supports development aid. I suppose I should have considered the interview source before adding this to my to-read list, but it sounded compelling in the case that I ever decided to start reading memoirs to help with 3U. (My interest was also heightened when I kept stumbling upon this book - as an Indigo recommended staff pick, when a fellow travel companion called it a "page turner".)

Before I launch on a tirade: This book was entertaining and readable. I don't know how much of the lovely prose to attribute to Lindhout, or her alleged "co-author" (who has no role in the actual narrative), Sara Corbett.

That being said, I have a lot of trouble mustering empathy for people who are intentionally reckless, without labeling themselves as being reckless. Call it what it is. Please don't attribute it to good intentions and an unwillingness to see negativity, or the potential far-reaching consequences of your actions. I can read narratives about self-injury, or alcoholism, or eating disorders, or drug addictions, or other similarly dangerous and self-consuming behaviours, so long as the authors don't act naive to the selfish suffering - albeit borne of deep sadness and longing - that they are inflicting on both themselves and others.

Like Into the Wild, this is not one of those memoirs. Any little self-reflection comes dangerously late. I am not in any way implying that the subjects of either of those texts were deserving of any harm, but to blindly hack through foreign terrain with good intentions and a lack of preparation is just, to me, not relatable.

Coupled with the following sentences, which are such offensive massive generalizations (again, under the guise of good intentions), I just - though I read it all - could not properly invest myself in the text:

"The Kuchis reminded me a little bit of the First Nations people back in Canada, independent and unintegrated and pretty much worse off for it." (82)

"She had the same angular face and elegant carriage as the Somali fashion model Iman." (317)

"He had a close-cropped beard and wide brown eyes and was the spitting image of the actor Morgan Freeman" (353)

Don't take my word, though. Feel free to read for yourself. It's actually won quite a few semi-prestigious awards. The review committee are entitled to their opinion - and, I, to mine.

On a more positive note, I'm back on track with book : time ratio. I will do my best to continue.

[Original goal list posted here.]

Completed: #1 - take French lessons

The amount of time I spend in my car pains me. It's literally almost 2 hours per weekday (10 hours per work week, 400 hours per work year, dear Lord.) In previous years, therefore, I have spent those 400 hours listening to sadbastard music on repeat. I figure this can't have been good for my psyche.

Now, I am an old person in more ways than, say, the love of making pickles and jam and hanging clothes on a laundry line. Please give me nothing for my car that does not involve a compact disc: no podcasts, no rigging my Samsung to the speakers.

Since my only language-learning/re-learning goals involved French and Mi'kmaq, I figured the former would be the more likely to find on an audio disc. Thanks to eBay, I snagged these mp3 lessons:

These audio recordings, by the late Dr. Christopher Kendris, operate on a whole language acquisition philosophy. It takes on the form of him teaching two students a basic conversational understanding of French through teaching verb tenses and sentence structure, while also providing historical context and tricks to grammar rules. It leaves space for the listener to also make attempts at sentence construction, before confirming the correct phrasing.

I have already completed the Level 1 & 2 audio course, finding it very useful, for someone who already has a basic understanding of French - though I don't know that I would otherwise find it as useful. I re-imagined myself on many a road trip to Gaspé, through small rural French towns, trying to order a Subway sandwich, and now feeling both capable of anticipating questions and providing answers in complete French sentences, as opposed to my usual combination of broken French words and pointing. I even noticed myself dreaming in bits of French, and silently understanding pieces of conversations from the immersion students.

I intend to continue on with Level 3 advanced, as it's nice to feel as though I'm doing something remotely productive with the 400 hours a year that otherwise fade into the ether.

[Original goal list posted here.]

Progress: 10/30 - #18. read 30 texts that will aid in my teaching

I've been steadily building a list of independent course texts for my grade 10 students, centered around the topic of culture. As a person who is very linear and structural in thought, I find it exceptionally difficult to mark an essay based around a text I did not even read - not to mention the lack of ability, then, to effectively answer any content-based questions. As such, I supply a steadily-growing list of books I have read.

Though the ENG2D0 course is infused with South Asian content (the course novel is Yann Martel's Life of Pi, and we watch either Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake or Gurinder Chadha's Bend it Like Beckham for a group essay formative - comparing values in the filmmaker / author's own life with those represented in the film), I have found my own independent study list to not include quite enough South Asian literature. This, obviously, meant I needed to read more.

I picked up The Lowland at an airport in New Dehli in the summer of 2015. I had a 10-hour stopover, before boarding a flight to Toronto via Switzerland, so I figured I had some time to kill. As it turned out, I ended up using the last of my rupees to reserve a sleeping pod equipped with a shower. I napped for six hours instead, grabbing all toiletries for future use. Best $60 I ever spent. 

Anyway. The Lowland has been sitting on my shelf ever since.

I talk to my grade 10s, from day 1, about "ignorance" on its base level not actually being laced with negativity. It simply means a lack of knowing. If we intentionally ignore or reject the things we do not know, that is a different and problematic form of ignorance. Use those moments, I suggest, not as stumbling blocks but access points. I don't mean to sound patronizing, I say, but you have the entire world at your fingertips on a handy device in your pocket, backpack, desk corner, or glued to your hand. Use it for good. When I was a wee kid and we didn't know something, my mom would have to drag out dusty encyclopedias from the basement downstairs - and she would, always freely admitting when she, too, didn't know the answer.

Even with the best intentions, we can't know everything. If you come across a cultural / historical / religious term that is new to you in these short stories or ISU texts, use those devices. Regard those unknown terms not as reasons to be alienated, but as reasons to discover more.

I held up The Lowland. "Do you know about the Naxalite movement? Anyone?" No hands. "I hadn't either. I have been through 32 years of my life without knowing anything about it - and it started in the 1960s in Calcutta, it's still happening, and I've been to India. This book mentioned it, again and again, wanting me to know more than I did. Where did I look?"

"Google?"

"Yes sir."

This novel presents a variety of perspectives, hashing and rehashing these notions of right and wrong. I wondered, also, why it kept weaving the festival of Durga Puja into the narrative - until I read more to realize that, honouring the victory of the Goddess Durga over the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura, the festival itself greatly symbolizes the triumph of good over evil.

In its themes of inattentive motherhood, loss, abandonment, residual trauma, resentment, it greatly reminded me of a memoir I read in the late summer of 2015: Projection, by a former favourite professor of mine, Priscila Uppal. In its apparent emotional vacancy, the pain and resignation in wrong and hastily-chosen paths, it was reminiscent of John Williams' classic novel Stoner.

However, in its alternating viewpoints, historical content, transcendence of time and place, its ceaseless efforts to draft a rough cartography and then only fill in the small details in gradual piecework to present a full picture - well, The Lowland is something entirely its own.

And did I cry like a baby when it was over?

I cried like a baby when it was over.

[Original goal list posted here.]

Completed: #20. make my own jam

I am told I was born an old soul. I am also often called "childlike", so it's a strange balance. As a child, I was always quietly enamoured with my Gaspé grandmother's way of life: the indigenous influence in a small country town sort of apart from my suburban small city upbringing.

Laundry was dried on lines. Field berries were picked fresh and made into jams, kept in a cold cellar for up to a year, alongside jars of sweet bread & butter pickles, and ever-ready stashes of root vegetables. Produce was grown in gardens, fish was caught and sold fresh from the Atlantic, the only corner grocery store was small and family-run by my uncle.

As I age, this is the lifestyle I've steadily tried to infuse into my quote big city living unquote. It imbues a peace and calm in the ready-made mass-produced fluorescence of grocery aisles and major intersections. It speaks favourably to some very core aspect of my being. It helps me on the journey to becoming more the person I'd like to be.

Last night, I received what will be my last Mama Earth order. I started out, in one of my first exacted goals on this list, with a Farms & Forks delivery. That company, months later, was absorbed into the larger institution of Mama Earth. I have very few complaints - their produce is great, and their customer service is excellent. However, since moving to North York, my delivery day has been switched to Friday evenings. The deliveries generally arrive around 7pm, which presents large issues if I am ever away for the weekend. In short, I'll be changing over to a biweekly delivery from a smaller, North York-based organization called Fresh City Farms, which will bring my order on Thursday evenings.

Anyway, this final order contained a pound of Ontario coronation grapes. I have very specific feelings about grapes, as follows: red -> love, green -> like, anything else -> loathe. However, though I consume jam very infrequently, I know that I have always loved any variety of grape jam. Therein, this idea was born.

This morning was the first official weekend Geoff and I have both spent in our new place. After a late night of organizing, we slept in. I woke, washed my clothes for the upcoming work week (gah!), and for the first time, used my new laundry line that my parents helped me install upon request.

(Hanging these clothes flooded back all sorts of Gaspé memories. They also smell greater than anything I've ever washed. Today's first "old soul" accomplishment.)

After these clothes were hung, we headed out for the first in what I'm sure will become a weekend tradition of grocery shopping (and, next to cooking our dinners together, may also become one of my favourite domestic activities). Knowing that I intended to make grape jam (the day's second "old soul" accomplishment), I researched local gluten-free grocery stores and found Goodbye Gluten. It's no Sweet Potato, but it'll do. I bought a loaf of overpriced gluten-free multigrain and an Amy's gluten-free vegan mac & cheese microwave dinner.

I took a long nap in the late afternoon to early evening, waking to try the mac & cheese (which was decidedly tolerable), take down my laundry, and prepare the jam.

I very loosely based my recipe upon this one for concord grape jam.

Here is the very simple pared-down version (which is easier than pie):

1. Skin the grapes by squeezing them into a small bowl / container.

2. Keep the grape skins in a separate bowl. They will be added later on in the cooking process.

3. Put the shelled grape mixture in a pan over medium heat. Stir occasionally.

4. Bring to a gentle boil after 3-4 minutes. Boil for about 5 minutes, covered. Remove cover to stir occasionally.

5. Add grape skins. Set heat as high as it will go. Stir frequently.

6. After about 2 minutes, add a cup of sugar per pound of grapes. (I use coconut sugar, so that this is a completely vegan-friendly recipe.) Add this sugar a cup at a time, while stirring.

7. Stir constantly as jam thickens.

8. Use a spoon test for completion: If you lift the spoon and it drips into the pot, it needs to be cooked longer. It should slowly fall into the pot when it is complete.

9. Remove from heat. Add the jam to a jar if you are planning to keep it in the fridge for awhile before consumption. The heat from the berries should create a vacuum seal (if the centre seal is pressed down, you're generally good). If it does not seal after an evening, either complete a hot water bath, or make sure you consume the jam in fairly short order. (I only made a small amount of jam, which I intend to begin consuming tomorrow, so I just set mine aside in a tupperware container. Breakfast!)

I was really struck after making this with the same thought I had after making pickles for the first time (which was another goal on my last three-year set): This is so easy! Why does anyone buy these at the store??

I encourage you to try it for yourself.

[Original goal list posted here.]

Progress: 9/30 - #18. read 30 texts that will aid in my teaching

I've been so busy with arts & crafts and reinventing new ways to be self-sufficient that this is, somehow, the only book I've completed this summer. This leaves me, essentially - on a ratio - one book behind on a three-year goal. I'm not too concerned. Books to me are an escapism that make waiting in transit possible (of which I've done little this summer, with zero international travel), that make quiet evenings possible, that make lunch breaks on bad days tolerable. Etc. Etc. Etc. I'll get there. I've been content in my own head these days. This is something for which I am grateful.

Anyway.

When first I spoke about reasserting my Métis identity a few years back, a colleague said: "You should read Three Day Road." I continued to hear about Joseph Boyden at many conferences since this recommendation, and started reading more about him and his literature. I almost picked up The Orenda, until I realized it was a continuation in a series that began with Three Day Road. I then decided to log the latter on an ongoing "To Read" list. I was fortunate enough to be awarded a $200 Indigo gift card some time back from a contest held by my union (one of many reasons I am indebted to my union!), and sat there at my computer screen with my "To Read" list in hand, picking off books. This was obviously one.

Now, at almost 400 pages of tiny text and brutal war descriptions, this is no light book. I'd recommend it on my 2D multicultural list to only the very mature readers. It could be a great pairing for a 4U ISU. Near the end of the book, the protagonist ruminates: “We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy.” This is the odd and exclusive reason I appreciate war texts, for this is what they illustrate about the human condition.

There is so much foreshadowing that I anticipated the ending well before the midpoint of the text as the only logical meeting point of the two parallel narratives. This kept making me wonder if perhaps I would be shockingly mistaken, or if I was meant to sadly anticipate the way in which it would all go down, so to speak, and simply wait for how. I think if the latter were possible, it didn't even take away anything from the narrative to me: just spoke of the brutal degradation of humanity in such a scenario. I kept reminiscing about this class I took in university called Literary Non-Fiction, in which we read - amongst many other texts - Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Of course we knew the inevitable ending. This was real. We were only waiting. (This called up all sorts of ethical questions with regard to ourselves as readers that I have always loathed having to face, but that's sort of an aside.) My professor asked: "What is the purpose of a parallel structure?" I raised my hand, and was selected: "At some point, they have to meet."

The structure here is a little different, as it floats through space and time within both narratives - told more in flashbacks than in present tense. However, unlike any postmodern text, this is entirely fluid and never disorienting.

Boyden is a beautiful writer. I do want to read the others in the series.

[Original goal list posted here.]