Posts with the Indian Residential School tag

Barris Beat

True reconciliation

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Authors connect with readers at the Saskatchewan Festival of Words.


The festival began the way most events do these days in Canada. With respect. Last Thursday evening, the creative director of a festival in which I was participating, came to the microphone at the lectern, looked at the assembly of novelists, non-fiction writers, poets and all the other festival-goers. With appropriate sincerity and solemnity, she read the local land acknowledgement.

“We acknowledge that we are on Treaty 4 land,” she said, “encompassing the lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota, Lakota and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.”

That’s the way the 27th edition of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words began in Moose Jaw, last week. (more…)

Barris Beat

Bad history that includes us

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Chanie Wenjack – never free to go home.

My first day at a new school nearly scared me to death. In September of 1956, my family and I had moved from a suburb in the east end of Toronto to a village outside the city. So, I had to go to a school I didn’t know, meet a teacher I’d never seen before, try to make friends among strangers, and then, try to blend into the classroom. The fact that I wore glasses, the only one in the class, proved equally terrifying, particularly when my new teacher fussed over me.

“Why don’t you sit at the front desk,” Miss Anderson told me.

I wanted to disappear. I thought everybody would pick on me for having to wear glasses. But the worst fear I faced was that I’d get lost walking home from school. (more…)