I READ CANADIAN DAY, February 17, 2021, is a national day of celebration of Canadian books for young people, but older readers will enjoy participating too. This is a day dedicated to ‘reading Canadian.’ The purpose is to raise awareness of Canadian books and celebrate the richness, diversity and breadth of Canadian literature. We have a wealth of talent in our country!
TITLES FOR ADULTS OF ALL AGES
This is a collection of some of the best Canadian work I've read in the past few years. Some are brand new titles and others had been on my to read list for decades. It includes, fiction, fantasy, poetry, memoirs and nonfiction. There is even a graphic novel. I hope you can find something here that interests you so that on #IReadCanadianDay, you can join the rest of us showing love to Canadian authors.
FICTION
This series, featuring Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, is absolutely addicting. It's best to start with Still Life, the first one so you can almost keep track of all the shenanigans the Inspector has to deal with while he's busy solving murders.
The Break by Katherena Vermette
Vermette takes you into a world of women survivors. She reveals how much work it takes for them to maintain their strength and continue to survive in their world. It's a world permeated with fear, a world marked by violence, a world where many of them can go missing.
This is a story of two sisters, Lark and Robin, and their absent Mother. Lark, the eldest, ends up raising Robin, a piano prodigy. The two sisters end up distanced emotionally and physically, but end up there for each other when they need to be.
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
Dimaline's work functions on so many levels. On the one hand this is a stand alone love story showing what we will do for people we care about. At the same time, it ends up being a profound examination of indigenous/settler relationships historically and today. It's also very very creepy.
Trower was a Vancouver poet whose fame is mostly restricted to the west coast. He deserves to be read more widely. His work feels like a cross between Robert Service and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. These poems reveal what it means to be a west coast logger. My father and uncles would have loved these.
How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
This is a collection of short stories about Laos immigrants negotiating their way in a strange new country. They tell of poverty, heartache and hardship. Thammavongsa’s characters are so matter of fact real it’s like you could run into them on the street. If not them, then people very much like them.
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Read anything and everything you can get your hands on by Richard Wagamese.
This book made me weep. Saul Indian Horse survived life at St Jerome's Residential School. He was settled into a supportive home when his hockey teammates told him he had to go and play with the big boys and get out - if only so the rest of them could live some of their dreams through him.
It was racism, not lack of skill that sabotaged him.
Jonny Appleseed is a two spirited Cree. You know how the best literature slips you inside a character’s soul and you come to understand what it means to be the other? This book is one of the finest examples of this.
Life Long Distance: Dialogue Poems by Robert Heidbreder
I adored this collection of poetry. It was like visiting with my mother in law and her bridge and coffee clutch gals. So many times I just laughed out loud. You will too.
Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson
You know how you finish a book and wonder what took you so long to get to it? This is one of those. Lisa's brother has gone missing while out fishing. While her parents head south to search for him, she stays in Kitamaat and cycles through her memories of other family who are no longer here. Eventually she ends up in a confrontation with the spirit world.
Now You're Logging! by Bus Griffiths
Bus Griffith's graphic novel showcases logging in the 1930's. I know these kinds of men portrayed here. They are my grandfather and uncles, especially the older ones. My younger uncles and father logged using chainsaws instead of crosscuts, but much of the industry, and certainly the culture, were similar. The romantic sections are a bit hokey, but I was charmed by the innocence of it.
Obsidian by Thomas King (series)
This is the most recent titles in King's DreadfulWater series. Thumps DreadfulWater, a Cherokee ex cop, returns from following leads in his search for the serial killer who murdered his girlfriend and her daughter many years earlier. It turns out that the murderer is now stalking him.
You should probably start this series at the beginning.
Anything by this author is a treat.
This is a fictionalized account of a Vietnamese family who were part of the first group of Boat People. It weaves together a young woman's memories of being a young girl in Vietnam, then living in a refugee camp in Malaysia, immigrating with her family to a small town in Quebec and then visiting Vietnam as an adult.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
NONFICTION
Black Water by David Alexander Robertson
This is a painful but brilliant read. The two main characters are young women trapped in circumstances of poverty and abuse. It's brilliantly written with the odd bit of dark humour thrown in. It was an emotionally hard read watching the train wreck of their lives unravel.
Simpson's writing is just stunning. This collection of poems and prose is a profound window into another way of knowing the world.
Tilly and the Crazy Eights by Monique Gray Smith
Tilly and a group of indigenous elders head out on a road trip to Albuquerque for the world's biggest Powwow. It's a coming of age novel for the older crowd. It's loaded with laughter and tenderness, but there is also loss, heartache and romance.
When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald
Youneed tomust make space in your heart for Zelda and her tribe. Zelda, who has symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome, lives with her brother, Gert. She's obsessed with Vikings and is determined to live her life according to the principles held by those ancient Norse warriors. When it turns out that Gert is in trouble with a gang, she sets out to be a hero.
NONFICTION
Robertson writes about his father and his relationship with him. Out of the ashes of the residential school system and a grade eight education, Donald Alexander Robertson ended up going to university to become a church minister. Eventually he became an important leader in Indigenous education here in Canada. He and his wife thought that keeping their Indigenous heritage from their children, was the right thing to do. They were wrong.
Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants by Ann Hui
Ann Hui and her partner, Anthony, travelled across the country visiting chop suey restaurants along the way. While working on the project she discovered that her parents had run similar restaurants. This book integrates the story of the author's journey and research with the more personal story of her father's history.
From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
In this biography Thistle talks about being abandoned and placed in abusive foster homes with his two brothers before being rescued and taken in by their paternal grandparents. His story is a slow downward spiral that escalates into addiction, homelessness, a life of crime and prison stays. In his thirties he finally made his way through rehab and ended up going to university. This is a hard read but well worth it.
Maria Campbell had a challenging, but love filled childhood. Her family were poor, but so was everyone else around her. As the oldest child, she did what she had to to protect her younger siblings. After her mother died, that meant, at fifteen years old, getting married to someone she did not love in order to give them a home. She survived all kinds of horror before finally starting to get her life back in order around the time she turned 30. This is another one of those books that has been languishing on my to read shelf for years. I wish I had read it earlier.
Billy-Ray Belcourt writes with powerful clarity in this poetic memoir. His words mine reality for essential truths. In the process, white readers like myself come to understand more clearly how colonialism pervades all aspects of NDN life.
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King
This is a book all people living in North America should read. As I read of the repeated land grabs and ongoing attempts to eliminate indigenous peoples, I was struck by the fact that we are continuing to do this still today.
This memoir Pawagi was diagnosed with leukaemia and the treatment regime she had to endure to get rid of it. It's loaded with gruesome details, truly wretched experiences and episodes of black humour.
What struck me most was the strength of the relationships she began with, and those she forged during her horrific marathon.
It is beautifully written. “ Love is not a tree, because trees die. Love is a rock. And not stone that crumbles into dust. It’s the Canadian Shield itself, granite as old is the Earth, solid and unwavering beneath my weak and unsteady feet.”
Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel J. McLeod
Darrel McLeod's childhood was brutal. My heart ached for the child he was. In his award winning memoir he writes of his abuse, his love for music, his desire to help his family, his struggles with his sexuality, and his conflict with fundamental Christianity. What I took away from this book is hope. I hope you do too.
This book translates the global ramifications of colonialism into an intimate level. At age 11, when his grandmother died, Downing was uprooted from a loving home in Trinidad and ended up in Northern Ontario. In the following eight years he lived in six different cities, went to six different schools, and had six different guardians. It's more than enough to crush the strongest White boy, never mind a Black youth who, on top of all that, was abused in Trinidad. Music and art saved him. This a crossover YA/Adult novel.
Tanya Talaga painstakingly takes the reader through a detailed chronicle of how the Canadian government explicitly attempted to destroy indigenous peoples. She leads us through the lives and deaths of seven students from 2000 to 2011, who were forced to leave their homes and cultures and travel to Thunder Bay, Ontario, to get a secondary education. This is a damning revelation that highlights the institutionalized racism of the police, all levels of the justice system, as well as the provincial and federal governments. Citizens of the city don't come across very positively either.
This felt like bearing witness to a year of police brutality in Canada. Desmond Cole is a brilliant writer who takes the time to educate readers fully about each of these different episodes of violence. I really appreciated all the background information he reveals.
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