Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream by Charlie Angus Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $27.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-401-8 Unbelievable. Appalling. Horrific. These are adjectives that could be used to describe the contents of Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream. This book will make readers feel uncomfortable. It’s designed to have that effect. Discomfort is the first step to justice, and justice is the first step to recovery and reconciliation. Member of Parliament Charlie Angus pleads throughout his book that Canada’s treatment of Aboriginals is a national shame. Those most severely affected are the Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario, part of Treaty 9 territory. Many homes are without running water, plumbing, or electricity. Even when water is available, it often has to be boiled. When the sewage station fails, sewers overflow. Educational opportunities are lacking. Suicides are at epidemic proportions. Angus provides an historical overview of the signing of Treaty 9 in 1910. Among its provisions is a promise to provide Aboriginals with proper education. The Attawapiskat school is infected with black mould and the ground under it swollen with toxins. When it’s torn…

The Surprising Lives of Small-Town Doctors edited by Dr. Paul Dhillon Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $21.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-431-5 “All doctors, no matter how great or experienced, are a work in progress. They call it practising medicine for a reason.” So declares Dr. Aleem Jamal, one of forty doctors who relate their experiences in The Surprising Lives of Small-Town Doctors, edited by Dr. Paul Dhillon. This 222-page book contains forty stories from all ten Canadian provinces and three territories. One story is in French with English translation, and five are by Saskatchewan physicians. The stories are split almost equally between male and female doctors. As editor, Dr. Dhillon introduces each doctor with a short paragraph. Before relocating to rural or remote areas in Canada, many of these professionals gained experience internationally, such as through Doctors Without Borders. The Surprising Lives of Small-Town Doctors has intriguing chapter titles such as “Do Not Feed the Polar Bears,” “Goldibear and the Four Anglers,” and “Horse Kicks, Talking Heads, and Bear Chases – Oh My!” Speaking of bears, when a patient with dementia claims to have seen one outside his hospital window, his doctor thinks he’s hallucinating, until a…

Inside the Mental: Silence, Stigma, Psychiatry, and LSD by Kay Parley Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $24.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-411-7 You never know who you might run into in a mental institution. When Kay Parley is admitted to the Weyburn Mental Hospital, she meets her father and grandfather. Her grandfather had been there before Kay was even born, and her father entered the institution when Kay was only six. She jokes that “they’d have to tear the place down if it wasn’t for my family.” This is one of many shocking details Kay relates in her book, Inside the Mental, a compilation of eighteen stories based on her experiences as both a patient and later as a nurse at The Mental as she calls it. Most of these stories have been previously published in magazines dealing with mental health issues and in her self-published volume, Lady with a Lantern. After a nervous breakdown in 1948, Kay finds herself in the Weyburn Mental Hospital, originally known as the Saskatchewan Hospital. When she observes a row of patients eating with their hands, mixing orange and toast into their porridge and slurping like dogs, a fellow patient tries to…

Forever Changed by Cheri Helstrom Published by DriverWorks Ink Review by Keith Foster $16.95 ISBN 978-1-927570-27-2 Change is inevitable. Some changes are so massive that they can change one’s life – dramatically and permanently. In Forever Changed, Cheri Helstrom relates how a series of changes affected her father, massively and permanently. In this work of creative nonfiction, Cheri tells the story of her father, William Richard Scott, as if he is telling the story himself. Known better as Ritchie, he lives with his parents and six siblings in Alameda, SK, where his businessman father is the town’s first mayor. As the title suggests, Ritchie experiences several changes that forever affect him. The first is when his mother dies. Then the Great Depression changes everything. There are further changes when his father dies. World War II brings more changes. But perhaps the biggest change, and his biggest challenge, is when he gives up alcohol. One of Ritchie’s great joys as a youngster is going on a trip with his father to the Banff Springs Hotel, where he later works for the summer as a bellboy. Later still, he works as an office boy at the Coca-Cola head office in Toronto. When…

Defying Palliser: Stories of Resilience from the Driest Region of the Canadian Prairies by Jim Warren and Harry Diaz Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $34.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-294-6 Everyone knows farming is tough. But how about getting just one truckload of grain out of 5,000 acres? That’s what happened to the Downie Lake Hutterian Brethren Colony in 2001. Colony member Sam Hofer recalled touring the field that year. He said the weather was so hot and dry that the crop “seemed to turn brown and dry up as we walked by.” This is just one incident related in Defying Palliser: Stories of Resilience from the Driest Region of the Canadian Prairies. The book could just as well be subtitled stories of resistance, since farmers and ranchers resisted the overwhelming forces of nature in the dry zone known as the Palliser Triangle. Named for 19th century explorer John Palliser, the triangle roughly comprises the southern part of the three prairie provinces. Palliser deemed the area unsuitable for agriculture because of its unfavourable climate. Indeed, this triangle can be as devastating to farmers and their crops as the Bermuda Triangle is to ships and planes. Farmers nevertheless stubbornly…

In the Temple of the Rain God: The Life and Times of ‘Irish’ Charlie Wilson by Garrett Wilson Published by Canadian Plains Research Center Review by Keith Foster $29.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-288-5 Reading In the Temple of the Rain God: The Life and Times of “Irish” Charlie Wilson is like getting two stories in one, or more precisely, a story within a story. The subject of this biography is one that author Garrett Wilson is intimately familiar with –his father. A family history, this book is also a history of Saskatchewan’s first 50 years as seen through the eyes of one man. In weaving a narrative of his father, Garrett quotes heavily from a combination of diary entries, correspondence, and tape-recorded reminiscences that his sister had the foresight to record. As a result, Charlie is able to tell his own story in his own words. Born in Ireland, Charlie immigrated in 1905, the year Saskatchewan became a province, and settled, appropriately, in Limerick, SK. He wore many hats in his lifetime – homesteader, businessman, politician, and debt adjuster. Charlie hobnobbed with prominent politicians of the new province. A genial host, he had all but one of Saskatchewan’s early premiers stay overnight…

Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest: Canada’s Home Children in the West by Sean Arthur Joyce Published by Hagios Press Review by Keith Foster $18.95 ISBN 978-1-926710-27-3 Even the best intentions can be paving stones to hell. In most cases, well-intentioned people like Thomas Barnardo thought they were helping homeless British children by sending them across the “golden bridge” to new homes in Canada. Their lives, however, were anything but golden. In Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest, Sean Arthur Joyce serves up some startling statistics. From the 1860s to 1967, “some 130,000 children were scooped up from the mean streets” of Britain “to be used as slave labour.” About 100,000 of them ended up in Canada, mostly on farms. Joyce, himself a grandson of a home child, points out that today there could be as many as four million descendants of these children – about one in eight Canadians! Conditions for homeless children in Britain were barely tolerable. In the East End of London, four out of five infants would die before their fifth year. Barnardo and Annie Macpherson started “ragged schools” – so named because the children were literally in rags – that provided them with at least…

Legacy of Worship: Sacred Places in Rural Saskatchewan by Margaret Hryniuk and Frank Korvemaker Photography by Larry Easton Published by Coteau Books Review by Keith Foster $39.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-597-9 It was the happiest of times; it was the saddest of times. It was a time for weddings, and a time for funerals. Whether celebrating the best days of their lives, or enduring the worst, people in rural Saskatchewan gathered at their churches to share their joy or to find solace from their sorrows. With these thoughts in mind, Margaret Hryniuk and Frank Korvemaker bring flesh and blood to their stories in Legacy of Worship: Sacred Places in Rural Saskatchewan, a book they co-researched and co-authored. With limited space in this 251-page book, churches selected were restricted to rural areas, not cities or towns. Even at that, many worthy structures had to be left out. The churches chosen were those of historical and/or architectural importance, with many recorded as national historic sites. Church structures come in all shapes, sizes, and denominations. Some are not buildings at all. Indigenous sacred places, for instance, consisted of medicine wheels, effigies, rock carvings, and pictographs. This book features some of Saskatchewan’s most prominent and well…

Indian Ernie: Perspectives on Policing and Leadership by Ernie Louttit Published by Purich Publishing Ltd. Review by Keith Foster $25.00 ISBN 978-1-895830-78-1 The best leaders and the best teachers are the ones who’ve learned by experience. Ernie Louttit is one of those leaders who teaches valuable life lessons in his book, Indian Ernie: Perspectives on Policing and Leadership. This is an up-close, personal look at some of the seamier streets of Saskatoon where his police beat took him. Ernie was educated in the school of hard knocks. Kicked out of school several times before grade eight, he dropped out of grade eleven. He worked as a labourer in northern Ontario, joined the Canadian Armed Forces, and served for a time as a peacekeeper with the United Nations in Cyprus. He was with inexperienced troops whose job was to patrol the front lines between hostile Greek and Turkish forces. “Somehow we made it through without getting ourselves killed or starting a war,” Ernie notes. After a stint as a military policeman, Ernie joined the Saskatoon Police Service, becoming only the third native member of the force. As an Aboriginal man, he faced racism and discrimination throughout his life. But he turned…

On the Frontier: Letters from the Canadian West in the 1880s by William Wallace edited by Ken S. Coates and Bill Morrison Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $29.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-408-7 Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall, listening in to the conversations of others? On the Frontier: Letters from the Canadian West in the 1880s is the next-best thing. It chronicles the lives of bachelor brothers William and Andrew Wallace, and their widowed father, Peter, as they immigrate to Canada from England and settle in what is now western Manitoba. Using his keen powers of observation, William corresponds with his sister, Maggie, back in Scotland. He signs his letters as Willie. His brother, Andrew, occasionally adds a postscript. Maggie’s letters, unfortunately, have been lost. What a shame. It’s like listening to a one-sided conversation. According to editors Ken S. Coates and Bill Morrison, William wrote in a stream of consciousness, without concern for punctuation. As editors, Coates and Morrison added the appropriate punctuation to make for easier reading, but kept the wording intact. One theme thoroughly permeating William`s letters are the hardships pioneers faced. Spring flooding would wash away bridges. But…