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…

The Education of Augie Merasty by Joseph Auguste Merasty with David Carpenter Published by University of Regina Press Review by Kris Brandhagen $21.95 978-0-88977-368-4 The creation of The Education of Augie Merasty, by Joseph Auguste Merasty with David Carpenter, which describes Merasty’s experience at St. Therese Residential School in Sturgeon Landing Saskatchewan between 1935 and 1944, from the age of five to fourteen, was a labour of tenderness and patience. From the point of Carpenter receiving a forwarded letter in spring of 2001 asking for professional assistance to the completion of the book, the endeavour took over thirteen years. Carpenter took no less than five trips from Saskatoon to Prince Albert to “run down” the elusive memoirist to finally sign the publication contract. Carpenter writes: “by telling the stories of others and connecting them to his own experience, Merasty broadened his range of inquiry, and […] the implications of his sometimes horrific story, a story in which our entire nation is darkly and obscurely complicit.” Whether readers like it or not, untold numbers of people were treated in a dehumanising way at the residential schools. Merasty does not get mired in recounting every small injustice (as if such things can…

Northern Trader: The Last Days of the Fur Trade by H. S. M. Kemp Published by University of Regina Press Review by Kris Brandhagen $27.95 9780889773165 Originally published in the 1950s, Northern Trader: The Last Days of the Fur Trade by H.S.M. Kemp is a memoir that begins in 1908 with Harold Kemp in his teens making the trip to Lac La Ronge to ask for a job with the Hudson Bay Company. With romantic thoughts in his mind about what it might be like to be a “company man,” he encountered frozen lakes that made canoe travel out of the question, necessitating a hard suffering walking trip. Unaccustomed to moccasins and snowshoes, under advisement of his native guide, he rubbed bacon grease on his feet every night, and finally reverted back to his patent leather shoes in favor of their hard soles. To travel the northern elements, with cracked feet, in search of a job seems surprising, but that’s how Kemp did it. Northern Trader is written in a very accessible style by a white Prince Albert man originally from England. Through his stories the reader learns that he is no ordinary “company man” in that he prefers to…

Downstream: Bestemor & Me by Vangie Bergum Published by Hagios Press Review by Keith Foster $18.95 ISBN 978-1-926710-26-6 In Downstream: Bestemor & Me, Vangie Bergum takes readers on her spiritual journey of self-awakening, self-discovery, and self-empowerment. Through creative non-fiction, she interweaves her own life story with that of her grandparents, peppering her narrative with Norwegian words and phrases, reflecting her ancestral background. While visiting Norway, she ponders why her grandparents left “this verdant land to spend their lives in the dry, treeless, windy spaces of the Saskatchewan prairies.” Her name, Bergum, “means encircled or surrounded by mountains,” and she wonders if this is where she was meant to be. In a twist of fate, the next generation, her mother’s generation, fears “the hovering mountains,” she says. “They claim they can only breathe on the non-stop prairie.” As she explores her Norwegian roots, Bergum uncovers a family tragedy – the deaths of her grandparents and their two daughters. She says the manner of their deaths – murder and suicide – brought shame to her family, “a shame encoded in my life from the time of my conception.” Adding to that shame is the fact that her grandmother spent time in two…

A Family of Our Own by Donna Miller Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Kris Brandhagen $21.95 978-1927756-08-9 A Family of Our Own, by Donna Miller, book two of her Help Me, I’m Naked series of books, proves an excellent read on its own, honest and earnest, independently of the first and third books. Miller opens the story with a prologue, in a way that abruptly smacks of childlike innocence. “My daddy would never do something like that for real. The arguing and fighting were plays they put on for my benefit, though my young mind couldn’t understand why they would want to perform such horrible plays. Sometimes I found the scenes so scary, so crimson, I would go hide in my closet.” This sense of disbelief sets the stage for the body of the book, which is a memoir (with changed names) of the tragedies that she and the women and children in her family have endured, spanning the years 1966 through 1974, when the main character, Korel, is in grade seven to the age of twenty-three. The severity of Korel’s own situation is hinted at through her sense of awe at finding herself in the midst…

After the Truck Hit by Jennifer Kuchinka Published by DriverWorks Ink Review by Michelle Shaw $19.95 ISBN 978-1-927570-16-6 When I first picked up Jennifer Kuchinka’s book After the Truck Hit, I was both intrigued and apprehensive. With a title like that, I figured I was in for an emotional journey. After the Truck Hit is both a story and a journal of Jennifer’s life before and after the accident. It’s a story firmly rooted in Saskatchewan. In Estevan, where Jennifer was born and where she lived for a time with her husband; in Macoun, a small town in the southeast corner of Saskatchewan, where she grew up and where she lived with her parents and baby daughter while recovering from her accident, and in Regina, where she studied at the University of Regina, met her husband and subsequently spent almost three months in the fall of 2010 recovering from her accident. Much of the book seems to have been taken from Jennifer’s personal journal after the accident which is both fascinating and a little frustrating in that the reader experiences firsthand her jumbled and repetitive thoughts. To make it easier to follow, Jennifer “fills in the blanks” in italics, putting…

I Know My Onions: Homesteading North of the 53rd by Ileen Boechler Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $16.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-30-0 Imagine reclining in your favourite armchair and reading a good book beside the fireplace on a cold winter evening. Then, having finished the book, laying it down and basking in the memories it evoked. Ileen Boechler’s I Know My Onions: Homesteading North of the 53rd is this type of book. The title comes from an expression that people who were well read, articulate, and possessing great general knowledge were said to “know their onions.” The author relates experiences from her growing-up years with her three sisters and their dog, Sport, on the family farm near Carrot River, SK. Trees were abundant in this northern area and she helped her parents build their log house. She still loves working with wood. To her, a building supply store is “like a toy store is to a child.” Ileen says she felt safe and secure in her childhood. Even in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s when times were tough, the family made do by being resourceful. They’d use the waxed paper lining from cereal…

Tending the Tree of Life by Irwin Kahan illustrated by Wendy Winter Published by Wild Sage Press Review by Jessica Bickford $25.00 978-0-9881229-8-7 Tending the Tree of Life is Irwin Kahan’s memoir chronicling his life from growing up on the Saskatchewan prairie, through the second World War, and onto his work trying to improve health care for those suffering from mental illness. I learned so much from Irwin’s story – from the struggles of pioneering while attempting to keep the Jewish faith, to the difficulties of trying to finish high school by correspondence lessons, and even to what it’s like to take LSD (for science, of course). Irwin’s optimism is clear throughout his story.  Despite the obvious hardships he and his family faced, not only with rampant anti-semitism, but simply surviving the harsh farming conditions of the prairies and then the horrors of World War II, Irwin refuses to complain.  He is endlessly focused on the good – his friends and family and the occasions where he felt he was doing good work to help others. I was so interested to learn about Irwin’s work trying to have mental illness, especially schizophrenia, recognized for what it is – an illness,…

Know Thyself: Help Me, I’m Naked, Book Three by Donna Miller Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Justin Dittrick $21.95 ISBN 9 781927 756348 In Donna Miller’s Know Thyself: Help Me, I’m Naked, Book Three, readers will find an engrossing, heartfelt, and honest memoir. Miller is a natural story-teller and memoirist, her memory of events startlingly clear, the prose crystalline, spare, and even. The events it depicts are relentlessly tragic, yet affirm the gift of life in faith, grace, and hope. The sense of harmony at this memoir’s depth is achieved through the rich development of its many strong female characters, who repeatedly demonstrate ingenuity, self-sacrifice, and resilience in the most trying circumstances imaginable. In one passage, the narrator admits that she does not grasp the difference between knowledge and understanding, with knowledge being defined as the possession of information, and understanding being defined as the possession of meaning in that information. This memoir’s great achievement is that it maintains just the right distance from its well-developed characters and detailing of events, a kind of sympathetic distance for the great costs attributable to free will, allowing the reader to grasp meaning in spite of the complexity of motivations…

Wes Side Story by Wes Funk Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Alison Slowski $19.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-15-7 A thoroughly entertaining book, author Wes Funk’s memoir Wes Side Story is light-hearted, fun-filled, and engaging. Funk glides effortlessly through several scenes in the story of his life from when he was a young boy to the present day. He writes candidly about every topic: from deep issues such as discrimination and suicide, to lighter, fresher topics such as getting married, and being wholly devoted to a man who is the love of his life. He describes his work as the host of a popular community TV show with a spotlight on writers in the Saskatchewan community, “Lit Happens”. Funk’s writing paints a picture of nn intelligent and unassuming Prairie boy at heart; there is a refreshingly honest quality to it. Funk’s memoir begins with details of his early life in rural Saskatchewan, growing up in a small town and then moving to an acreage with his family while still in his younger years. His beautifully rendered heartfelt memories of growing up as a teenager in the 1970’s and 1980’s speak to his earlier work, Dead Rock Stars. Coupled with his…