“I am an Indian,” Norval Morrisseau declared when a journalist asked him who he really was.
The occasion was the first exhibition at a Toronto gallery in 1962 by the 32-year-old unknown Anishinaabe painter—at which every work was sold.
The exhibition marked the beginning of an extraordinary career. Morrisseau would continue to sell everything he produced, have his work included in the collections of most major Canadian…
Lewis DeSoto
Lewis DeSoto is the author of two novels and a biography of Emily Carr. His first novel, A Blade of Grass (HarperCollins, 2004), was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and was an international bestseller.
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Lewis DeSoto
The Amazing Absorbing Boy is a very funny book. But it is also many other things. Like the best of novels, it is as layered and enjoyable as a profound dream. It surprises, it amuses, it intrigues and it troubles. And, like a dream, it moves simultaneously through the quotidian details of daily life and into the deep levels of the…
Canada's Boer War
A novel about a forgotten conflict resonates in this country today January–February 2009
Canadian soldiers tried to kill my relatives. No, not in Afghanistan; in South Africa. And when I say relatives I should more correctly state “ancestors,” for the events happened in 1901 during the Anglo-Boer War, or, to be even more exact, during the first Boer War. Yes, there were two, in 1880–81, and the main war in…