It is December 5, 1951, in a remote area of the Subarctic, “the most beautiful location on the face of the Earth, northern Manitoba where it meets Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, and what, since 1999, has been called Nunavut.” The Cree caribou hunter and dogsled racer Joe Highway — along with his wife, Balazee, who is pregnant with their eleventh child, and four of their kids — is travelling by ootaa-paanaask in minus‑40 weather from their traditional hunting grounds to their home base, the village of Brochet, Manitoba. Being Roman Catholic, they intend to celebrate the Christmas season with their extended family and to replenish their supply of food and other staples. Most of the Highway children were born in snowbanks on various lakes, and their mortality rates were high. How this memoir’s opening scene turns out is spellbinding, coloured by tension, violent comedy, and thrilling heroism before culminating in the arrival of the future memoirist, born...
Keith Garebian has published thirty books and five chapbooks, including the poetry collections Three-Way Renegade and, most recently, Stay. He is featured in the third volume of Laurence Hutchman’s In the Writers’ Words.
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