Dear Canada: These Are My Words

About the Author\nRuby Slipperjack was born in Whitewater Lake, Ontario. She learned traditional stories and crafts from her family. In the 1960s she attended a Residential School in northern Ontario for most of a year, and later, high school in Thunder Bay. She has written 5 novels for middle grade and teen readers: Dog Tracks, Little Voice, Silent Words, Weesquachak, and Honour the Sun, and indigenous story contributions to the Dear Canada anthologies Hoping for Home: Stories of Arrival and A Time for Giving. Ruby lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario.\nAcclaimed author Ruby Slipperjack delivers a haunting novel about a 12-year-old girl’s experience at a residential school in 1966.
Violet Pesheens is struggling to adjust to her new life at residential school. She misses her Grandma; she has run-ins with Cree girls; at her “white” school, everyone just stares; and everything she brought has been taken from her, including her name―she is now just a number. But worst of all, she has a fear. A fear of forgetting the things she treasures most: her Anishnabe language; the names of those she knew before; and her traditional customs. A fear of forgetting who she was.
Her notebook is the one place she can record all of her worries, and heartbreaks, and memories. And maybe, just maybe there will be hope at the end of the tunnel.
Drawing from her own experiences at residential school, Ruby Slipperjack creates a brave, yet heartbreaking heroine in Violet, and lets young readers glimpse into an all-too important chapter in our nation’s history.