Red Wolf

by Jennifer Dance

  Bruce County Indian Residential School does not exist, nor to my knowledge did it ever exist. The school depicted in this story is a fictional amalgamation of many schools across Canada, based on the experiences and memories of First Peoples. Similarly, the characters are fictional.

  THE WOLVES

  Before white settlers arrived on North American shores, timber wolves, Canis lupus, also known as grey wolves, hunted the vast ancestral range of the entire landmass. They lived in highly social family groups and co-existed with nature in a delicate dance of survival. To the Europeans, the wolves, like the indigenous people, were viewed as dangerous and savage. They occupied land that the settlers wanted. Wolves were systematically shot, trapped, snared, and poisoned, enabling the settlers to log and cultivate the land, and to raise livestock. If the wolf was to survive in this new era, he had little choice. He had to run to places where the white man could not follow. Today, North America’s timber wolves live almost exclusively in Northern Canada and Alaska, far from human habitation. But in the twentieth century, wolves were not even safe in these remote wilderness areas. Hunters shot wolves ruthlessly from airplanes and dropped poison bait into formerly inaccessible places. In 1972 Ontario finally put an end to bounty payments, but hunting wolves was still legal.

  Interestingly, the Algonquin Wolves found today in Ontario’s wilderness sanctuary of the same name are not timber wolves. They are red wolves, Canis rufus. After the loggers cleared the forests in the Algonquin area and had killed or driven away the timber wolf and the elk, their main source of food, white-tailed deer, started to flourish and with it the smaller red wolf, which had already been extirpated in the southeastern United States. Red wolves, like their bigger grey cousins, were also hunted, almost to extinction, but Algonquin Park became their sanctuary. However, when wolves left the protection of the park’s fenceless perimeter, they were still hunted, and their survival remained in jeopardy.

  In 2003, the Canadian government permanently banned hunting in the townships surrounding the park.

  A NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  The Ojibwey language, with its many divergent dialects, is spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest American Indian languages north of Mexico. Due to the long history and large geographical area there are many ways to pronounce and, in recent times, write the language. The newest Roman character-based writing system is the Double Vowel system devised by Charles Fiero. Because of its ease of use the Fiero system is quickly gaining popularity among language teachers in the United States and Canada.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Marilyn Paxton Deline of First Nations Creations who saw some merit in my first draft and worked with me to ensure the Anishnaabe, their language, beliefs, and culture were accurately represented. And also to Judith Ennamorato for her enthusiastic response to my writing, and for her book, Sing the Brave Song, a comprehensive scrutiny of the relationship between Indian people and the church and the repercussions endured by former students of the residential school system. Judith’s book was invaluable in writing Red Wolf.

  I would also like to thank Feroze Mohammed. For teaching me to be a better writer, from punctuation, spelling and sentence structure, to sharing your knowledge of the subject matter and remaining on track with the story. For the countless hours that you spent on this project, I thank you. I could not have done it without you.

  Warm thank-yous to:

  Jason Robertson for loving my daughter and opening the door to the telling of this story; Erin Robertson for sharing her research and personal stories about residential school life that fuelled my desire to write this book; Dianne Robertson for her prayers, her conviction that this story needed to be told, and her belief that I, a non-native, could tell it; Jane Warren for her willingness to read yet another version of the book and for her insightful suggestions that helped me to develop a better story; Heather Cargill for reading Red Wolf with the senior class of Uxbridge Montessori school; Darlene Campbell and Betty Scuse for their spiritual insight and friendship; Educators Gail Aziz, Susan Hayward, Doris Beers, Lydia Keen, Pat Dipede, Georgina Wolske, Robert Lawrence, Margaret, and Shiraz Mohammed for sharing their wisdom about the target audience. And most importantly, my middle-grade readers: Persia Mahdavi, Decara Adams, Lorelei Adams, Maggie Anderson, Liam Banks-Batten, Liam Burns-Holland, Ciaran Conlan, Siobhan Conlan, Charlotte Damus, Elena Damus, Madeleine Galloway, Karter Hickling, GJaudy John-Wallace, Sam Keen, Chris Menard, Jon Menard, Erik Morris, Siena Morris, Justine Simpson, Clayton Tennakoon, and Maverick Worgan.

  I also want to thank Jim Brandenburg for the amazing photography and narrative in his book, Brother Wolf: A Forgotten Promise. Jim’s outstanding work following wolves in the wild helped me find Crooked Ear in my imagination and make him real.

  My heartfelt thanks go to Allister Thompson at Dundurn for his enthusiastic response to the manuscript at a time when other publishers were shying away from this sensitive subject.

  And last, but not least, I thank my children: Joanna, James, Kate, Tarik, and Matthew. You have blessed my life in ways you cannot fathom. I could not have written this book, without you! I first learned about Indian residential schools when you were heading out into the big wide world of elementary school. I was unable to imagine the pain of other mothers whose little ones were ripped away for ten long months each year It weighed on my heart. Red Wolf is the result.

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  But warfare is also part of their lives, and signs point to a defining conflict between Mahingan’s nation, its allies the Omàmiwinini (Algonquin), Ouendat (Huron), and the Nippissing against the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). The battle’s aftermath may open the door to future journeys by Mahingan and his followers.

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  In 1647, ten-year-old Etienne yearns for a life of adventure far from his family farm in Quebec. He meets an orphan destined to apprentice among the Jesuits at Fort Sainte-Marie. Making the most impulsive decision of his life, Etienne replaces the orphan and paddles off with the voyageurs into the north country. At Sainte-Marie, Etienne must learn to live a life of piety. Meanwhile, he also makes friends with a Huron youth, Tsiko, who teaches him the ways of his people. When the Iroquois attack and destroy the nearby village, Etienne must put his new skills into practice. Will he survive? Will he ever see his family again?

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  Copyright © Jennifer Dance, 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Allister Thompson

  Project Editor: Laura Harris

  Design: Jesse Hooper

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Dance, Jennifer, author

  Red Wolf / by Jennifer Dance.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-0810-5 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-0811-2 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-0812-9 (epub)

  1. Wolves--Juvenile fiction. 2. Ojibwa Indians--Juvenile fiction. 3. Native peoples--Canada--

  Residential schools--Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PS8607.A548R43 2014 jC813’.6 C2013-902962-1

  C2013-902963-X

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

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