“Nora Cummings, Enn pchit fee Michif: A Life and Legacy”
By Nora Cummings with Cheryl Troupe
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$25.95
ISBN 9-781779-401540
Nora Cummings, Enn pchit fee Michif: A Life and Legacy features this Métis/Michif trailblazer, whose life—from growing up in a road allowance community in “uninsulated shacks” to helping create and leading the Saskatchewan Native Women’s Association and Gabriel Dumont Local 11—demonstrates how one selfless individual can make a tremendous difference in the lives of countless others.
Cummings and interviewer/co-writer/educator, Cheryl Troupe, deliver an accessible, educational, and highly interesting portrait of Cummings’ traditional Métis upbringing; the teachings and values she learned from family and passed on to her own eight children; and her community activism and politics.
Borne from Troupe’s interviews, the memoir preserves Cummings’ authentic voice and conveys a “kitchen table” vibe, where even sharing photos happens: the author’s included several photographs of extended family, and her grassroots associates who advocated for “a network of services for the urban Indigenous community in Saskatoon,” including SaskNative Housing. Troupe heralds women like Cummings—the “aunties, the Koohkooms (grandmothers), the quiet organizers,” whose “names don’t always appear in textbooks, but their fingerprints are on every movement that brings [them] to justice.”
Cummings’ chapters validate Troupe’s claim that the former’s life has been “politically significant” and “culturally resonant.” Cummings shares her hard-working family’s stories; details what it was like to live on a road allowance (then to be “moved off the land in 1953” due to city expansion); and explains how moving into the city “changed everything” and “[her] people felt discrimination.” She educates others “about the work that [her] people did in building the city of Saskatoon and making it better” for Métis people, and “all Indigenous people in the city.” Initially so shy she couldn’t look job interviewers in the eye, Cummings, who earned a GED, eventually found herself speaking at conferences and running for Saskatoon city council.
Cummings frequently lauds her mother, grandmother, and other relatives, including uncle Clarence Trotchie, who “helped create the Native Alcohol Council House in Saskatoon.” He instilled the importance of involvement in the Métis movement in 1970; a year later Cummings was working as a fieldworker for the Métis Society of Saskatchewan.
Her grandfather fought at the 1885 Battle of Batoche, and her grandmother “worked with the women, melting down pots, pans, nails—whatever they could find—to make bullets for guns.” Post Rebellion, Métis families “had to pack up, leave their homes, and move to Montana” or be arrested, and they remained there “until the early 1900s,” before returning to Round Prairie (near the Whitecap Dakota First Nation).
Cummings and her siblings attended St. Joseph’s School in Saskatoon, where the nuns were “quick to punish [them] for any reason.” A female cousin had a rib broken, and students were made to “̒bob for apples,’” which meant having their heads held under water “until [they] ran out of breath.”
Enn pchit fee Michif means “a little Michif girl.” Though she now lives in a seniors’ home, Cummings says “There is still a lot of work to do” … and this Elder keeps doing it.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
"On Spec 2026: New Canadian Literature of the Fantastic”
Edited by Edward Willett
Published by Shadowpaw Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.99
ISBN 9-781998-273720
“Speculative fiction” is an umbrella term that refers to magical realism, science fiction, fantasy, alternative history, horror, and dystopian fiction … basically any fiction that ventures outside of what’s considered reality. From 1989 until 2025, “On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic” was the most lauded English-language speculative fiction magazine, garnering numerous Aurora awards and nominations.
After “On Spec” metaphorically shuttered, award-winning multi-genre writer and publisher, Edward Willett, picked up the torch and published the anthology On Spec 2026: New Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, bringing more thrills, chills, and imaginative new worlds to fans of speculative fiction. The anthology features twenty-eight original stories of varying length, style, and theme, but each delves into the strange territory of What if?
Fiona Moore’s story, “Web We Weave,” examines AI going out of control (not too hard to imagine, after all). “Bespoke spider-bots, web crawlers that tracked methodically through all the websites on the Internet, could find out anything you wanted and send the data back to any site you pleased.” A thwarted lover creates a system called “ArgoSearch” that can determine if “your partner [is] cheating on you,” or help you get “the dirt on your neighbours or co-workers,” and “provide evidence in minutes and send it to whoever you want.”
In the excellent piece “Scorch,” by Noah Chinn, an autistic child’s father is involved in creating a “new world” where “there would be only perfection. Designed cultivated, deliberate perfection.” But his daughter is not perfect. And he loves this only child—she reads everything, and discovers that “One day, the words changed.” These five horrifying words begin this emotional story.
In Rebecca Bennett’s “Written in the Bones,” Anna, a pioneer-era archaeologist, is trying to recover a stolen fossil from “Mama Pepper,” a witchy woman who “smacks of P.T. Barnum tomfoolery.” The charlatan has sold the bones and “there’s spellwork in the air.”
My favourite piece is Marcelle Dubé’s creepy-forest story, “The Gloaming,” which I felt viscerally. The real-world rootedness (it’s set north of Whitehorse); the First Person narration (by a woman whose husband and dog had gone missing during their “walk in the gloaming”); and the descriptive details of the setting, weather, and the narrator’s terror gave me the chills. There’s also a neighbour who insists that the husband is dead, and warns that “̒It comes down off the mountains every twenty years.’” As with any good horror story, the protagonist decides to head up the mountain to search. “The trail was littered with broken twigs and freshly fallen needles on top of the six-inch accumulation of snow. Once, I saw a clump of fur caught on the bark of a black spruce, about six feet up.” Oh, oh. I can hear the cawing raven and the “late-nesting squirrel [flinging] bits of bark” in this superb piece.
Whatever gives you the willies—vampires, the undead, gigantic insects, or discovering that we’re all living in a simulation—you’re sure to find something in this book that will pleasantly unnerve you.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“A Friend for Hairy”
Written by Maureen Ulrich
Illustrated by Brenda Blackburn
Published by Flatlands Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.99 ISBN 978-1-0691135-6-6
I’m so glad that Maureen Ulrich was not finished with the antics of her orange-furred, white-pawed character, Hairy, after she released A Home for Hairy last year. Ulrich, who lives near Lampman in southeastern Saskatchewan and is also known for her novels for young readers, has again teamed with illustrator Brenda Blackburn to bring us more of the endearing cat in a new softcover sequel, A Friend for Hairy.
One thing that’s unique—and something I particularly liked about both of these picture books—is that Ulrich features an adult—busy nurse Alison—rather than a child in her tender story. Fearing that “She was too busy working and studying” to spend enough time adventuring with her rescue cat, Hairy, Alison brings home a “hissing and yowling” surprise in her knapsack. “A grey blur leaped out” and a new kitten, feisty Ella, “bounded towards Hairy, and swatted him on the nose.” Alison hopes that the new cat, another rescue, can “keep [Hairy] company when [she’s] busy.”
Much of the humour here is delivered by the book’s illustrator, Brenda Blackburn. Blackburn lives rurally near Estevan, and, like the author, is also a cat lover. She knows that like kids, cat’s get up to the darnedest things. She ably shows yellow-eyed Ella ripping curtains and looking doleful after destroying potted flowers, and there’s even a panel of little Ella lapping up food inside Alison’s fridge.
Well-behaved and responsible Hairy is rather distraught over the chaos, ie: he “watched in horror” after Ella knocked medical manuals off the bookshelf and “shredded the pages.” The closer one examines the full-colour, full-bleed illustrations, the more one finds the light humour, ie: Hairy, who’s perfectly content to look out the window “at the busy street below or [pad] around their apartment,” sees faceless humans outside a theatre showing a movie called “That Darn Cat.” Among the medical texts on the bookshelf is a book simply titled Cats.
Before long, mischievous Ella finds herself trapped inside the washing machine (not in use) after Alison’s left for the day, and, Hairy being Hairy, he quickly comes up with a solution that bonds the two very different cats.
I did an internet search to learn more about the writer-illustrator team, and found an article (https://discoverestevan.com/articles/lampman-author-maureen-ulrich-launches-new-childrens-book-with-illustrator-brenda-blackburn) about their congenial creative process. Ulrich said “the story can change as illustrations take shape, sometimes allowing the artwork to communicate details that no longer need to be written into the text.” I also learned that on the aforementioned “theatre” page, the illustrator presents “a view of Estevan Street and a playful nod to the Orpheum Theatre,” and that “Blackburn also drew inspiration from photographs of cats belonging to her sister and her own cat.”
There’s also something going on here at the human level. In the article quoted above, Ulrich says “the book’s message extends beyond the antics of two cats. Ella’s transformation shows how companionship and a positive influence can help bring about change.”
A Friend for Hairy is the cat’s meow.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
No comments:
Post a Comment