Teasers

They were borne away by the mindless wind. Great swells were brewing. The sloop coasted down their sides, dived into their troughs, and struggled out of canyons of water onto cresting waves. Water shipped over the gunnels. Jake bailed when he could. He was having a hard go of it. He had never been tasked with such responsibility before. When fishing far from land, Guy, friend and skipper of their crew, was the one who handled their boat when caught in sudden gales. With Guy at the tiller, under bare poles or full sail, the run home seemed easy. Jake was finding now that it was far from easy, and he was worried for his family. Then, as sure as the looming islands had appeared before the storm hit, Guy’s rugged face, chiselled by the bite of a thousand winds and wrinkled by a thousand willing smiles, appeared before him.

Find ’er sweet spot, Jake! Every punt’s got one! A place among the lops, no matter the size, where only she will fit. ’Tis a wondrous, never-failing thing. The tiller has been polished by my hand, Jake. I give you my strength. The pulse of the sea through wood will guide you. You must find the punt’s sweet spot. Never fear. It will carry you home safe.

My God, thought Jake, what is happening? Am I losing my mind?

—Excerpted from Redjack by Gary Collins. Published by Flanker Press. flankerpress.com

When I got home, I took the ribbon from my pocket and wrapped it around my fingers. It was soft and pretty. I owned nothing like it. Mother was busy baking in the kitchen. I quietly went to her room and propped the mirror up on her dresser. I tied the ribbon around my hair as I had seen Madge do. It wouldn’t stay in place and slid beneath my wiry curls.

“You’ll never be like her.”

My mother stood behind me in the doorway. I could see her in the mirror. “You’ll never be good enough for them,” she said. “She’s in God’s pocket, that Madge. And you and I, well, we’ll never be there. Everything will always go her way, you just wait and see.” Our eyes met in the round glass and we held each “ other’s stare. “Get to the laundry.” She turned and went back down the stairs.

I looked at myself as Madge had earlier that morning, searching for something but unsure what that something was. I took the ribbon from my hair and put it back in my pocket. I thought of the mean old battleaxe from the mill, looking me over like I was trash, and Madge’s mother saying they were visiting friends. I felt the satin ribbon in my pocket and I hated my mother for saying such things. Maybe Boston will be better, I thought with a sudden longing for my father.

—Excerpted from Birth Road by Michelle Wamboldt. Published by Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press. nimbus.ca

In our work with social work students, pre-service teachers, justice workers and health care professionals, we note the troubling repetition of explanations “that let those accountable for on-going domination off the hook for pervasive inequality” (St. Denis 2007: 1085). Settlers often hold Indigenous Peoples responsible for the devastating consequences of inequitable conditions maintained by whiteness within our institutions. The most popular explanations for inequality today are rooted in deficit discourses widely circulated through what we are calling colonial scripts— these are the stories, narratives and statements that frame Indigenous identity as inferior and lacking and simultaneously construct a positive identity for white settlers and thereby naturalize settler-colonial power. So ubiquitous and so entrenched, negative and racist narratives about Indigenous Peoples are stated by white settlers as if they were reasoned facts (Schick 2002). Colonial scripts reproduce the national narrative that Canada is a peaceful, non-discriminatory nation that has been built on individual work ethic alone (McLean 2018; Thobani 2007). … Colonial scripts allow social workers, health care professionals and teachers to assume the familiar role of innocent do-gooders who simply wish to help and to see themselves as providers of what they imagine Indigenous Peoples are lacking — be it intelligence, work ethic or parenting skills. As mechanisms of white settler colonialism, the dehumanizing narratives that mark Indigenous Peoples as biologically different and inferior continue to impact Indigenous Peoples’ lives and deaths in Canadian systems today. In assuming positions of superiority and of knowing best, non-Indigenous people continue a pattern that began at first contact: “Ever since the two races first met, non-Indians have been trying to teach, convert, ‘improve’ or otherwise change Indian peoples” (Doxtator 2011: 33).

—Excerpted from White Benevolence edited by Amanda Gebhard, Sheelah McLean and Verna St. Denis. Published by Fernwood Publishing. fernwoodpublishing.ca

She carries three names. The first, Sophia, is common. Its Christian meaning is “divine wisdom.” To Muslims, it means “beautiful.” Let’s think of her in these dignified terms. Her last name, Pooley, she took from the man she married in freedom. Pooley refers to a pond or a pool of water (from Old English pōl, from Dutch poel) that is located next to a ley—an area of pasture or grassland. Ley can also refer to a ley line, “a supposed straight line connecting three or more prehistoric or ancient sites, sometimes regarded as the line of a former track and associated by some with lines of energy and other paranormal phenomena.” Pooley is riparian, as in fed by or living near the banks of a river. Wise and beautiful, she sits by water, at the edge of a field. I am searching for the ley lines which still pulse, linking her across time and space to this moment. It is her maiden name, her enslaved name, Burthen, that carries the most weight and casts the longest shadow.

Burthen is an archaic English word that will become burden, the th morphing into a single d. It now means a physical thing one carries or a psychological weight (of anxiety, trauma, or depression) that can or will be passed on to others, becoming a responsibility (“the burden of proof”) and maybe a curse lingering in the past and shading the future.

—Excerpted from It Was Dark There All the Time by Andrew Hunter. Published by Goose Lane Editions. gooselane.com