Celebrating Over 25 Years of Service to Our Communities! Author’s Book “Hold Your Tongue” Adds Local Flavour

By Angelique Forest

Ste. Anne resident Matthew Tétreault has launched his second book recently, Hold your Tongue, a fictional book that incorporates and represents some of the rich history of Ste. Anne and southern Manitoba. His first book was a collection of short stories titled What Happened on the Bloodvein which was published in 2015.

The author drew upon the wealth of knowledge from his parents Maurice and Paulette Tétreault as well as the folks from the Dawson Trail Arts and Heritage Committee.

In the book, Tétreault plays around with storytelling as a celebration of the Métis cultural resurgence.

“Storytelling and the way that stories are remembered, told, and passed down are hugely important in sustaining our sense of self, both as individuals but also as members of larger communities,” said Tétreault.

“I was really interested in exploring francophone Métis experiences, both in terms of their historical and contemporary challenges and struggles, and occasional conflicts with others but also by using different languages throughout the book, from bits of Michif, and different registers of French to English, to not only show but celebrate Métis cultural persistence,” he added.

“I’m a big reader and I have never really come across these places that I write about in fiction before and so I figured someone had to write about them!” said Tétreault. His story focuses on the communities of Ste. Anne, La Coulee and Ste. Genevieve.

Tétreault explained in detail how he became the author he is today starting with where he comes from.

“I grew up in Ste. Anne and lived both in the town for a while and then between Ste. Anne and Richer where my parents still live,” he said. “I’m Métis on my mom’s side and French-Canadian on my dad’s side.”

He attended to École Pointe-DesChênes in Ste. Anne and didn’t really know what he wanted to do after graduating so he enrolled in university and in his words “never left.”

“I earned a diploma in multimedia communications at l’Université de Saint-Boniface, but I also caught the writing bug, and so I went back to school to the University of Winnipeg and completed a Bachelor of English with a focus on creative writing,” he added. “From there, I moved to Edmonton and completed a Master of Arts in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.” As for the book?

“I wrote the first draft of ‘Hold Your Tongue’ there as my thesis. I also started thinking more broadly about Métis literature, and decided to do a PhD in Métis literary history,” he continued. “I successfully defended my dissertation last August. I am now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto Mississauga, working on, researching, and writing about Métis writing and literature.”

For his next project, Tétreault plans on releasing a Métis literary western and horror novel set in the Red River Valley, North Dakota, Manitoba and Minnesota in the 1830s.

‘Hold Your Tongue’ is available on Amazon.