Candies

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Basil Johnston was one of the foremost Anishinaabe writers and storytellers, and his comedic stories about life in Residential School, Indian School Days, is a classic. Candies was Johnston’s first collection of humorous works in decades.

Excerpt from “Indian on Bicycle” found in Candies:

Both cars raced off. Tires squealed. Rubber burned. 50 . 60 . 70 . 80 miles an hour.

Behind, the old Indian, his hair flying, his shirt flapping and snapping like a wind-blown flag, was desperately ringing his bell, “ding, ding, ding.”

.”Better get ready to flag down a couple of fool kids racing down the road about 80 miles an hour. But you won’t believe this . there’s an old Indian on a bicycle trying to pass them!”

AUTHOR

Basil H. Johnston

Basil Johnston is cherished as an esteemed Anishinaabe writer, storyteller, language teacher and scholar. He was born in Wasauking First Nation in 1929, and was a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation. Johnston was awarded the Order of Ontario, three honourary doctorates, and the 2013 OAC Aboriginal Arts Award.

AUTHOR

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is a member of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation, on the Saugeen Peninsula in Ontario. Kateri is an Assistant Professor, teaching Creative Writing, Indigenous Literatures and Oral Traditions in the English Department at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. She has taught creative writing and Indigenous literatures at the University of Manitoba, the Banff Centre’s Aboriginal Arts Program, and the En’owkin International School of Writing in partnership with the University of Victoria. Her publications encompass poetry, fiction, non-fiction, radio plays, television and film, libretti, graphic novels, and spoken word. Her teaching and creative work is firmly decolonial, a practice of cultural resurgence, affirmation and survivance. She is a recipient of a REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award for writing, her 2015 book of short stories, The Stone Collection, was a finalist for the Sarton Literary Book Awards, and her collaborative recording A Constellation of Bones was a nominee for a 2008 Canadian Aboriginal Music Award. Kateri was the 2011-2012 Poet Laureate for Owen Sound and North Grey. She founded and coordinated the first Honouring Words: International Indigenous Authors Celebration Tour in 2003 and initiated and was a co-organizer for the first Indigenous Comics Symposium in 2021. She is the founder, publisher, and art director for Kegedonce Press. (Re)Generation: The Poetry of Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, selected and edited by Dallas Hunt, was released in August 2021. She is currently completing work on a new collection of poetry and a collection of humourous short stories.

Reviews

Johnston “moves effortlessly through cultural divides and through the oral and written worlds.The awe in his writing is his distinctive style.” -2013 Jury, OAC Aboriginal Arts Award “Basil Johnston will always be one of our nation’s great minds and storytellers. To have known him was to know a man who understood the great medicine in humour. I urge you to read this book. You will laugh out loud and maybe learn a thing or two as you do.” – Joseph Boyden, author of The Orenda “Everyone who met Basil Johnston found him not only ingenious and sharp, but hilarious. Every single narrative he told – indeed every single word – was selected for meaning and layer. Spend time with him now in the pages of Candies, and find out why he is one of the best storytellers ever.” – Niigaan Sinclair, Head, Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba