“How’s the city, boy?” my grandfather asked me about my new foster home. It was my third foster home, and my first one in the big city.
“Grandfather, it’s awesome,” I answered respectfully. And I answered true too. “There’s everything there. There’s Fast Eddie’s, it’s the biggest arcade I’ve seen in my life. There’s a 7-Eleven just around the corner. There’s everything. And, grandfather, the people I’m living with say that they don’t know why anybody would stay on the reserve. Why do you stay there?”
David Bouchard reads from his very first book, White Tails Don’t Live in the City. An accomplished Métis author of children’s books and two non-fiction books on literacy aimed at an adult audience, David tours British Columbia and across Canada, either by Zoom or in person. Over the past 35 years, he has written 75 picture books—the 76th has just been released. Most of his works address Indigenous rights and responsibilities, values, and traditions.
His books are relatively short, offering snapshots of life, usually in a rural community. He constructs loving portraits of nature, the environment, and life on the land, often drawing upon his personal history.
“For us kids on the prairie, our life revolved around Mother Nature. If you’re not from the prairie, you don’t know the wind. I write what’s in my heart, and then, if I feel it needs an illustrator, I also pick my own illustrators.”
David has collaborated with numerous famous artists such as Allen Sapp, Roy Vickers, Henry Ripplinger, and others.
He often records his stories on his cellphone, usually from his shack, reading each page in his warm and sonorous voice before holding the page up to the camera so viewers can see the illustrations. He posts these videos on social media.
“I choose topics that are meaningful and have depth to them,” he says. “I don’t write books that are complicated or involve sequencing. They’re aimed at weak readers like myself.”
That’s because he didn’t read a book for pleasure until he was 27. David is dyslexic, and he writes in rhythm and rhyme to aid his comprehension.
“Even today, I’m not a strong reader,” he says.
David’s workspace is a rustic shed in the backyard of the Victoria home he shares with his wife, Vicki. He refers to it as “the shack”. It’s a personal retreat crammed with memories and mementoes. The ceiling is recycled shiplap, the floors are reclaimed cedar, and the French doors came from Facebook Marketplace. An avid environmentalist, he strives not to burden the planet with unnecessary purchases.
“I’m not going to take any more than I need. I get inspiration from the walls around me,” he says. “I see a cougar mounted up there, a marten, and a lynx from northern Quebec.”
“I’m in my shack every day, almost 24/7.”
His day begins at four in the morning. “By noon, there’s not a creative thought left in my head,” he laughs. “I’d like to say there’s magic to this, but there really isn’t. When something touches me and sits in my craw for long enough, something just starts to percolate in the back of my mind, and I go away and get it started.”
Recognized as a prolific storyteller and public speaker, David has received many honours, including the Governor General’s Award and the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award. He’s also a Member of the Order of Canada. He even has an Oshawa high school named after him. When a local school posted the lowest reading scores in the district, the administrators approached David for help.
“‘We want to focus on a Métis who writes, and we’d like to use you as a role model.’”
“I said, ‘Oh, man, there are so many better choices,’ but I ended up being [the role model].”
David was born in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan, a small town 117 kilometres southwest of Moose Jaw. Raised as white, he spent his early years as the principal of the local high school.
He only began writing in his forties after discovering his Métis ancestry.
“I assumed I was Francophone,” he says.
But something strange happened. “I started to write about things that I shouldn’t know. I started to write books about life on the reserve.”
He’d never been on a reserve, yet he was commenting on reservation life—and accurately too.
“I put a number of little things together. They just weren’t adding up, so I threw my great-grandmother’s name, Odile Allard, out on the Internet, and then I met this cousin and eventually this genealogist.”
The genealogist traced his lineage back six generations to his Indigenous roots in Wisconsin.
“It felt so, so good. I can’t tell you how stoked I was to know who I was. I am French, Ojibway, and Osage, and I am proud to be Métis.”
To this day, he credits his reawakening to the memory of his Métis grandmother, Jeanne Charboneau.
“That moment, that little thing when you say, ‘I don’t know what it is,’ it’s genetic memories. Our grandmothers live in our DNA. They live there. I believe that when you die, your body goes back to Mother Earth, and your soul, your spirit, goes back among your ancestors.”
Understandably, he has strong feelings about roots and the loss of identity. He doesn’t blame his parents for concealing his Métis heritage to protect him from racism. “We understand,” he says, but he’s less charitable when discussing Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples or the progress of Truth and Reconciliation.
“I have some very serious doubts about how well we’re doing. In order for there to be truth, there has to be trust, and the First Nations people don’t trust the government of Canada. The way to build trust is to allow non-Indigenous people to come and see our work, our values, our spirituality, the way we lived. When there is that respect, things can change. But right now, it’s very harsh. As someone who has spoken to over a million people, there’s got to be something more I can do—and I can do that through stories.”
Yes, he’s critical of past injustices, yet there’s no bitterness or antagonism in his stories. It’s through stories that David aims to build bridges and set the historical record straight, especially with youth.
“The generation we have now is the best generation the world has ever known. These kids, unlike us as kids, are open. It’s not just to one another but to the environment, towards animals. We have to be truthful with these kids; we have to tell them the truth. My goal is to help parents who, like me when I was a young father, know what I should know. I say to parents and educators: our school systems aren’t prepared to change, and they should. They’re archaic.”
Now that a new school year has begun, David is ramping up his program. Much of his work is now online, a result of the pandemic that kept him at home and unable to travel. He estimates that three-quarters of his personal appearances are now on Zoom.
Whether in person or online, he says he intends to push the message of openness, modelling, and critical thinking.
“Reading isn’t taught. Reading is as natural as walking and talking. Modelling is the way to influence your kids, the only way. You want your kids to read? Pick up something to read.” “My basic theme is the relevance and importance of reading—not only to succeed in school but also as an opportunity to see the world, especially for kids who normally can’t see it. I have a kind of key that will allow them to do that. Am I an activist?” he says. “Absolutely.”
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