Waswanipi

Jean-Yves Soucys story and encounter with my Dad provides a charming glimpse into a changing world, for us all.- Romeo Saganash. Its 1963, Jean-Yves Soucy is 18 and dreams of being a fire warden scanning the boreal forest from a fire tower. But he ends up at an equipment depot between Val-dOr and Chibougamau. To his delight, he is located near the Cree community of Wawanipi. With two Cree guides, including a man named William Saganash, he will be canoeing through the lakes and rivers of the region. On each encounter with the Crees, Jean-Yves expects to see a new world. Instead, he meets a different civilization, as different from his own as Chinese civilization. Yet he knows nothing about it. He wrote Waswanipi because Romeo Saganash, son of William, insisted: You have to write that, Jean-Yves. About your relationship with my father and the others, how you saw the village. You got to see the end of an era. Provides a Cree-English glossary.