Author: Ariel Gordon

What was your goal while writing this book?

To help break down the silos between the stories that we tell… about ourselves, about each other, and most specifically about this complex, challenging yet beautiful country we call Canada.

Was there a book or piece of writing that made you want to pursue writing as a career? What was it?

Writing is not either of our careers. Writing is something we both recognized can be a potent and impactful and meaningful vehicle for advancing shifts in public discourses and social consciousness, alongside other efforts and striving.  

Who/what were your influences while writing this book?

The greatest influence were the Canadians we have met from coast to coast to coast who expressed a yearning for a revitalized understanding of Canada’s history that can help shape their efforts to build the Canada of tomorrow.

What is one thing you learned while writing this book you wish everyone knew?

That the voices of the past act as a mirror to the challenges of this present moment in time in every more clear and powerful ways.

Tell me a bit about why writing about Canada/Canadians is important to you?

The world is crying out for examples of peoples and places where justice and harmony in contexts of diversity and difference are upheld and embraced. Canada, with all of our advantages, capacities, and strength needs to be that example that the world so sorely needs. 

What was your goal while writing this book?

I wanted to tell a story about a disastrous – probably the most destructive – example of Indigenous-European contact, one that was already famous as a heroic narrative, and explore the motivations of all the people involved. Telling this story was, I believe, a good way of explaining how all sides entered an Indigenous-European partnership, and how these new relationships often had unforeseen catastrophic consequences. Almost always, these consequences were suffered by Indigenous people. 

Was there a book or piece of writing that made you want to pursue writing as a career? What was it?

I am a life-long reader. I was raised in a home where history was important. My dad took university courses starting when I was about 12 and I would read all the books. We lived in a tourist area near Collingwood, and there was a lot of time when there weren’t many kids around. It was quite a while later when I realized I might actually be able to write books.

Who or what were your influences while writing this book?

This is the first book that explores some of the intertwining of my own family with a historical event.One of Champlain’s young interpreters, Nicolas Marsolet, one of my ancestors, got into a dispute with Champlain and Brebeuf, documented with some hostility by the Jesuits in the 1630s, about the way Champlain treated young Indigenous girls. To my great relief, Marsolet took the right side of the argument. One of my great uncles supposedly used a miracle to find the site of Brebeuf’s death. Another great-uncle built the interior of the Martyrs’ Shrine. My great-great grandfather actually bought part of the site of the Jesuit mission ruins more than a century ago, and as a teenager, I was a friend of the archaeologist who excavated the site.

What is one thing you learned while writing this book you wish everyone knew?

People can have good intentions and may honestly want to help people but are so blinded by their own ideologies and cultural norms that they fail to see the damage they do to people who see the world differently. They may be very kind people with good hearts, but they need to respect the beliefs and practices of those they want to help. We still see this in what we think of as developing countries. 

Tell me a bit about why writing about Canada/Canadians is important to you?

A sense of self and place is important to me, and, I believe, to many readers. Canada is more like a continent than a country. It is very complex. Its history is complicated and nuanced. And it’s very different from the story of the United States and every other country. If we are to survive as a country, fending off the influence and threats of the United States and overcoming the internal forces of division, we need to understand how we got to the place where we are. History – more accurately, pseudohistory – has also become an important weapon in the ideological and cultural fights within Canada. When people do use Canadian history to try to make some kind of point, they need to know what they’re talking about, and they must have access to good source material.

What was your goal while writing this book?
I wanted to make a case for Norquay’s importance in the first decades after
Confederation and for the relevance of his thinking and of his example today.

Was there a book or piece of writing that made you want to pursue writing as a career?
What was it?
I read a lot during my elementary school years. Books on sports and several mystery
series stand out in my memory, as does a book of humour that I thought was amazingly funny when I was nine years old.

Who or what were your influences while writing this book?
During my childhood and teen years in Prince Albert I studied, played, and worked with
First Nation and Métis people. In the fifty-plus years I’ve lived in Winnipeg, I have worked with many people in Manitoba schools, in the trade union movement, and in government. My wife sat in the legislature for thirteen stressful years which offered insights into the complicated business of politics. These were influences I could see while I was writing. I wanted to express respect for Indigenous activism, to acknowledge the commitment of civil servants, union leaders, teachers, and political representatives, and to reveal a little of the intellectual challenges and partisan realities that shaped the electoral fortunes and fate of this one good person, John Norquay.

What is one thing you learned while writing this book you wish everyone knew?
Norquay’s vision of Canada differed from the thinking of those few among his
contemporaries who are remembered and celebrated today. He expressed an ideal of bilingual and multicultural citizenship, he insisted that First Nations and English and French Métis were equal in status to other citizens, and he campaigned for a rebalancing of national and provincial powers within the Canadian federation. His perspective was just as worthy as the Ontario “national” vision represented by John A. Macdonald.

Tell me a bit about why writing about Canada/Canadians is important to you?
Each of us belongs to many communities, from the very local to the global and universal.
I believe (I know not everyone shares this view), that the nation-state is one of the most
important of these communities because of its power to impose limits and open possibilities for us all. If our nation-state, Canada, is to function well, citizens have to find the means to express their own views and interests while learning to respect others’ views and interests. They have to argue more or less amicably, even when they disagree vehemently. I want to live in a democracy where discussion is encouraged, and group decisions are reached fairly. And I believe that a history book can tackle significant public matters in the past – Indigeneity, Prairieness, business strategy, and election campaigns, in the case of the Norquay biography – while offering a useful perspective on our lives today.

What was your goal while writing this book?

One early title for this book was Awakening to Invasion: A Resistance Narrative Ranging from Hitler and Stalin to Donald J. Trump. You can see why we toned it down. It does have the virtue of clarity, however, because my goal was to awaken Canadians to the rise of fascism in the US and the attendant threat of invasion, be it military or economic.

Was there a book or piece of writing that made you want to pursue writing as a career? What was it?

My father, born in the early 1920s, sang the praises of John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. By the time I was twelve, I wanted to be a writer. The celebrated Jack Kerouac novel On the Road inspired me to venture out into the great wide world. Kerouac was adventurous, an explorer, a writer who reveled in real-world experience. Not only that, but like me, he was part-Quebecois. That sealed the deal. My first novel, as distinct from work of nonfiction, was Kerouac’s Ghost, in which my fictionalized narrator wrestles with the ghost of JK while working as a fire lookout in the Canadian Rockies. And when, while I was living in Calgary, the Alberta legislature set out to ban Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, well, I responded by writing a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuGZkSNPPQ&list=RDaeuGZkSNPPQ&start_radio=1

Who/what were your influences while writing this book?

The conceptual framework of Shadows of Tyranny encompasses writers who have written speculative fiction, essentially dystopian novels. Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Sinclair Lewis extrapolated from “the present” while forecasting totalitarian futures. Philip Roth wrote an alternative history in which a racist, authoritarian America declares war on Canada. Farther back, H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds, which depicts an invasion by a vastly more powerful enemy. Together, these works constitute a cautionary allegory.

My vision of the present day is informed by writers such as Anne Applebaum, Robert Reich, Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley, Miles Taylor, Liz Cheney, Masha Gessen, and Ruth Ben-Ghiat. They pointed me to the barricades. In June 2022, in a blog post, I wrote that “the American fanatics who recently turned back the clock 50 years . . . are just getting started. They are bent on turning America into a totalitarian state. First the rights of pregnant women. Next those of gays, of non-whites, you get the idea. Think Germany — not of the 1940s and full-blown Nazism but of the 1930s and the rise of fascism. And Canada? Well, we are cast in the role of 1930s France. You remember: the peaceable country that got invaded, occupied, and abused by its far more powerful neighbour?” https://kenmcgoogan.com/2022/06/28/happy-wake-up-to-canada-day/

During the rise of the Nazis, any number of journalists sounded the alarm. These included Americans like Dorothy Parker and Martha Gellhorn, as well as the unsung Canadian Matthew Halton, a young correspondent from Pincher Creek who wrote an eye-opening 10-part series on the events unfolding in 1930s Germany. They belonged to a resistance that included many Canadians, all of whom figure in my book – among them political leaders (Lord Beaverbrook), medical doctors (Norman Bethune), spymasters (William Stephenson), and soldiers (Farley Mowat and Tommy Prince). These inspirational figures taught me that defeating fascism requires extraordinary courage and resolve.

What is one thing you learned while writing this book you wish everyone knew?

Writing this book, I learned something that is fast becoming a truism – that HISTORY does not repeat itself, but often it rhymes. The current rise of authoritarianism in the US strongly resembles the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930s. Today is rhyming with yesterday. And Canada looks to be cast in the role of France, which, of course, was invaded and occupied. I believe that Canadians are finally awakening, and I hope they become increasingly aware of the dangers ahead.

Tell me a bit about why writing about Canada/Canadians is important to you?

I called my first book, published in 1991, Canada’s Undeclared War: Fighting Words from the Literary Trenches. I see a direct line from that work through 50 Canadians Who Changed the World to Shadows of Tyranny. Along the way, I wrote six books about the exploration of the Canadian Arctic, from Fatal Passage to Searching for Franklin. With this last, I believe I solved the Great Canadian Riddle: what was the root cause of the disaster that befell the final Arctic expedition led by Sir John Franklin? Three more of my books explore the way Canada has been impacted by the Scots and the Irish. My work-in-progress is tentatively entitled Awakening to Canada: American Invaders Meet the Ghosts of Montreal.

So, yes, I look to be obsessively focused on Canada and Canadians. I think it’s because, as Norman Levine once wrote, “Canada made me.”  I grew up in small-town Quebec and Montreal, earned university degrees in Toronto and Vancouver, and worked at major daily newspapers in Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. Before that, I picked tobacco in Tillsonburg and potatoes in New Brunswick, and survived a stint on the green chain in Nelson, B.C. I spent one summer as a fire lookout in the Rockies, three months at Berton House in Dawson City, and went voyaging repeatedly in the Northwest Passage. For years, I taught creative writing at universities in Toronto and Halifax. While outside the country, I brought Canada with me, whether backpacking around Europe, working as a bicycle messenger in San Francisco, or teaching French in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. With my life partner, Sheena Fraser McGoogan, and our two kids (now adults), I hauled a tent trailer back and forth across the country. I could go on, but you get the idea: I owed this country everything. Canada made me.

What was your goal while writing this book?

My goal was to document and centre the voices of Indigenous Peoples in the North—particularly Gwich’in and Inuvialuit Survivors—in the history of Indian residential schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. I wanted to write a book that placed northern Indigenous experiences at the heart of Canadian history, while also honouring the stories of strength, care, and survival that allowed families and communities to endure. Too often, histories of residential schooling are written about people rather than with them. My aim was to contribute to truth-telling in a way that would resonate with Survivors, descendants, general readers, and scholars alike, and to insist that these histories matter for our collective future.

Was there a book or piece of writing that made you want to pursue writing as a career? What was it?

The publications from my own nation—of the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute and the Department of Cultural Heritage, Gwich’in Tribal Council—were pivotal for me, especially Gwichyà Gwich’in Googwandak: The History and Stories of the Gwichyà Gwich’in and Our Whole Gwich’in Way of Life Has Changed: Stories from the People of the Land. These books demonstrated how research, when done in close partnership with Elders and communities, could protect knowledge, honour oral histories, and make Gwich’in voices accessible to future generations. Seeing my own relatives and community members represented in those pages showed me the power of writing to safeguard histories that might otherwise be lost. They were proof that scholarship could be accountable, collaborative, and deeply rooted in place — and they inspired me to take up writing as both a career and a responsibility.

Who or what were your influences while writing this book?

The most important influences were Survivors and their families, who shared their stories with me—sometimes painful, sometimes full of humour and resilience. Their generosity and courage guided every decision I made. I was also influenced by Indigenous scholars and community-based researchers who insist on accountability to the people whose histories we write. Finally, my own family, Elders, and Gwich’in heritage shaped how I understood the responsibility of carrying these stories forward.

What is one thing you learned while writing this book you wish everyone knew?

One thing I learned—and that I wish everyone in Canada knew—is that residential schooling in the North lasted much longer, and in different forms, than many people realize. The last federally run residential school in Canada closed in Inuvik in 1996. For families like mine, this isn’t “distant history” but living memory. Recognizing this truth changes how we think about reconciliation: it’s not about the past, it’s about the present and future.

Tell me a bit about why writing about Canada or Canadians is important to you?

Writing about Canada is important because it means engaging honestly with the truths of this country’s past and present. Residential schools are not just Indigenous history—they are Canadian history. To move forward, we must confront the ongoing legacies of colonialism, listen to Survivors, and recognize how these histories continue to shape families and communities today. Writing about Canada is therefore part of the work of truth and reconciliation: it is about ensuring that Canadians understand their responsibilities, and that these truths are never forgotten or denied.

We are proud to announce the 2025 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize Shortlist!

Mark Bourrie’s Crosses in the Sky
Crystal Gail Fraser’s By Strength, We Are Still Here
Ken McGoogan’s Shadows of Tyranny
Jody Wilson-Raybould and Roshan Danesh’s Reconciling History
Gerald Friesen’s The Honourable John Norquay

Congratulations to all! Before we announce the winner on October 14th, we will be highlighting each remarkable title on our socials and website and sharing some insight as to why our jury members selected them for the shortlist.

Thank you again to our wonderful jurors Dale Barbour, Patricia Bovey, and Gregory Mason.

From ground zero of this country’s most important project: reconciliation.

Niigaan Sinclair has been called provocative, revolutionary, and one of this country’s most influential thinkers on the issues impacting Indigenous cultures, communities, and reconciliation in Canada. In his debut collection of stories, observations, and thoughts about Winnipeg, the place he calls “ground zero” of Canada’s future, read about the complex history and contributions of this place alongside the radical solutions to injustice and violence found here, presenting solutions for a country that has forgotten principles of treaty and inclusivity. It is here, in the place where Canada began—where the land, water, people, and animals meet— that a path “from the centre” is happening for all to see.

At a crucial and fragile moment in Canada’s long history with Indigenous peoples, one of our most essential writers begins at the centre, capturing a web spanning centuries of community, art, and resistance.

Based on years’ worth of columns, Niigaan Sinclair delivers a defining essay collection on the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Here, we meet the creators, leaders, and everyday people preserving the beauty of their heritage one day at a time. But we also meet the ugliest side of colonialism, the Indian Act, and the communities who suffer most from its atrocities.

Sinclair uses the story of Winnipeg to illuminate the reality of Indigenous life all over what is called Canada. This is a book that demands change and celebrates those fighting for it, that reminds us of what must be reconciled and holds accountable those who must do the work. It’s a book that reminds us of the power that comes from loving a place, even as that place is violently taken away from you, and the magic of fighting your way back to it.

Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair is Anishinaabe (St. Peter’s/Little Peguis) and an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba. He is a regular commentator on Indigenous issues on CTV, CBC, and APTN, and his written work can be found in the pages of The Exile Edition of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama, newspapers like The Guardian, and online with CBC Books: Canada Writes. Niigaan is the co-editor of the award-winning Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (Highwater Press, 2011) and Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories (Michigan State University Press, 2013), and is the Editorial Director of The Debwe Series with Portage and Main Press. Niigan obtained his BA in Education at the University of Winnipeg, before completing an MA in Native- and African-American literatures at the University of Oklahoma, and a PhD in First Nations and American Literatures from the University of British Columbia.

Canada’s longest war (2001-2014) pushed military, diplomatic,  development and humanitarian organizations to their limits. Was it all in vain?

Based on interviews with twenty-one key decision-makers and participants, many of whom are speaking publicly for the first time, Unwinnable Peace recounts the personal and professional challenges faced by individuals deeply committed to securing and rebuilding Kandahar province.

Diplomats planting seeds of democracy in a society dominated by warlords

• Aid workers bringing relief and development to shattered communities
• Mounties struggling to improve a corrupt and illiterate police force
• A young foreign service officer who suffered life-changing injuries
• Prison experts bringing international standards to a jail used to torture
• The Canadian and Afghan generals who fought the Taliban
• An Afghan–Canadian who risked his life to govern the Province of Kandahar
• Interpreters desperate to save their families from retribution

These are the men and women who are still struggling to reconcile their sacrifices with the eventual Taliban victory.

A veteran diplomat and the last Representative of Canada in Kandahar, the author combines his personal experiences with those of his colleagues (Afghan and Canadian) to examine  Canada’s mission to Afghanistan at a human level.

This is the story of the collision of two worlds. In the early 1600s, the Jesuits—the Catholic Church’s most ferocious warriors for Christ—tried to create their own nation on the Great Lakes and turn the Huron (Wendat) Confederacy into a model Jesuit state. At the centre of their campaign was missionary Jean de Brébeuf, a mystic who sought to die a martyr’s death. He lived among a proud people who valued kindness and rights for all, especially women. In the end, Huronia was destroyed. Brébeuf became a Catholic saint, and the Jesuit’s “martyrdom” became one of the founding myths of Canada.

In this first secular biography of Brébeuf, historian Mark Bourrie, bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, recounts the missionary’s fascinating life and tells the tragic story of the remarkable people he lived among. Drawing on the letters and documents of the time—including Brébeuf’s accounts of his bizarre spirituality—and modern studies of the Jesuits, Bourrie shows how Huron leaders tried to navigate this new world and the people struggled to cope as their nation came apart. Riveting, clearly told, and deeply researched, Crosses in the Sky is an essential addition to—and expansion of—Canadian history.