Back to the Red Road

Edward Gamblin and Florence Kaefer

Request Sample

Name:	*
Email:	*
Address1:	*
Address2:
City:	*
State:	*
Zip:	*
Institution Represented:

I am a professional / teacher considering utilizing this in a classroom
I am a professional book buyer considering purchasing this for my bookstore
I am a reviewer who would like to write about this
submit close

Publisher: Caitlin Press Inc.

In June 1967, Norway House Indian Residential School of Manitoba closed its doors after a somewhat questionable past. In 1954, when Florence Kaefer was just nineteen, she accepted a job as a teacher at Norway House. Unaware of the difficult conditions the students were enduring, Florence and her fellow teachers nurtured a school full of lonely and homesick young children. After a few years, Florence moved to Vancouver Island with her new husband where she continued to teach, thinking often of the children of Norway House. Many years later, after the death of her husband, Florence unexpectedly reconnected with one of her Norway House students, Edward Gamblin. Edward had been only five when he was brought to Norway House and Florence remembered him as a shy and polite young boy. Leaving the school at sixteen, Edward faced some challenges in a world that was both hostile and unfamiliar to him. But Edward found success and solace in his career as a musician, writing songs aboutthe many political issues facing Aboriginal people in Canada. On a trip to Manitoba, Florence discovered Edward's music. She was captivated by his voice, but shocked to hear him singing about the abuse he and the other children had been subjected to at Norway House. Motivated to apologize on behalf of the school and her colleagues, Florence contacted Edward. "Yes, I remember you and I accept your apology," Edward told her. "Reconciliation will not be one grand, finite act. It will be a multitude of small acts and gestures played out between individuals." The story of their personal reconciliation is both heartfelt and heartbreaking as Edward begins to share his painful truths with his family, Florence and the media. Three years after Edward's death in in 2010, Florence has continued to advocate for truth and reconciliation. BACK TO THE RED ROAD is more than one man's story: it is the story of our nation and how healing can begin, one friendship, one apology at a time.

About Edward Gamblin

About Florence Kaefer

buy it now

detail

Binding	EAN	ISBN-10	Pub Date	PAGES	Language	Size	Price
Paperback	9781927575376	1927575370	2014-03-16	224		0.00 x 5.90 x 8.80 in	$24.95

Publicity

Connect

Multimedia

Contributor Platforms

Recent Press

Promo Quotes

Events

Book Signings and Tour Cities

Invisible Generations

by Barman, Jean

Irene Kelleher lived all her life in the shadow of her inheritance. Her local community in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley all too often treated her as if she was invisible. The combination of white and Indigenous descent that Irene embodied was beyond the bounds of acceptability by a dominant white society. To be mixed was to not belong...

The Co-op Revolution

by DeGrass, Jan

“We were undercapitalized, inexperienced, practiced democratic decision-making and some of us smoked dope occasionally. All elements that would make us grow as human beings and as business people. We ran a helluva show.”In the spring of 1975, a free-spirited Jan DeGrass backpacked across Canada in search of adventure and greater meaning in life...

Resolve

by Parks Mintz, Carolyn

Andy and Phyllis Chelsea met during their years spent at the St. Joseph’s Mission School in Williams Lake, BC. Like the thousands forced into the church-run residential school system, Andy and Phyllis areno strangers to the ongoing difficulties experienced by most Indigenous peoples in Canada...

Imprint

by Sicherman, Claire

Imprint is a profound and courageous exploration of trauma, family, and the importance of breaking silence and telling stories. This book is a fresh and startling combination of history and personal revelation. When her son almost died at birth and her grandmother passed away, something inside of Claire Sicherman snapped...

Surveying the Great Divide

by Sherwood, Jay

In 1917 Canada commemorated its 50th anniversary against the backdrop of World War I. Although the war effort was the main focus of the federal and provincial governments, some important projects continued. The Alberta-BC boundary survey, which had started in 1913 during an economic boom in western Canada, continued to receive funding throughout the war...

Blossoms in the Gold Mountains

by Chow, Lily

Third book by de facto expert on Chinese Immigration to BC reveals never-before-told stories relevant to food, politics and national heritage. In this long awaited third book, author Lily Chow further explores Chinese settlement in BC. In the nineteenth century, thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived in British Columbia to work as labourers...

Fernie at War

by Norton, Wayne

Fernie, a small community located in BC’s Kootenay region, entered the First World War in 1914 with optimism and a sense of national pride—it emerged five years later having experienced staggering losses and multiple controversies that threatened to tear their community apart...

Whale in the Door

by Le Bel, Pauline

An exhilarating mix of natural history and personal exploration, Whale in the Door is a passionate account of a woman’s transformative experience of her adopted home. For thousands of years, Howe Sound, an inlet in the Salish Sea provided abundant food, shelter, and stories, for the Squamish Nation...

How Deep is the Lake

by O'Callaghan, Shelley

A prudent and intentional examination of privilege and belonging in Chilliwack Lake by retired environmental lawyer and grandmother.Curious about the previous inhabitants of the lake where her family has spent the summer for over one hundred years, author Shelley O'Callaghan starts researching and writing about the area...

The Land on Which We Live

by MacPherson, Barbara

Legendary tales of pioneers and adventurers cultivating BC's Cariboo Plateau in between the 19th and 20th century.The romantic backwoods landscape known as the North Bonaparte, stretches east from 70 Mile House to Bridge Lake and is full of small remote ranches, hidden abandoned homesteads, and rutted roads leading to graves in forgotten meadows...

Chilcotin Chronicles

by Birchwater, Sage

A collection of historical stories about the early indigenous people, settlers, trappers, and adventurers of BC's Cariboo Chilcotin.A compilation of stories that meld both culture and bloodlines, CHILCOTIN CHRONICLES by Sage Birchwater is set in the wild and untamed country of central British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau...

Ootsa Lake Odyssey

by Sherwood, Jay

From the 1920s to 1952, George and Else Seel lived about sixty kilometres south of Burns Lake near the small farming settlement of Wistaria on the western shore of Ootsa Lake. Like many early twentieth century settlers who migrated to BC’s Central Interior, the Seels came in search of opportunity and prosperity, but the harsh environment posed challenges they could not have imagined...

Wilderness Dreams

by Boudreau, Jack

Jack's fourth book documents the amazing adventures of the Bowden family in the rugged wilderness of British Columbia's interior. It is largely based on 40 years of diaries kept by Liza Bowden.

Wild and Free

by Cooke, Frank

Jack Boudreau, author of the bestselling Crazy Man's Creek and Grizzly Bear Mountain, is back with another wild and wooly, scarcely believable but nevertheless true tale of misadventure in British Columbia's northern wilderness...

Trappers and Trailblazers

by Boudreau, Jack

In 1934 international entrepreneur and filmmaker Charles Bedeaux hired a team of Canadian men to trail blaze from Edmonton, Alberta, to Telegraph Creek, BC. What started out as adventure for Carl Davidson and Bob Beattie soon became a treacherous and heartbreaking journey...

The Railroader's Wife

by Stevenson, Jane

The story of the railway has never been told in such a charming voice as in these letters by Bernice Medbury Martin. Bernice Medbury married railroader Leslie Martin in 1912 and arrived later that year in Prince Rupert at the height of rock blasting and railroad building...

The Native Voice

by Jamieson, Eric

In 1945, Alfred Adams, a respected Haida elder and founding president of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia (NBBC), was dying of cancer. After decades of fighting to increase the rights and recognition of First Nations people, he implored Maisie Hurley to help his people by telling others about their struggle...

The Last Patrol

by Billington, Keith

In Keith Billington's new book, "The Last Patrol," he shares one of the most tragic stories of the far north. It was a quiet December morning in 1910 when Inspector Fitzgerald and his crew left Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, on a dog team patrol to Dawson City, Yukon...

The Landscape of Ernest Lamarque

by Sherwood, Jay

At the age of sixteen, Ernest Lamarque travelled from England to North America, to begin a life as a Victorian adventurer. Born in 1879 and orphaned at age twelve, he would go on to become an artist, a writer and a surveyor, creating some of the earliest visual records of the people of remote regions of Canada...

The Junction

by Schreiber, John

In his third book, "The Junction," John Schreiber invites us to join him on a journey into the hidden corners of BC?s Cariboo Chilcotin, where he observes and describes a land of mountains and old trails, coyotes and bighorn sheep, Aboriginal folk, homesteaders, ranchers and the stories of long ago...

The Good Hope Cannery

by MacDonald, W. B.

In 1895 Scottish entrepreneur, engineer, and outdoor adventurer Henry Ogle Bell-Irving built the Good Hope Cannery in Rivers Inlet, BC. There was a fortune to be made and Bell-Irving was determined to make one, both for the shareholders of the Anglo-British Columbia Packing Company, and for himself...

Surveying Southern British Columbia

by Sherwood, Jay

SURVEYING SOUTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA, Jay Sherwood's fourth and final book about prominent BC surveyor Frank Swannell, covers the years from 1901 to 1907, before Swannell began surveying for the BC government...

Surveying Northern British Columbia

by Sherwood, Jay

Considered one of British Columbia's most famous pioneer surveyors, Frank Swannell surveyed much of northern BC for the provincial government between 1908 and 1914, taking many striking photographs of the area and its people. Together with his journal, these images constitute the best record of the region during this period of enormous transition...

Salmonbellies vs. the World

by MacDonald, W.B.

In 1889, in an obscure corner of the British Empire called New Westminster, a few dedicated lacrosse players and sportsmen put together a team of world-beaters. In today's era of manufactured teams with generic names, the New Westminster Salmonbellies stand with the old guard: the Yankees, the Canadiens, the Celtics and the Packers...

Salish Elders

by Tewinkel, Wim

A stunning book of portraits and biographies of the elders of the Salish Nation, complete with stories of the highlights of their lives.

Passing Through Missing Pages

by Welwood, Frances

Annie Garland Foster was born in Fredericton, NB, in 1875. She was an educator, nurse, politician, social reformer, journalist and biographer of Pauline Johnson. But she was also a bit of a mystery...

Gumboot Girls

Forty years ago, droves of young women migrated away from urban settings and settled in rural areas across North America. Many settled on the north coast of British Columbia, on Haida Gwaii or around Prince Rupert. GUMBOOT GIRLS tells the stories of thirty-four women, through their own eyes, as they moved from their comfortable city-dwelling surroundings to the rugged north coast...

Great Fortune Dream

by Chuenyan Lai, David

In 1858, gold was discovered in the Fraser River. News of this discovery travelled to the Pearl River Delta, where, in the aftermath of the Opium Wars, many Chinese sought to escape the poverty, overcrowding, political unrest and even slavery-invaders from western Asia captured and shipped many Chinese to South America as "piglets...

Disaster on Mount Slesse

by O'Keefe, Betty

Mount Slesse, a jagged 2,500-metre peak near Chilliwack BC known locally as "The Fang," lived up to its evil reputation on December 9, 1956, when Trans Canada Airlines Flight 810 slammed into it, killing all 62 aboard. For five months nobody knew what happened. Flight 810 had just disappeared into the night...

Chasing Their Dreams

by Chow, Lily

'Chasing Their Dreams' recreates the hardships early Chinese settlers faced in Northwestern British Columbia: harsh land and climate, little or no financial resources, deep-set prejudice and sometimes racial violence...

Cassiar

by LeBlanc, Suzanne

With an eye for detail and a lively writing style, author Leblanc recreates the history of Cassiar, an asbestos mining town in northern British Columbia.