Hope in the Midst of Despair and Tragedy: Tomson Highway’s “Permanent Astonishment”
Tomson Highway. Permanent Astonishment. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. 2021.
The political and social landscape in Canada was knocked sideways in the spring of 2021 with the locating of 215 children’s unmarked grave sites at an abandoned Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C. These Residential Schools, first organized in the late 1800’s and operated for one hundred years, were the brainchild of Canada’s federal government that impacted approximately thirty percent of Indigenous children across Canada. The Schools were an attempt to provide structured education to Indigenous children that would enculturate them to Western social and economic activity. Indigenous children were taken from their families, housed in large residences one school year at a time, and educated in English. Unable to staff the schools themselves, the federal government turned to Christian churches for support. The legacy of these schools has ranged from the horror of mental, physical and sexual abuse of students, to the benign, such as complaints about eating green beans at dinner time. The understanding amongst Canadians is that Residential Schools broke up many Indigenous families, brought pain and humiliation to Indigenous communities, and were an instrument of destruction for traditional Indigenous life and culture.
Over the past thirty years in Canada, the act of reconciliation between Indigenous people, Canadian society, various Christian communities, and the federal government, has moved along in fits and starts. On an official level, there have been apologies from Churches, Religious Orders, Bishops, and the Prime Minister. At local levels, Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people have connected with one another in often meaningful ways in the world of commerce, the arts, times of prayer, and other communal celebrations. Still, there is much work to be done at the political level, and the anticipated discovery of grave sites at other abandoned Residential Schools next spring and summer suggests that grieving, along with anger, may continue to influence political and social conversations in Canada.
Professional historians in Canada are also unsettled. Some, such as Professor Jacques Rouillard, who recognizes without a doubt that children died at Residential Schools, nevertheless has growing questions specifically about the grave site discoveries, the political response, and the reporting done by Canada’s media.[1] As well, many historians in Canada argue with their own governing body over whether the treatment of Indigenous people by the Canadian government constitutes genocide, or not.[2] Is cultural assimilation, forced or otherwise, a form of genocide?
Canada is a young nation, with aspects of its own history still being researched and interpreted. In a recent book review at VoegelinView, James Greenaway articulates three challenges that threaten analysis of history in a young nation.[3] Two of those challenges, the fall into anachronism, or in telling of past horrors and sufferings, the surrender to nihilism, are threats to the practice of history today in Canada, especially in the public realm. The third challenge is that of “weaponizing” history, so that interpretation of historical events may serve as a defensive or offensive weapon meant to serve the interests of institutional powers, or conversely, serve the interests of people who wish to topple a nation’s institutions.
Canadians appear to be sensitive to the challenges at hand, appreciating the grief that the gravesites elicit. Currently, the dominant narrative interprets Residential Schools and Canada’s colonial history as one of genocide, and very few people care to publicly question it. The positive aspect of this is that Canadian citizens have grown more mindful of the experience of Indigenous people in Canada, and the need to listen to Indigenous voices. The negative aspect of this is that in the public and political forum where a nation’s issues are to be discussed and debated, citizens are sometimes rendered speechless.
It is into this constraining atmosphere that Tomson Highway brings a sense of hope that no Canadian politician, social advocate, intellectual, or artist has come close to matching over the past number of years. His book, Permanent Astonishment, without vindicating the Residential School system or suggesting some political program for Indigenous cultural restoration, offers a healing perspective that is essentially spiritual in nature, there for the taking for anyone who feels called to pursue it. Following the lines of insight David Walsh articulates in The Priority of the Person, Tomson’s book is a reminder that the life of the person trumps the broader social and national narratives that threaten to diminish a person’s unique experience and sense of self.
Permanent Astonishment is a thoroughly entertaining and informative read about a Cree child growing up in Canada’s sub-arctic, and it is also a humorous read. He tells a story of traditional ways of living on the land, and the experience of living and learning in a faraway Residential School. It is a story informed by gratitude. Importantly, Tomson is also able to recognize the uncompromising weight of historical existence and the sometimes uncontrollable forces that bandy people about, while drawing attention to the responsibility each of us shares to participate in life while oriented by some transcendent presence from which hope, goodness, and laughter are born. The book states, without saying it, that there is hope of a happy future! Most obvious to the reader is that this message of hope is delivered with authority, by someone who has realized hope in their own soul.
Permanent Astonishment includes the story of Tomson’s father, Joe Highway, a champion dog-sled racer, and his mother Balazee Highway, a mother of 12 children and fearless defender of the family. It reveals the extreme challenges inherent to living in the bush of northern Canada, and the triumph of the human spirit in such a place. The author was himself “born in a snow bank” in 1951, with nothing but a blanket and a tent wall separating him from minus 40 degree Celsius winter. During Tomson’s birth, his father was badly injured while chopping wood, but he nevertheless ventured off to hunt, because his family was on the verge of starvation. Joe Highway had already lost five children to pneumonia, and he prayed that his life be taken in exchange for the life of his son, Tomson.
Joe and Balazee were devout Catholics, praying the Rosary together every night, whether they were on the land in a tent, or in their small home in the village of Brochet. Tomson was therefore raised in the faith as well. At Residential School he would be an altar server, a singer in the choir, and a studious admirer of Latin. And while Tomson emphasizes respectfully the sincere faith of his parents and the beauty of the Latin liturgy, he is also happy to draw attention to the comical moments when the solemnity of the faith was interrupted by mating dogs, his little brother Rene needing to go to the bathroom, or promiscuous teenagers seeking privacy at a secluded grotto. Tomson, in other words, is able to tell his story with a self-deprecating humour and an ironical eye to the cultural structures in Cree, Dene, French, English, or Catholic society that invites one to laugh. Perhaps more Christian missionaries in Canada would have benefitted themselves, others and the Christian faith generally, with a similar openness to the ironical.
The humour in the book begins with Tomson himself, whose favourite activity is laughing. He was born on December 6, he reminds the reader, the feast day for Saint Nicholas, Santa Clause or Saanchi Giloss in Cree, “who was the King of Laughter.” The stars aligned for Tomson, it seems. The humour in the book is rooted, however, in the Cree language, where the Trickster—a mythical figure well known in many different Indigenous cultures–continues to dwell. Tomson, who speaks and writes comfortably in Cree, sharing with the reader many words and expressions of the language, identifies closely with the Trickster, the “insane clown” who “motors” the Cree language. The Trickster, “the god of laughter,” is possessed by “unfettered concupiscence,” so “virtually every second word of the language pulsates with sexual innuendo,” contributing to the “over-the-top, wild sense of humour that lives at its core.”
Tomson’s childhood community of Brochet, on the shores of Reindeer Lake in Canada’s far north, was home to Cree and Dene people, French Catholic missionaries, Scandinavians who sought to escape the wars of Europe, and English-speaking traders from across the British Isles who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company. The mixing of races and languages created unique blood lines and cultural changes for the Cree people. For example, the French introduced the “L” to the Cree language, which before European contact had not existed. Tomson Highway’s last name, he speculates, may have Irish roots, speculation that centers on a time when he was studying music in London, England, in the 1970’s, watching soccer on television.
While observing the game, he noticed an Irishman playing with the last name Heighway. In the 1600’s, many Irish and Scots ended up on English trading ships sailing to the Hudson’s Bay, jumping aboard at the Orkney Islands, where vessels, avoiding French war ships, would make a last stop for provisions before heading across the North Atlantic. Intermarriages between these adventurers and Indigenous people often occurred, which is one way a name like Heighway may have made it to northern Canada. Another way could have come with the signing of treaties. When treaties had to be signed with Indigenous names that the English found impossible to spell or pronounce, names were sometimes “borrowed…from the boys who happened to be sitting at the counter drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.”
Tomson was close to his younger brother, Rene. They were like twins, neesoo-cheewak in Cree, which is a contraction that ends up meaning, “two maggots,” an example of how the Trickster language turns things on its head. People’s names are similarly played with. Father Egenolf of the local parish ends up being called “Father Egg-Nog,” and locals have names like Samba Cheese Gunpowder, Happy Doll Gaazayoo, Check Wheat, Oogeest (August) Zipper, and Seagull’s Little Poop. Non-Native people are affectionately called Moony-Ass, a non-sensical word that may well have its roots in a Nordic, French or English expression. Because the Cree language of today is born from a pre-colonial oral tradition, some changes have come to it that will never be fully understood.
Of interest to the Canadian reader is the place of the Residential School for people of Brochet. Most of Highway’s older brothers and sisters went away to “Boarding School,” and Tomson’s own attendance was assumed in the family. In fact, Tomson was excited to go to school. And so it was one early Autumn day as a six year old that his dad brought him by boat to a float plane that would whisk him 300 miles south for a ten month term at “Guy Hill” Residential School. As a six-year-old, Tomson knew how to speak Cree and Dene, but English was foreign to him.
Joe Highway wanted his children to attend Residential School. He was a careful observer of his world, and it is highly significant that Joe understood the Cree people in the isolated, northern world of Reindeer Lake were on the “cusp of leaping five generations in one.” He knew his people had to be ready for the sudden changes that were coming to northern Canada in the form of increased industry, and the cultural and social changes that inevitably followed a large influx of non-Indigenous people to formerly isolated regions of the north. Joe also understood that cultural and social changes had already occurred in other parts of the world, and that in some cases the transition to modernity had cost millions of lives. He wanted his children to contribute to “the easing of that transition…contribute to saving their people,” and as he confided to Tomson one day while fishing on the cold waters of Reindeer Lake, he wanted his children to avoid the harsh conditions he had lived with over his lifetime.
Tomson’s recollection of Residential School over the following ten years includes the colors and wonder of liturgical and seasonal high points, such as Christmas concerts and spring “Field Day” sports meets. Kind and giving staff are acknowledged for their dedication and generosity, including many teachers who made great sacrifices for the sake of their pupils. Staff members included Sister St. Aramaa, the piano teacher, Mr. Babchuk, the shop teacher, and Brothers St. Arnaud and Menard, who were seen as Saints. Tomson looks back with fondness to his experience at the school, and ironical judgment at some of the absurdities he experienced.
The Residential School was tasked with teaching its pupils English, so one form of absurdity included the growing strictness surrounding use of the Cree or Dene language by the pupils. Students would collect tickets from one another if they caught them speaking their native tongue, and the student who collected the most tickets won a prize. It was a free-for-all as Cree and Dene students snuck up on one another, hoping to hear a word or expression in their native language so they could earn another ticket.
Despite sometimes rigid practices to promote learning, Tomson expresses gratitude for the strenuous study programme he was forced to learn under, for it helped him eventually move to far away Winnipeg for High School, and eventually to a university education. His gratitude for the people he knew at the school includes all of his fellow students, even the bullies, and wise-beyond-their-years students such as William Peeskwa, who gave of himself to help the non-athletic Tomson win a participation ribbon at a Field Day one spring in the three-legged race. William would become one of “the kindest and wisest Elders ever to emerge from Northern Manitoba.” Tomson’s parents, family, and the colorful community of Brochet were the foundation of his life, but he also attributes his successes in life—including his mastery of at least six languages, to his education at the Residential School he attended.
His experience at the school was not without shadows. One year, for example, the school staff and students were particularly hard hit by a flu that had four out of five people bed-ridden at any time, suffering with fevers of 105 degrees. He acknowledges with thanksgiving that no one died, but his memory of the event, which essentially stopped all routines in the school, is a reminder of the children who did die at Residential Schools, often of diseases like tuberculosis or flu. Tomson, a self-described Two Spirit person, was also bullied over the years, most often because he was considered effeminate by the other boys, and therefore labelled as a “girl.” Most ominous, one year a Brother Felix Lemoine would be stationed at the school as guardian of the boy’s dormitory, and his sexual molestation of male students would leave a lasting impact on many survivors of the school. In fact, Tomson does the math in order to approximate how many students were harmed by Lemoine, and lists the destructive results of that harm, including broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and violence. It is a reminder that for all the learning experiences and friendships Tomson had at Residential School, there was a serious price to be paid for being away from the care of parents.
The light and laughter guiding Tomson’s life gets the last word over Brother Lemoine, however. Tomson will not settle for allowing hatred or resentment to thwart his openness to the wonders of life. Regarding Lemoine’s abuses, Tomson asks, “why waste my time thinking about something that happened sixty years ago?” There are so many people to love and be loved by, so many people to thank for the love they have given, so much laughter and joy to experience, and so much music to dance to; the act of breathing “is reason-a-plenty for permanent astonishment.” His hope is that people who suffer from horrible memories like Lemoine will write their own stories; for those who cannot do this, Tomson says, “I have tried to write this story of survival for you.” Tomson is attempting to bring healing by remembering and celebrating the good, in gratitude. He has been saved, and he is inviting others to tell their own saving tale.
This is in essence the hope that Tomson brings to the reader. His story is a reminder of the mystery and wonder of the human person, and the joy of living found in gratitude and laughter. With this mystery and wonder in mind, it seems the question of genocide in Canada as it pertains to Indigenous people is first answered by each Indigenous person, themselves. In Tomson’s life, it is obvious that long before Residential Schools came into existence, assimilation and cultural change had been in the works for three hundred years, most often occurring randomly, without a government program. Tomson notes that with the advent of television, the Cree of Reindeer Lake would never be the same again. With television, English was suddenly part of their everyday world. “Time changes everything and everyone,” Tomson writes. Most importantly, however, is the fact that Tomson is alive and well now.
Following his experience in Residential School, Tomson’s life is a testament to the continued flourishing of a person open to new experiences and new cultures, while never forgetting the culture and family of his birth. His life offers a direction ahead for all people in Canada who seek to understand their place in an ever-changing world, where, for many, traditional ways of living and language have been lost. Tomson does not constrain himself to a particular interpretation or grand meaning of history. Tomson remains open to the time he exists in while honoring the responsibility he carries for his family, his remembered tradition, and the people like you and me with whom he shares life now. Love opens one’s soul to a rich, meaningful life—permanent astonishment—not anger, resentment, or a political program.
Permanent Astonishment celebrates games like Pageesee, wedding celebrations with hours of square dancing into the early morning, and moments of wonder and awe in nature, as when his mother runs laughing with her children in the sled behind her, being tracked by six wolves also running across open ice. They will not approach her. And the book reveals times of trouble. Tomson’s father Joe instilled a saying into his children’s hearts, “from disaster make something spectacular.” So it is that Tomson’s memoir leaves the reader feeling that a hopeful now and a hopeful future is possible when we recognize the good that has visited us through the course of our lives and remember to be thankful for the many gifts of the good that find their way to us today, “in this godly kingdom.” How will Tomson go about saving his people? It will be with laughter, “the joy that anchors Cree. It will be the Trickster-fuelled, spectacular sense of humour that sparks it to life.”
END NOTES:
[1] https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/in-kamloops-not-one-body-has-been-found [2] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/barbara-kay-historical-associations-genocide-statement-brazenly-unscholarly [3] https://voegelinview.com/searching-for-history-wherefrom-does-history-emerge-inquiries-in-political-cosmology/
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