Author Richard Wagamese on his novel Indian Horse
CBC Archives | Posted: June 20, 2018 8:55 PM | Last Updated: June 20, 2018
In her introduction to her interview with author Richard Wagamese, Shelagh Rogers describes the cover of his new book, Indian Horse, as "suggestive and mysterious," with photographs of footsteps in the snow and boys racing on a frozen lake.
The host of CBC Radio's The Next Chapter is with Wagamese at his Paul Lake home near Kamloops, B.C., a place he describes as "magical," and where he can "drink in the atmosphere of creation."
It is 2012, and he has just released his newest novel.
It tells the story of Saul Indian Horse, a young Ojibway boy who is sent to a residential school and finds his escape through the game of hockey.
Wagamese speaks of his own experience with residential schools, his placement in foster and adoptive homes, and how that affected him throughout his life.
A self-described "wild hockey player" until he was 39, he talks about what the game meant to him and to Saul.
He describes the book as being "about hockey, residential schools and redemption, but in the end I think it's about Canada."
Indian Horse was a selection for Canada Reads in 2013, and the film adaptation played at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017.
In his debut novel, Keeper'n Me, Wagamese also wove fiction and his own history together, as he tells Midday host Tina Srebotnjak in this 1994 clip:
Richard Wagamese died in March of 2017, at the age of 61.