Kanata Classics

"We who feel the weight of history need not justify ourselves under the terms set by others. And all of us must now risk more honest and creative forms of telling- not only for our survival as peoples but as a species. Such are the broad and enduring lessons of NISHGA. Yet it is for the specific reader that Abel directs his potentially life-saving message: I'm writing you this letter to tell you that you're not alone." 

— David Chariandy from the new introduction of NISHGA by Jordan Abel, Kanata Classics Year One 

"So many of our people across this land have made huge contributions to make the world for our future generations a kinder and safer place… In 1973 I ended the writing of Halfbreed with ‘I believe that one day, very soon, people will set aside their differences and come together as one. Maybe not because we love one another, but because we will need each other to survive. Then together we will fight our common enemies.’ I still believe this, but sometimes it gets very difficult and I feel like running away. There is so much more I want to say, but I can't find the words.”

— Halfbreed by Maria Campbell, Kanata Classics Year One

“I have read Bear maybe a dozen times, but when I picked it up again, I found fresh questions about my identity on every page. This land was lived in, cared for, and named thousands of years before people like me, of European ancestry, arrived. How do we, as newcomers who still live inside a colonial mindset, need to change?"

— Claire Cameron from the new introduction of Bear by Marian Engel, Kanata Classics Year One

"Years ago, Ru showed me how to write with arms wide open.... Still, I have not figured out how to craft a sentence like this: 'Very early, my father learned how to live far away from his parents, to leave places, to love the present tense, to let go of any attachment to the past...’ How does a writer reach through the page, clutch the reader's heart, and force it to halt? I will re-read Kim Thúy's Ru forever in search of the answer.”

— Sharon Bala from the new introduction of Ru by Kim Thúy, Kanata Classics Year One

"Set against the stunning backdrop of Mother Earth, Medicine Walk is at once an exploration of self and an embodiment of the inextricable connection Indigenous peoples have with the natural world and all it holds in its embrace. Wagamese employs the tradition of the medicine walk— travelling into the natural space and safety of Mother Earth— to explore the intersections of past and present, of memory and self."

— David A. Robertson from the new introduction of Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese, Kanata Classics Year One