CANADA
Leader-Post
BY WILL CHABUN, LEADER-POST FEBRUARY 18, 2015
REGINA — It’s one of those things that writers do when they’re on the trail of a story: get up in the wee hours of a morning and drive 100 miles on the possibility they’ll find a special person.
David Carpenter chuckles as he tells of his quest for Joseph August “Augie” Merasty, who years before shyly sought out a writer to tell his story.
The elderly Cree trapper’s signature was needed to let the University of Regina Press publish The Education of Augie Merasty, a 76-page book that, through one man, tells the story of Canada’s experiment with residential schools.
It is the story of how one of them failed Merasty, who attended the St. Therese Residential School at Sturgeon Landing in northeast Saskatchewan from 1935-44.
The core of this book is the memoir Merasty wrote in longhand for the forerunner to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has been hearing school survivors’ stories.
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