Book Club: Tuesday, September 8, 2026, 2-4pm. Fellows and External Fellows – Zoom only event

September 8, 2026, (Tuesday) 2-4 pm – Fellows and External Fellows

Please note:  Because Monday, September 7 is Labour Day, this meeting will occur on the following day.

Permanent Astonishment: Growing Up Cree in the Land of Snow and Sky by Tomson Highway (2021)

Discussion Leaders: Giuliana Katz & Meg Fox

Shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, Permanent Astonishment is a memoir like no other. Cree novelist and playwright, Tomson Highway tells the story of his first 15 years, from being born (literally) in a snowbank in the remote sub-arctic to attending the Guy Hill Residential School near The Pas. While that description might set up an expectation of trauma, this memoir offers a different (personal) story to sit alongside the current dominant narrative: it is humour and joy, not pain and suffering that dominate. There is joy in the beauty of the vast northern landscape, in the love of his large family, in the mind-expanding discoveries of learning, especially language and music. The book’s tone is playful, lyrical, and very funny, threaded through with the Cree language and worldview. As one reviewer said: “The book’s epigraph is a quotation from Highway’s brother René [a dancer who died of AID-related illness in 1990]: ‘Don’t mourn me, be joyful.’ It is a dictum Highway seems to have observed in both writing this book and in the life it recounts.” (Available in all formats; 344 pages)

The link to register is https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/D4jy8jrqUD

The deadline to register is the Monday morning the day of the event at 8 am. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.

If you have any questions, please contact the organizer, Mary Jane Ashley at maryjane.ashley@utoronto.ca.