Back in the 60’s, during my high school and college years, I worked as a guide at two fishing camps in Northwestern Ontario. Most of the guides were First Nations Ojibway and many of them also worked out of both fishing camps so we had the opportunity to form strong friendships.
I started writing The 53rd Parallel because it was my great fortune to live in that wilderness with those people, during the last of the frontier times and I wanted to pay tribute to the wonder of the place. And because I wanted to tell the story of the terrible injustice done to the First Nations Ojibway of Grassy Narrows and White Dog.
And the wonder is so great, the injustice so tragic, it has taken a second book—Worlds Between—and a third—Grassy Narrows, a work in progress—to even try to capture it all.
A close friend from those frontier days, Steve Fobister, set me on course to write a novella that Light Messages will also be publishing later this year. Anung’s Journey is based on an Ojibway legend told from “the times before the white man came to Turtle Island”—that’s how Steve put it when he first told me the legend. And then he asked me to popularize it. He has endorsed my effort, and I look forward to sharing this magical story with you.
Anung’s Journey officially launched at the Museum of Ojibwa Culture in St. Ignace, Michigan. What a great honor for this book, to be presented to the public for the first time in the center of the Ojibwa universe. The book is now available nationwide in select bookstores and through Amazon.
Carl Nordgren 