On Sunday, September 27, 2020, during the first Toronto’s Virtual Word on the Street Festival, the Indigenous Literature award recipients interviewed with Peter Olson, President of the PMC.

The winner of the Children’s Book Award was Clayton Gautier for his book: Sus Yoo The Bear’s Medicine, published by Theytus Books.

This is Clayton Gautier’s, a multi-media artist, second children’s book.  He brings the teachings of the land into this bilingual picture book. Nancy Cooper, (First Nations Consultant) writes: “In this bilingual story, a mother bear teaches her cubs how to live in relationship to the land. Emphasizing gratitude, interdependence, and ancestry, Cree/Dakelh author and artist Gauthier conveys the wisdom of growing up and cultural inheritance through the movements of a bear family.”

Read more in the Quil and Quire article, or the  My Prince George Now article.

In the young adult category, Drew Hayden Taylor was the award recipient for his book: Chasing Painted Horses, published by Cormorant Press.

Drew Hayden Taylor is a proliferate writer of books, short stories, plays, magazine, and news articles.  Read more in the Anishinabek News or at Mykawartha.com.

“Chasing Painted Horses has a magical, fable-like quality. It is the story of four unlikely friends who live in Otter Lake, a reserve north of Toronto. Ralph and his sister, Shelley, live with their parents. One day, their mother brings home a chalkboard and installs it prominently in the kitchen. She wants her children and their friends to draw something every week, at the end of which there’ll be a vote as to which is the best artwork. Danielle, a small and quiet girl from school, draws a horse — a breathtakingly beautiful horse. And while she wins the competition, the reactions to her work set in motion a series of actions and reactions that will shape the lives of the brother and sister and William, Shelley’s would-be-boyfriend, that rarity, a bully who bullies other bullies.”

To view the interview, on YouTube. Begin at the 4:02 mark.

 Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS) is mandated to deliver programs and services on behalf of the Ontario Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport by:

• increasing cooperation and coordination among public library boards and other information providers to promote the provision of library service to the public;
• assisting public library boards by providing them with services and programs that reflect their needs, including consultation, training and development.

For more information about First Nation Communities READ and Southern Ontario Library Service, contact:

Nancy Cooper, First Nations Consultant
Telephone   647-264-7342

Southern Ontario Library Service
E-mail:        ncooper@sols.org

Periodical Marketers of Canada is the national association of magazine and book wholesalers serving thousands of retail newsstands across Canada. Periodical Marketers of Canada was established under a federal charter in 1942 for the purpose of furthering the wholesale periodical distribution industry and contributing to the encouragement of reading in Canada.

PMC’s ongoing activities have included funding of a non-profit charitable foundation, the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters, which has contributed to individuals and agencies engaged in the encouragement of literacy and reading in Canada.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project.