Conversations with a Dead Man - by Mark Abley (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

As a poet and citizen deeply concerned by the Oka Crisis, the Idle No More protests, and Canada's ongoing failure to resolve First Nations issues, Montreal author Mark Abley has long been haunted by the figure of Duncan Campbell Scott, known both as the architect of Canada's most destructive Aboriginal policies and as one of the nation's major poets. Who was this enigmatic figure who could compose a sonnet to an "Onondaga Madonna" one moment and promote a "final solution" to the "Indian problem" the next? In this passionate, intelligent and highly readable inquiry into the state of Canada's troubled Aboriginal relations, Abley alternates between analysis of current events and an imagined debate with the spirit of Duncan Campbell Scott, whose defense of the Indian Residential School and belief in assimilation illuminate the historical roots underlying today's First Nations' struggles.

Review Quotes

"Mark Abley has undertaken a daunting task: reconciling the Duncan Campbell Scott whose pen inscribed the cultures of Canada's First Nations in justly celebrated verse, and the same Duncan Campbell Scott who, as the overseer of residential schools and head of Indian Affairs, attempted to erase those same cultures from the pages of history. Abley, a fine poet himself, turns Scott, the bogeyman, into a man of flesh-and-blood, by--in a fine twist--making him into a revenant to be grappled with in regular visitations. The conceit works admirably. Reading, i>Conversations with a Dead Man, I felt as if I had been waylaid, not by a dour Ottawa bureaucrat, by an Ancient Mariner with the most urgent of tales to tell." --Taras Grescoe, author of Bottomfeeder and Straphanger

"As Canadian biography deepens as a form, it will need books as intrepid, incisive, and compassionate, as this one, and before long Conversations with a Dead Man may be seen as pioneering." --Charles Foran, author of Mordecai

About the Author

Mark Abley studied literature at the University of Saskatchewan and, after winning a Rhodes Scholarship, at St. John's College, Oxford. Among his books are Beyond Forget: Rediscovering the Prairies, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, and The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English. The author of a language column for the Montreal Gazette, he lives in Montreal.