Joseph Boyden

The acclaimed author of The Orenda gives us a powerful and poignant look into the last moments of Charlie Wenjack, a residential school runaway trying to find his way home. An Ojibwe boy runs away from a North Ontario Indian School. Too late, he realizes just how far away home is. Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and ultimately offering him a type of comfort on his difficult journey back to the place he was so brutally removed from.

Wenjack

Chanie being protected until the end by the lynx so that he may be found, so that he isn’t lost forever

laine

And now as cloud curtains shut on this lonely performance, moon bowing to the darkness, a snowstorm squalls through the cut rock of tracks, covering a country’s shield where Chanie lies, great lynx protective above him.

We watch as the lynx through a thickening screen of snow stands up on her hind legs to look down upon the child. She reaches her long arms to take him in her paws and then lifts him up and into her embrace.

Wenjack quotes

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