In the fall of 1966, 14-year-old Violet and seven other children leave Flint Lake for school in the city.
In the largely First Nations community, Christmas was not widely celebrated. Ironically, Violet's story stands out in a Christmas story collection as the only one not about Christmas. Her only worries had to do with the number of unwanted dogs in town and the stories about residential school brought home by older children when they returned for Christmas and Easter. She also helped her grandmother ice-fish and cut wood. In that story, 12-year old Violet's life involved attending the village school in the Northern Ontario railway settlement, Flint Lake. Violet Pesheens, the narrator-protagonist of These Are My Words, appeared in a short story, "Winter with Grandma", in A Time for Giving: Ten Tales of Christmas. I wonder what they would have done to me if they had caught me. I walked up the driveway and sat down on the first of the wide steps and slowly ate my chocolate bar. I had a stitch in my side so I slowed down when I saw the tree-lined driveway to the Residential School. I glanced back and the man was getting out of the car and shouting at the boys. It screeched to a halt and I heard a man yelling. I came around the corner and ran across the road and just barely missed being hit by a car.
I raced to the main road and down the street, but I could still hear them behind me.
I saw five teenaged white boys running across the street and I looked around me and that's when I realized they were running toward me! I just took off as fast as I could. When I came out, I was unwrapping the chocolate bar when I heard a shout: "There's one!" I took a shortcut to the corner store about two blocks from the Residential School after school. Native peoples-Canada-Residential schools-Juvenile fiction. These Are My Words: The Residential School Diary of Violet Pesheens. CM Magazine: These Are My Words: The Residential School Diary of Violet Pesheens.
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