Joseph Boyden
Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
He grew up in Willowdale, North York, Ontario and attended the Jesuit-run Brebeuf College School. Boyden's father Raymond Wilfrid Boyden was a medical officer renowned for his bravery, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was the highest-decorated medical officer of World War II.
Boyden, of Irish, Scottish and Métis heritage, writes about First Nations heritage and culture. Three Day Road, a novel about two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I, is inspired by Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. Boyden's second novel, Through Black Spruce follows the story of Will, son of one of the characters in Three Day Road. He has indicated in interviews that the titles are part of a planned trilogy, the third of which is forthcoming.
He studied creative writing at York University and the University of New Orleans, and subsequently taught in the Aboriginal Student Program at Northern College. He divides his time between Louisiana, where he and his wife, Amanda Boyden, are writers in residence, and Northern Ontario.
“I thought of my mother late that night, after leaving Dorothy, as I followed the moon's path back home across the Moose River. My mother, maybe she was in that moon's light. I didn't know any more, but when I was younger, Iuse to imagine that she was. I'd talk to the moon some nights, and I knew my mother listened. I haven't done that in a long time, me." -Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden, ch 13, pg 119”
“Build it all up, and it all falls down. It all burns down. Everything you need can be taken. Remember that, nieces. Everything you hold dear, it can be taken.”
“Mother Nature was one angry slut. She'd try and kill you the first chance she got. You'd screwed with her for so long that she was happy to eliminate you.”
“C'est une longue histoire, je crois. (...) Je désirais la lui raconter sans détours, mais je ne la voyais pas ainsi. Les histoires sont toujours pleines de détours.”
“On attend quelque chose, et un matin on se réveille et on comprend. C'est simplement la fin qu'on attend.Selon Lisette, c'est ce que les gens à la télé appelle une dépression.”
“Tout ce que je sais, c'est qu'il n'existe pas de héros dans ce monde. Pas vraiment. Rien que des hommes et des femmes devenus vieux et fatigués qui n'ont plus la force de lutter pour ce qu'ils aiment.”
“When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff.”
“There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?”
“Lots of times growing up, I’d just try to do something myself because I believed that being a boy, and being Indian, I should just know how to do things." -Will Bird, Through Black Spruce”