As a newly published author, I am learning a lot, usually at my own expense.

I recently blogged about the pain of non-response or outright rejection from book sellers. You will also know that self-publishing a book means hours and hours of self-promotion, and in my case, direct deliveries to bookstores and other outlets. Of course, when I felt compelled to start writing, I surely did not anticipate that the marketing and delivery would take on a life of its own, or that it would need to.

And the acceptance of books, especially on cold calls, is such a good feeling, a surprise and a blessing. I recently had wonderful chats with book sellers who took books, with no delay, like 6 at Mountain Light Books at the Chateau Lake Louise, 5 at The Viewpoint in the Samson Mall in Lake Louise Village, 6 at The Book Nook in Akamina Gifts at Waterton, and 6 for Jasper Mercantile and the Mt. Robson Store.

It is hard to describe the sense of appreciation and validation, that uplifting "specialness" that boosts the spirits of a beginning writer. Thank you George, Dale, Dave and Annie!  Good luck with sales this summer.

One lesson learned after perhaps one too many road trips to sell books...one should actually call to see if the bookstore being sought is actually there, and open and a bookstore.  You will be surprised at the number of places which appear on the internet as existing, but which are either gone, or are something else, or only sell used books, in a basement.  In the long run, turning into a town, and following the GPS to a building that is empty, or an address which doesn't exist or is not really a bookstore, is not the end of the world. I like driving, I like road trips and exploring places I have often just flown by on the highway, but it sure wastes time, usually on a trip where the cost of gas outweighs the "profit" from the books sold anyway.

Fun news, for me anyway!  A Métis Man's Dream is now lodged for sale in at least 19 sales outlets from the far southwest of the province (The Book Nook in Waterton Lakes) to Métis Crossing and Fort MacMurray Heritage Society park in the northeast, and Hay River and Yellowknife in the NWT!

And books are now in our first BC outlet, Mt. Robson Store in the Mt. Robson Provincial Park.

Fort Edmonton Heritage Park is now a seller of the book and a great place to check out local history relating to Indigenous, Métis and Others who made their home in the Edmonton area.

Fort Edmonton Gift Shops is the 21st retailer that has A Métis Man's Dream!

We have a new friend to share Gordon's story! The Bookstore on Perron which has been serving St. Albert and area since 1975 is getting stocked up on A Métis Man's Dream!

The audio version of A Métis Man's Dream is under production. The voices sound wonderful so far! I'll be updating this post when the audio book is ready for purchase.

Best wishes for a wonderful summer!

Marketing A Métis Man's Dream has been a learning experience! Of course, selling a self-published book is difficult, and per force, involves cold calling. For me, an almost overwhelming sense of inadequacy hits me as I arrive at the front door of a bookstore or as I see a call or email come in from someone who might reject this labour of mine. 

Those are stressful moments. It is an easy time to rationalize that you are wasting your time, that yours is a book more suited to some other bookstore. I have been blessed by special people who have pushed me to, yes, actually go into the store, mention my book, see if they are interested in carrying it on their shelves.

For lo and behold, usually they are! What has been so truly fascinating and encouraging is that those same cold call approaches to book sellers have, like miracles, led to wonderful, interesting, deep and connecting conversations.

Those conversations, the information I have been blessed with, and the stories, some joyful, some sorrowful, which have been shared with me on this journey have been one of the highlights of the Gill project. There are so many good stories out there.

Thank you book sellers, for your support and your encouragement, and for sharing your own stories!

You will likely know and understand that putting yourself "out there", ready to be rejected, is quite personaI, and scary. And one difficulty is that, as I told a friend the other day, my book sales seem to be tied directly to my efforts. They go up when I am up and they go down when I am "down", inactive, tired, or distracted.  So again, thank you book sellers and those friends who have suggested I contact this one or connect me with that one. It has been a marvelous ride!

There is another thing....perhaps it is worse just being ignored.  I understand of course that no one has to take an interest in MY book. But I do find it strange and disappointing that CBC Edmonton, the Royal Alberta Museum (the Provincial Government is its purchasing arm), and the Fort Edmonton Park Indigenous Peoples Venue didn't even acknowledge receipt of information about a local, positive story of a successful Métis Edmontonian Gordon Gill.  Especially a true story with much information about Alberta and NWT issues, and history, by an Edmonton author, sold in Edmonton bookstores.  

I am very appreciative of the great interview aired on CBC North about Gordon and his life, and the full page articles about A Métis Man's Dream in various northern Alberta and NWT newspapers.

I am so happy to announce that new bookstores are coming on stream with A Métis Man's Dream all the time. Colourized, glossy, deluxe, signed-by-the-author copies have NOW been delivered to:
- Mt. Robson Store, Mt. Robson Prov. Park, BC.
- Jasper Mercantile, Jasper, Ab.
- Mountain Light Books, Chateau Lake Louise, Lake Louise, Ab.
- The Viewpoint, Samson Mall, Lake Louise, Ab
- Cafe Books, Main Street, Canmore, Ab.
- Shelf Life Books, 1302 - 4th St SW, Calgary, Ab.
- The Next Page, 9th Ave, Inglewood, Calgary, Ab.
- The Book Nook at Akamina Gifts, Waterton, Ab.

Thank you booksellers!

Books continue to be stocked and restocked with the good folks shown in the "Get Your Copy" Section of the website.

Thanks for supporting those stores which support Canadian, local and independent writers!

Warm wishes.
Neil

For National Indigenous History Month, I want to share one legacy of researching and writing the Gill book. I believe many of the real stories of Canada's people have been obscured by the myth of our nationhood. I believe that in building a nation our leaders, deliberately or not, have taken a thread of racism and stitched together an Eurocentric quilt of overriding unfairness. It has been perpetuated under that great sense of advancing civilization with propriety and honour that most of us English descendants take for granted as our country's origin story.

We have always had the Americans to criticize for how they have behaved toward the Indigenous Peoples south of the border. However, in exploring our own history through Gordon's Métis eyes, and related reading, my sense of what our ancestors, and particularly our politicians did, leaves much to be desired in our own country's self appraisal.

There are many good history books on the massacres and dirty dealing on the American side of the Medicine LIne. Specific biographies of Indigenous leaders like Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Little Crow, Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce, and Geronimo are all worthwhile and interesting reading. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown is still a bestseller 50 years after it was published. That book examines the "American Indian" experience while Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian shares a more continental look at the dishonourable mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples, including some Canadian examples. Recent reads The Northwest is Our Mother; The Story of Louis Riel's People, The Métis Nation by Jean Teillet, The Trial of Louis Riel; Justice and Mercy Denied by George Goulet, and Big Bear, by Rudy Weibe all both reflect poorly on white actions, and especially white honour. These are all, in my view, important, mind altering reading for all members of our society as we try to figure out a future that is fair and equitable to all peoples.

I personally was surprised and offended by the so-called justice meted out to Louis Riel. It is a story which differs so much from the "Riel as Traitor (and Probably Insane)" story that most European descendants learned growing up in Canada. It is a story which needs to be told and re-told, so that history is better understood and does not have to repeat itself.

John S. Milloy's A National Crime tells the story of our country's treatment of the most vulnerable, children in residential schools. It too is an important book.

Researching the Gill book took me down a path which revealed treatment of Indigenous Peoples and the Metis, that was duplicitous, dishonest, fraudulent, dishonourable and illegal. These actions by many (not all) of Canada's leaders and bureaucrats were carried out as the representatives of Canadians including my own ancestors, whether they knew it or not.

The Trial of Louis Riel, Justice and Mercy Denied, by former Calgary lawyer and Métis descendant George R D Goulet is a detailed, painstakingly reasoned and explained, and heavily footnoted account of the trial of Louis Riel for Treason against Her Majesty (Victoria R) under an English Statute from the 1300s, (under which no other participant in the Resistance was charged). The conclusion seems clear that Riel's trial, appeal and hanging was in fact unfair, and in reality the state sponsored judicial execution of Riel at the behest of John A MacDonald.


Big Bear is a biographical history of the chief of the band, some of whom committed the Frog Lake Massacre north east of Fort Edmonton during the Riel Resistance of 1885. Rudy Weibe's account is of a good and honest man who refused to bow down before the government's illegal acts and misrepresented treaty promises. Big Bear also tried to stop his angry young men from taking out their frustration on some apparently pompous white traders and a priest. This account and others lead to the conclusion that signatures on the various treaties Canada relies on, were obtained by misrepresentation, and duress, and not performed as called for, that is, Canada was in breach of contract.  This same conduct is used in courts of law to void (or enforce) general contracts, which are of a less solemn nature than Treaties between supposedly sovereign nations, as Canada deemed Indigenous peoples at the time. 

All the things
We didn't know
We didn't know...

There is only one problem...

At every book store I have visited, I have made a purchase. Usually, those purchases add up to more than the cost of the books I end up delivering.

But, truthfully, book sellers always have good suggestions of what I should be reading next.  

I also have birthday and Christmas shopping wrapped up for this year and it is only June!

Many people have asked why we created A Métis Man's Dream; From Traplines to Tugboats in Canada's North. This book, about a poor Metis boy's growth from his Iroquois Cree grandfather's trapline to success in marine transport and crane services, despite all the odds, came about for a number of reasons. However, the most significant to me is the need to save Gordon's personal story in the context of its place among the tugs and barges that moved one of the largest economic booms Canada has ever seen. To this extent, a major driver was completely altruistic. That was the sense that Metis and marine transportation history in the north, particularly in Hay River and along the Mackenzie River and out into the Arctic, was (and is) being lost for all time. Even now, the stories seem to have faded like the aft lights on a group of barges being towed into the morning mist of Great Slave Lake. 

The secondary aspect was that surprisingly, so few people in Canada even know there is history in the area.  In my book signings, I am repeatedly reminded about the number of people who had no idea how goods and people moved about the NWT, or even that there was a marine industry (and exploration, oil and gas, mining, etc) in the NWT.  "Tugboats? in the North?  Where? Why?" was a common refrain.  Few remember that Edmonton (for example) was a part of the Hudson Bay Empire from 1670 and then from 1870 to 1905, a part of the Northwest Territories, and that transportation even then was the basis for all life in the north.

So, this is a work of oral history, of Gordon Gill and his Métis upbringing, but it is more than that too. It is a history of the north, of transportation and business and resilience. What started as a random comment about residential schools in the NWT led to ongoing conversations with Gordon Gill, the Metis Man with the dream, and about the history of the South Mackenzie, as that area of the Northwest Territories cornered by the Alberta and Yukon borders is called.  It is also a story I have wanted to tell since first venturing forth as a callow 18 year old university student to work for the Northern Transportation Company Ltd. (NTCL) in Bell Rock camp, where the company was having the new era of large tug boats built for the northern trade and the upcoming oil and gas boom during the Pan-arctic and Dome Petroleum years.

The dream for Gordon, as he initially told it, was simply to be a mechanic and welder. He wanted to get out of Hotchkiss, in the north Peace because there was nothing there for him as a Métis boy with no trade, no future.  Later, his dream expanded as Gordon went about his life, first to be able to supply food and security for his family, in the mode of Lionel Gagnier, his uncle by marriage.  (Lionel Gagnier is a legend in the north and likely worthy of his own story). But then, as Gordon achieved more and more, first as a ship's engineer on the Mackenzie River and the Arctic Ocean, then as a repairer of damaged ships and tugs at the Hay River base of Northern Transportation Company Limited, he thought he could do more.  He liked to work, and he always gave more than was expected of him.  He mentored others, hiring and training welders and such.   Then he got the opportunity to set up his own business, with the generous help of John Pope and others.  Gordon always talks of others who helped him. There is another aspect of the story:  Why do some get help and others not?  I suspect Gordon's own helpfulness, his eagerness to do more than his share, his gentle demeanour, and his appreciation made a lot of the difference. He was also willing to take risks (like setting up a business) and later, to create a new company and move it to where the work was.

As Gordon says, "If nothing is happening, you need to make it happen" and as the owner and operator of Northern Arc Shipbuilders and ultimately Northern Crane Services, he did that. Gordon also wanted to make sure there was work and opportunity for others. He recognized (and acted on) the fact that many northern employees, at least in the old days, were not so attuned to working by the clock.  As northern songwriter Bob Ruzicka wrote, in "The Winds of Change" [LionsGate-BMI], about an Inuit man getting a job: 
"The man says I got be there on time
The man he says I got be there all the time,
And he pointed to the clock on the wall.
I told him I tell time by the sea and the sun
and by the seasons,
those are the only reasons
for doing the things I might do..."  

Gordon was not that sort of employer.

A Métis Man's Dream hopes to salvage both the personal and the larger elements of a history that has largely passed.