l to r: Karen Krossing (Credit: Helen Tansey) and Cathie Jamieson

As a treaty person, have you ever wondered about the history of your street? My Street Remembers, written by Karen Krossing and illustrated by Cathie Jamieson, tells part of the story of one particular place, Danforth Avenue in Toronto, from the perspective of the street itself.

Jamieson’s illustrations present not only the landscape and buildings but also the vegetation, animals, and people of various cultures and abilities that “travel the land.” It is a street many have walked on; readers are introduced to what lies just beneath their feet.

The book is organized chronologically beginning more than 14,000 years ago with ancient creatures such as mammoths, when “the land was covered in ice.” We move through the marks made on the land by animal trails and the footsteps of the First People more than 12,000 years ago, and learn that their “descendants stepped in harmony with this land for thousands of years.” Then, we are slowly introduced to the period of disharmony created by European colonization. The book contrasts traditional Indigenous ways of approaching the land with European ways that came with suffering, conflict, annexation, renaming, and paving.

Illustration: Cathie Jamieson.

My Street Remembers focuses on the stewardship of this area by the Mississaugas while also honouring all those who have gone before. Overlaying images of ancestors with the people of today, bringing ancestors forward to the Toronto we would all recognize.

The images, including those that touch on reconciliation and the Every Child Matters movement, have the greatest impact, engaging imaginations in the powerful, wordless pages that invite the reader to fill in the story. There is a gravity to Jamieson’s characters, and an invitation for further learning. They are rich in symbolism and complement the pared-down text in which Krossing offers her own history with the land as a stand-in for many of our own.

The book ends with the hopeful message that together with the land and its traditional stewards, we may “find ways to heal past wrongs and share the journey forward.”