The phone call was unexpected.

Shortly after the launch of Swift Water Books, the first Indigenous children’s imprint within a major publishing house in Canada, David A. Robertson, its editorial director, got a call from the agents representing Richard Wagamese. They were calling to raise the possibility of adapting one of Wagamese’s works, “The Canada Poem,” into a picture book.

“The Canada Poem” originally appeared in Runaway Dreams, a collection of poetry published by Ronsdale Press in 2011 that was described as showing readers “Canada as seen through the eyes and soul of a well-worn traveller, with his love of country, his love of people.” Robertson was already familiar with the poem, but he became intimately reacquainted with it by adapting it into Canada: We Are the Story (Swift Water Books, March 17). The poem encourages the younger generation to honour the past, find belonging in the present, and look to the future.

Wagamese, an Ojibway writer from Wabaseemoong First Nation in northern Ontario, died in 2017. He published nearly two dozen books, and is best known for the 2012 classic Indian Horse. Some of his writing, including the children’s titles The Animal People Choose a Leader and The Inquisitive Raven, have been published posthumously.

“Richard’s writing is very vivid, it’s very much on the page, and it’s very poetic,” Robertson says. “So, it was easy to envision the story as a picture book.” Robertson looked for two elements to adapt it into a picture book: repetition of words and repetition of structure. This allowed him to harness Wagamese’s voice, and give it even more power. “In a lot of ways it felt like I was writing it with Richard, and that was a very special experience,” Robertson recalls.

Robertson, a prolific and award-winning author whose titles include the bestselling Misewa Saga series, consulted with both Wagamese’s agents and estate throughout the process to ensure they approved of the direction the poem was headed. Receiving the green light from them to move forward was a very important moment in the development process.

So, too, was bringing on Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley to illustrate the picture book. When looking for illustrators, Robertson confesses that Pawis-Steckley was always at the top of the list. “I knew of his work, and we felt like he was a perfect fit for what we wanted the story to be,” Robertson says. “The way he brought the story to life, and how he realized some of the story elements on the page, he was also telling his story through Richard’s words, and you need that in a picture book.”

Pawis-Steckley is a multidisciplinary Anishinaabe artist and a member of Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario who has illustrated nearly a dozen books, including the winner of the 2022 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award, Mii Maanda Ezhi-gkendmaanh / This Is How I Know. He has also written and illustrated the books Boozhoo! / Hello! and The Trickster Shadow.  

Illustration: Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley.

One element that Pawis-Steckley zeroed in on immediately was the absence of a character in the poem, and he felt one was necessary to guide the reader along with Wagamese’s words. So, the idea of a young Indigenous girl conflicted over a class assignment – answering the question “What makes you proud to be Canadian?” – took shape.

He also made the decision to stay away from Canadian symbolism because he wanted the picture book to have an identity all its own. His main influences for the artwork were Ancestors of the Spirit World and the northern lights, reflected in a goosebump-inducing palette of blues, greens, and purples that permeates every page.

“Beyond any of our spoken languages there’s an energy that connects us all,” Pawis-Steckley says. “That’s the deeper meaning of this book.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Robertson, who also sees an element of spirituality to Canada. “When it says to listen – and that was one of the things I wanted to repeat in the picture book – was to just listen, listen to the ancestors, listen to elders, listen to the land, listen to each other, listen in silence,” Robertson says. “I think that’s what Richard’s asking us to do, find connection, and then, in that connection, build something meaningful as a community. And I don’t think there’s any book that could be more suited to what Swift Water is all about than Canada: We Are the Story.”

In Robertson’s eyes, without people like Wagamese there would be no Swift Water, and there might not be a David A. Robertson. “What he was trying to accomplish through [his work], like all of the trailblazers that he was contemporaries with, whether it was Beatrice Culleton, Lee Maracle, or Maria Campbell, these trailblazers opened doors for people like me to be able to do the work that we do,” Robertson says. “So Richard’s work, for me, is a path. They walked in front of us so that we could walk after them, and we also want to carve this path.”

Swift Water – which has nearly 30 books contracted and in development that range from picture books and graphic novels to middle grade and young adult fiction – is slated to publish two other works by Wagamese. The first is The Kingdom of There, a book about fathers and sons crafted entirely from excerpts from his memoir For Joshua: An Ojibwe Father Teaches His Son that will be illustrated by father-son team August and Luke Swinson. It will be released next year. The second is an as-yet-untitled picture book inspired by another of his poems to be published in three years’ time.

While Canada: We Are the Story is grounded in Indigenous thoughts and Indigenous ways of knowing, Robertson feels the universality of the message is why it’s going to find a place in schools all over the country. “I think it is going to be read by parents to kids. I think it is going to show people a better way to connect and to listen. I think it’s going to do really magical things,” Robertson says. “I’m just so excited and so honoured to be a part of it. I feel it’s going to bring Richard’s work and his legacy to a whole new readership, and I think that’s something he would have really loved.”

l to r: Richard Wagamese: Yvette Lehmann; David A. Robertson: Amber Green; and Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley: Jake Kimble.