Thinking Paperback - 2000

I am Aboriginal. Born in this province. I am one of the many who spent time in one of the residential schools that made the front pages of our erst publications. I have no issues with these schools. They taught me to look at life in a different light. No abuses. Discipline, yes. This has fortified me in all my years. It brought me through a war. It helped me lead many a "body" home. This book is about me.
How I got started in life. Being born through Holy wedlock, of course, I was born in the interior town of Vernon, British Columbia, in the year 1917. Am a Gemini being. It was in the month of May of that year. My early years I do not recall much of. I was my grandfather's favorite, only because my brother had blue eyes and was very fair of complexion. As far as granpa was concerned my brother was a "shamma." I am not certain of the correct spelling of the Indian word meaning white man. It came to pass that brother spoke the Indian language of this certain area better than most of the local tribesmen.
Anyway, to shorten up on the story, I went to school at Kamloops Indian Residential School. Then to school in Kamloops proper. Some schooling in Vancouver and then started lessons in the school of hard knocks. I joined the work force at the tender age of thirteen and a little better. I went placer mining. This period is in the book.
Later, I went to work in lumbering. Then I went "underground." Huh, oh. I mean I went to work as a miner, in this case, a gold mine. I had near mishaps down there so came up to breathe nice fresh air in the rain forests of our beautiful British Columbia. All this during the Hungry Thirties. Early Thirties, into the Forties, I knocked around thither and yon and managed to get myself married and had a family.
In the meantime the Second World War broke out and I did not join right away. I was doing OK so I hung on for a while. My brother enlisted and so did my father. He in the Veterans Guard. My father that is.
I did enlist and in no time I am in a war theater, this is also in the book. After the war I went prospecting for a gold mine, only for someone else. Because of a health category I had to leave that.
I did go back to the woods and I remained in the woodworking game near onto forty years. All this is in the book, with a few embellishments to make it good family reading.