Quotes by Joseph Boyden

“[Boyden remembers hearing that when Pegahmagabow returned to Canada, he was made a conquering hero before the promises of rewards for hard service evaporated.] He wanted to begin to raise horses and to start farming, ... He went to his Indian agent [a government employee who managed the Indian reserves] and asked for a $300 loan and the agent turned him down, saying: How can I trust you with animals?”

“Its a beautiful thing,”

“(The international exposure) has been this completely amazing bonus, ... It makes me very happy to see that Im kind of exporting Canada.”

“[But if Boyden grew up canoeing across cold-water lakes and tramping through the birch forests with his relatives, no one ever explained their connection. His parents were raised during the 1930s when native heritage was considered shameful and many mixed-race people would pretend to be white.] I think my grandmother lived with this quietly, unhappily, ... My mother just refused to recognise it so didnt grow up with any kind of prejudice.”

“When I look in the mirror, I dont say Im an Indian. Its not a huge part of my make-up but a huge part of who I am.”

“[Among the native people who became important to Boyden was Francis Pegahmagabow, a sniper credited with killing 378 Germans during the Great War, who is fictionalised as the sharpshooter Peggy in the novel. Pegahmagabow was the chief of the Parry Island reserve near where Boydens mother now lives, and Boyden grew up with his grandchildren.] Francis looked at being a sniper as a job, neither with happiness nor sadness, ... To him it was like trapping and he was very good at it. But Canadians have completely forgotten him.”

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.

Your grandfather was a hero in a war, girls. He wasnt a bad man or a weak man. Maybe he was too old to have a second family, a second wife and your mother and me, so many years after he lost his first. Maybe he was too old to fight anymore, and thats why he let me be taken away. Ive thought about this for years and years. All I know is there are no heroes in this world. Not really. Just men and women who become old and tired and lose the strength to fight for what they love any longer.

“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.”