Evolving Pop Culture Guide to Canada
Evolving pop culture guide on what to consume before or during your trip to Canada 🇨🇦.
These are podcasts, books, and documentaries I have consumed and would recommend.
You can learn more about each by clicking the links in the title.
Learn about Canada’s Indigenous Peoples
Listen to Podcasts on Canadian Indigenous Stories:
- Who Killed Alberta Williams? by Connie Walker and Marnie Luke on the disappearance and investigation of Alberta Williams along the Highway of Tears.
- Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo by Connie Walker covering a family searching for their sister who was taken during the 60s scoop.
- Stolen (Season 2) – Surviving St. Michael’s: Specifically through the lens of Connie Walker uncovering her own family’s story fits within the horrific history of Canada’s Residential Schools.
Read Books on Canadian Indigenous Peoples:
Non-Fiction Books
- Highway of Tears by Jessica McDiarmid: Non-fiction by Canadian journalist Jessica McDiarmid on the Highway of Tears (Highway 16) in British Columbia. For decades indigenous women have gone missing or found murdered along this highway. “Highway of Tears is a powerful story about our ongoing failure to provide justice for missing, and murdered, Indigenous women, and a testament to their families and communities’ unwavering determination to find it.”
- 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph: Non-fiction by Canadian Indigenous author Bob Joseph based on his viral article of the same name. This book analyzes the Indian Act, its impacts on Indigenous Peoples and is the root of many stereotypes.
- The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King: A non-fiction by Indigenous author Thomas King; “The Inconvenient Indian distills the insights gleaned from Thomas King’s critical and personal meditation on what it means to be “Indian” in North America, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other.”
- From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way by Jesse Thistle: Memoir by Métis author Jesse Thistle; “once a high school dropout and now a rising Indigenous scholar, chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is.”
Fiction Books
- Ragged Company by Richard Wagamese: A fiction (and one of my favourite books of all time) by one of the leading Indigenous Canadian authors, follows the story of four homeless friends and their individual stories within their past and futures.
- Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead: This is a fiction by Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit storyteller Joshua Whitehead about Jonny Appleseed’s life off the reserve in Manitoba. This is a unique storytelling from the perspective of a fictional young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer character.
- Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq: This is one of the most unique fictions I have read. It’s a combination of novel and poetry by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq about a girl who grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s.
- Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden: This book (fiction) has stuck with me since I was a teenager. Written by Métis author Joseph Boyden, this story takes place in Northern Ontario, post-World War I, when Niska has received word that her sole living relation has returned after the Great War, wounded and addicted to morphine.
British Columbia Wildlife
Watch Orca Documentaries:
- Blackfish (2013): About the impacts of captivity on orcas.
- The Whale (2011): About a whale named Luna that resided off of Vancouver Island
