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Article: Truth is more complex; A new book presents a less black-and-white account of one Indian residential school.(Amongst God's Own: The Enduring Legacy of St. Mary's Mission)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Report Newsmagazine
- Article date:
- October 7, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 United Western Communications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When the B.C. historian and journalist Terry Glavin was approached in 2000 to write a book about the old St. Mary's Residential School near Mission, B.C., he balked. Mr. Glavin is prolific, prizewinning, and busy, so normally he does not work on commission: he has plenty of his own ideas and journeys to put down on paper. And the last thing he wanted to do, he says, was to become the instrument of some politicized literary parade of suffering. "I wasn't interested in writing the same old story [about the residential schools]," he says. "We fall into this habit of producing narratives that prove 'White man good, Indian bad,' or the converse. And that does a great ...