WASWANIPI

1963: Jean-Yves Soucy is 18. Needing a summer job, he applies for a fire ranger position with Quebec's forestry ministry. Living alongside the Cree, long treks by canoe and through the forest: he discovers a people and a culture that had, until then, been nothing more to him than tired old clichés. He also comes to see nature, which his companions know better than anyone, with fresh eyes. Waswanipi is a simple and touching work that examines interactions between modern Quebec and the First Nations, at a time when everything seemed new and anything was possible.

Jean-Yves Soucy (1945-2017) was a novelist and an editor. His novel Un dieu chasseur (1976) is a classic of Québec and Canada literature.