Dr. Mary Jane McCallum, Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous People, History and Archives, will launch Brown Tom’s Schooldays by Enos Montour at McNally Robinson at 7 p.m. on November 7.
Brown Tom’s Schooldays tells the story of life in a residential school from the point of view of a young boy. The book was originally self-published in 1985 and was drawn from Montour’s own experiences at Mount Elgin Indian Residential School between 1910 and 1915. The title is a turn on the 1857 Thomas Hughes novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
Montour was born at Six Nations of the Grand River in 1899. He earned degrees in Arts and Divinity at McGill University and served as a United Church minister for more than 30 years. His writing appeared in newspapers and magazines, and he published two books of family history. Brown Tom’s Schooldays is an important text that describes a key period in Canada’s residential school history.
This new edition includes a foreward by the book’s original editor, Elizabeth Graham, and an afterword by Montour’s granddaughters Mary Anderson and Margaret McKenzie. In her introduction, Dr. McCallum documents Montour’s life and work, details the history of the publication of Brown Tom’s Schooldays, and offers further insight into the operations of Mount Elgin.
