"But then again, I've donated a large part of my life to native causes, to teaching on native reserves, to studying native religions." I didn't go through the poverty that many native Canadians and Americans do, and I didn't have to deal with a lot of the horrible issues that native Canadians are facing, so part of me says, no you are not Indian, it would be wrong to say that," he says. Although it is part of his heritage, Boyden is quick to make clear that his own experience is not much like the majority of native Canadians. Growing up in Toronto, he would spend summers on reserves on Georgian Bay he later taught on reserves near James Bay. He describes himself as part Métis, specifically Ojibwa. The author's father, Lieutenant-Colonel Raymond Wilfrid Boyden, was a decorated Second World War veteran, a front-line doctor who served through the entire Italian campaign and the liberation of the Netherlands, earning a Distinguished Service Order for one particularly brutal stretch that saw him rescuing troops on foot under enemy fire.Īnd then there is Boyden's "core of who I am," as he puts it.
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