This book was completely different from what I expected … and I loved it!

It was as if I was having coffee and a walk through my city with my grandpa, learning about Vancouver’s early days and what he experienced in his youth as he sipped, walked, and talked. The format was a welcome treat.

I had never heard of Larry Grant before picking up this book. I learned that this 88-year-old lives locally and is an Elder of both the Vancouver Chinese community and the Musqueam Indian Band. The focus of this book is on the 34-year legal battle Larry and his siblings have undertaken in order to be recognized as status members of the Musqueam Nation. I appreciated the effort Larry went to in painting his background for readers so that we’d understand the challenges he faced and why reconciliation, on several levels, is important to him.

Larry’s Indian status was taken from him, his siblings, and his mother because she married a Chinese immigrant. Under the Indian Act, status is patriarchal. I was absorbed in a great narrative, learning about why Aggasiz became the corn capital of B.C., that there was a residential school a mile down the road from me, the issues with renaming Trutch Street, the misuse of the term ‘ceded’ in conjunction with events I attend on Native land, the meaning of ‘musqueam’, the ‘Red Ticket Woman’ and the loophole in the Indian Act.

I highly recommend this memoir. Locals will appreciate a wander through Vancouver’s former days. I’m encouraged now to head out to my local university and see the places mentioned with regards to the reconciliation.

I was gifted this copy and was under no obligation to provide a review.