I grew up in Thunder Bay in the shadow of the Sleeping Giant, the Stone Man.  In Thunder Bay the Sleeping Giant dominates the landscape and like the eyes of the Mona Lisa it follows you everywhere.  My childhood in Northern Ontario was wonderful, with summers spent running wild at our cottage at Loon Lake, and winters skiing the slopes of the Nor’Westers, but as I grew older I began to feel the isolation of the place and longed to see more of the world.

I left Thunder Bay when I was 19 and began my odyssey, which took me to Britain, Europe and then back to Canada where I settled in Toronto for a time.  I followed my bliss – books and reading and worked for the Toronto Public Library.  They were good years.  I worked with children, did puppet shows and storytelling and found my tribe of fellow writers.  Toronto is where I brought my two sons into the world, which was my greatest joy.

 It was in Toronto that Wake the Stone Man began to stir inside me.  I thought I'd left Thunder Bay when I was 19, but in truth I carried it with me in my bones and in my heart. 

 Like Molly Bell, I had been a young white girl who stood on the outside of the fence of a residential school looking into the eyes of an Anishinaabe girl on the inside of the fence. I travelled the world and had many adventures, but through all the years I never forgot my deep friendship with the girl on the inside of the fence of the residential school. Our lives had been so very different simply because I was white and on the outside of the fence and she was Ojibwe and on the inside of the fence of a residential school. Church and government had defined our fates.

Wake the Stone Man is fiction, and the characters who populate the novel are not real.  But the staggering beauty of Superior’s north shore, and the strength and resilience of the people who live there are very real.  And sadly the truth of the devastating impact of the residential school on hundreds of thousands of First Nations children is also very real. This dark period in Canadian history was a genocide that continues to impact generations of First Nations families. Until there is healing through truth and reconciliation it will cast a dark shadow over Canada.

 I believe the writing of Wake the Stone Man was the journey I had to take to find my  own way home. A journey I had to take to try to make sense of the evil I bore witness to as a child and to come to see my birthplace in a true and honest light. In the end I discovered that home, like family is complicated. And I also learned, as Molly did, that we all carry home within us.  We can always get there, the tracks run both ways. 

 BIOGRAPHY

Carol McDougall is a writer and  advocate for early literacy.  She was born in Northwestern Ontario and has been active in the Nova Scotia writing community for many years.

In 2005 she was awarded the Mayor’s Award for her contribution to literature and literacy and in 2010 received the Progress Woman of Excellence Award for the Arts. In 2012 Carol received the Beacon Award for Social Justice Literature for her novel Wake the Stone Man, which was inspired by her northern roots.

Carol's work includes writing for children, non-fiction, fiction, essays, book reviews and video scripts and her short fiction has been published in Room and presented on CBC radio. 

PUBLICATIONS:

Maud Lewis Colours - Nimbus Publishing - 2023

Read Talk Play - Nimbus Publishing - 2020

Tummy Time Friends - Nimbus Publishing - 2019

Maud Lewis 123 - Nimbus Publishing 2017

Let's Point - Nimbus Publishing 2017

Let's Read - Nimbus Publishing - 2016

Wake the Stone Man – Roseway Press, 2015

Look at Me Now! - Nimbus Publishing - 2014

Baby Talk – Nimbus Publishing – 2013

Baby Play – Nimbus Publishing – 2012

Baby Look – Nimbus Publishing – 2012

Nova Scotia Guide to Frugal Living – Nimbus Publishing – 2009

In the Soul of the House – Room of One’s Own – 2001