Village of the Small Houses: A Memoir of Sorts - Softcover

Ferguson, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1553650697 ISBN 13: 9781553650690

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004

Synopsis

In 1959, just one step ahead of the law, Ian Ferguson’s parents left the sophisticated big-city life of Edmonton and ended up in Fort Vermilion, 846 km due north. It was meant to be a temporary move. Ian’s father lasted ten years before he made his escape; his mother remained until recently. Fort Vermilion, once a fur-trapping frontier town, was predominantly aboriginal, the third poorest community in Canada. Like their neighbours, the Ferguson kids Ian and his six brothers and sisters grew up without indoor plumbing, central heating or electricity. Living closer to the Arctic Circle than to the American border, without the influences of television or radio, Canada was a dream to them, as faraway and exotic as England or Australia.

Beginning with the dramatic events surrounding his birth including a paddlewheel ferry heading for destruction, a legendary rowboat trip, and a life-and-death race against time Ferguson moves on to recreate adventures involving loophole ceremonies, life-saving encounters with indigenous medicines, tea dances, stolen hockey sticks and a boy lost in the woods.

Funny with sad bits and sometimes the other way around The Village of Small Houses is an unforgettable story that lives, as Ferguson says, somewhere between Angela’s Ashes and Who Has Seen the Wind.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Village of the Small Houses is Ian Ferguson's hilariously offbeat account of growing up poor in the far north. In 1959, just one step ahead of the law, Ferguson's con-artist dad, Hank, headed north in a beat-up Mercury Zephyr with his pregnant wife, Louise. He got as far as isolated Fort Vermilion, where he passed himself off as a teacher at the "Indian school" and settled his ever-expanding family in a house without plumbing or electricity.

Ferguson's gifts as a comic actor and writer come to the fore in this spirited reading of his best-selling memoir about a scrappy northern childhood. Interweaving truth and fiction, and introducing a cast of lovable misfits, this tenderly amusing chronicle is a cross between Angela's Ashes and W.O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind.

About the Author

Ian Ferguson is an award-winning playwright and humorist whose commentaries have been widely broadcast on radio and television. He is the creator of the live improvised soap operas Die-Nasty and Sin City and is currently writing a sitcom pilot for a major US television network. With his brother Will, he is co-author of the runaway best-seller How to Be a Canadian.

About this edition

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1553650697
• ISBN 13: 9781553650690
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192