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  • The Beginning of Print Culture in Athabasca Country: A Facsimile Edition and Translation of a Prayer Book in Cree Syllabics, by Father Émile Grouard, OMI, Prepared and Printed at Lac La Biche in 1883
  • Kyle Carsten Wyatt (bio)
Patricia Demers, Naomi McIlwraith, and Dorothy Thunder, translators. Introduction by Patricia Demers. The Beginning of Print Culture in Athabasca Country: A Facsimile Edition and Translation of a Prayer Book in Cree Syllabics, by Father Émile Grouard, OMI, Prepared and Printed at Lac La Biche in 1883. University of Alberta Press. xxviii, 458. $100.00

In 1877, a largely forgotten priest and Oblate missionary from Brûlon, France, began printing the first books ever produced in Athabasca Country – what is now northern Alberta. With a press from Paris and type from Belgium, Father Émile Grouard (1840–1931) would go on to publish works in the syllabics of five Indigenous communities: Cree, Montagnais (Dene), Loucheux (Gwich’ in), Beaver, and Peau-de-Lièvre (Hareskin).

In 1883, at Lac La Biche, this ‘forgotten pioneer of print culture in Alberta’ published kâtolik ayamihêwi-masinahikan – a three-part Catholic prayer book, catechism, and hymnal rendered in Cree syllabics. There are few extant copies of the once widely circulated text, presumably because most were read to pieces; this critical edition reproduces a rare copy, housed in the Collection of the Missionary Oblates of Grandin Province at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, in Edmonton. The editors complement a photographic facsimile with a direct transcription of the syllabics, a contemporary transliteration that conforms to current linguistic practice, and an English translation. In doing so, they offer ‘three avenues of access’ to a historic publication that allows us to consider ‘a series of double perspectives: then and now, the spoken and the written, beliefs known and doctrine imparted.’ [End Page 710]

In their preface, Demers, McIlwraith, and Thunder note, ‘In our critical climate few topics provoke such heated and polarized responses as the need to retain First Nations languages and to examine missionary work within Aboriginal communities.’ Whereas the former is generally celebrated, the later is often met with ‘a minefield of accusations – from suspicion to denunciation.’ With their edition, they hope to ‘fill a gap in awareness and documentation by reproducing, translating, and commenting’ on one of the earliest books printed in Athabasca Country – one that testifies to a collaborative, mutually respectful relationship between Grouard and the Northern Plains Cree community.

The edition’s front matter, especially Demers’s introduction, contextualizes and assesses that relationship. The untold story of Grouard’s work, and his profound respect for Indigenous languages, reinforces historian James Miller’s caution against blanket summaries about First Nations communities, residential schools, and missionary activities. Furthermore, the specific textual history of kâtolik ayamihêwi-masinahikan, and the broader discussion of print culture in Athabasca Country, offers a fascinating counterpoint to better-documented histories of entrepreneurial and Methodist presses in Ontario and Quebec.

The facsimile itself consists of a black-and-white photographic reproduction of each page, printed on the verso, with an English translation in the form of a partial quasi-facsimile. Rectos include two columns, consisting of transliterations and transcriptions of the Cree syllabics in Standard Roman Orthography. In the afterword, the three editors speak to the difficulties of their project. They impress upon readers (especially non-Cree speakers such as myself) the nuances of Northern Plains Cree and thus the physical, theological, and linguistic challenges facing Grouard in the late nineteenth century.

On the surface, the significance of The Beginning of Print Culture in Athabasca Country is its preservation, contextualization, and renewed circulation of a rare text. In a less obvious way, the book can also prompt important conversations about the history of the Indigenous book in Canada. In the strictest sense, this is not a coffee-table book. Nonetheless, the volume does possess some of the qualities that characterize a successful one, namely its inviting format and novel subject matter. In preparing this review, I have had The Beginning of Print Culture in Athabasca Country sitting out at home and at my office. Time and again, friends and colleagues – including those who have no particular interest in the history of...

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