Tchipayuk, or, the Way of the Wolf

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Winnipeg,
Manitoba.

Lavallée began Tchipayuk in 1979, finally finishing in 1987. The
original French edition of the novel won Canada’s Prix Champlain,
Manitoba’s Prix Riel, and France’s Prix Jules Verne. Translated by
Patricia Claxton, the story of Askik Mercredi, a Manitoba Métis,
resounds with historical and geographical detail.

The reader meets Askik as a child living with his mother in the Métis
settlement across the Red River from the colony of St. Boniface. Askik
attends the French-Canadian Catholic school in St. Boniface and faces
the inevitable conflicts between the white culture and the beliefs and
traditions he has been taught at home. Following a series of misfortunes
that befall the Mercredi family, Askik ends up in Montreal, where he
studies law and becomes a trusted employee of a wealthy family.

However, Askik’s dreams of becoming a great man suffer setbacks. He
is as much an outsider in the white society of Montreal as he was in St.
Boniface. An unsettling chain of circumstances leads to Askik’s return
to the prairies (during the Riel Rebellion), where his is reunited with
his family and his heritage. The Cree word Tchipayuk means “a soul
condemned to wander the earth until its memory is honoured.” Lavallée
leaves Askik wandering back near where he began. His novel demands the
reader’s full attention and commitment, but rewards with its
remarkably vivid portrait of a man’s coming of age during a turbulent
period in Canada’s history.