Book Launch: The Honourable John Norquay

In the context of Wab Kinew’s victory in Manitoba’s 2023 Election, several conversations about the assignment of the title of Manitoba’s first First Nations, Metis or Indigenous premier were playing out in the public square. Did this title belong to Louis Riel, or Wab Kinew? What about John Norquay?

It was fascinating to see the public start to wrestle with these ideas, while I had heard rumblings within the scholarly community that Dr. Friesen had been working on this project on a time scale that is best measured in decades.

Against this backdrop, I attended the book launch for Dr. Gerald Friesen’s The Honourable John Norquay: Indigenous Premier, Canadian Statesman. Seeing both the scholarly community and the Norquay family come together to support the book, the story, the work and the scholar conducting it was special.

After I picked up a copy of Norquay, while working on my own research that touched on the Norquay Brothers during Lord Dufferin’s visit to the R.M. of St. Andrews in 1877, I thought I should check my work against Dr. Friesen’s, only to find that he was citing the same newspapers, and the same anecdotes from Lady Dufferin’s Journal that I had. Fearing suspicions, I cautiously informed my professor that my research had been conducted before Norquay was released. “If you’re pulling the same evidence as Gerry Friesen”, they said, “I’m not too worried”.