On Thursday, June 19, a book launch provided both insight and entertainment for fans of local history or anyone who likes a good story told with character.
Cecilia Dick-DeRose and Sage Birchwater hosted a storytelling and slideshow session as they launched the book about Dick-DeRose's life: One Arrow Left.
More than 20 people came out to the Gathering Place at Thompson Rivers University in Williams Lake on the Thursday evening, to enjoy some stories, slides, and snacks.
Between Birchwater, three of her children and Dick-DeRose herself, the event offered the opportunity to hear some of the book's stories straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, and a few bonus bits as well.
Dick-DeRose and Birchwater co-operated on the storytelling, just like in the book, and while Dick-DeRose may have lost some of her hearing, making it sometimes harder to pick up the threads Birchwater began, she has lost not an ounce of her charm.
The photos spurred a lot of discussion, with some corrections from her children in the room on the odd detail, but the stories and the humour were all on point.
Dick-DeRose grew up one of 10 children, in an era when her parents moved seasonally between meadows the family hayed outside Lac La Hache and a house at Esk'et, travelling only by horse and wagon. Race horses her father raised were hitched to the wagon and ridden throughout the summer at local races. This readied the horses for fall hunts with normally less skilled riders who were clients of her father's guide-outfitting business.
"As soon as we got big enough, we rode a horse," she recalled.
It took two days to get between the hay meadows and Esk'et and while her life was full of hardship, there was also a healthy dose of adventure and strong family bonds.
Birchwater and Dick-DeRose, friends for many decades, worked on the book together for more than two years, with Birchwater managing to capture Dick-DeRose's oral storytelling skills on the page, along with some of her children's recollections of their family history.
But when asked which of the many stories he had heard over the years was his favourite, Birchwater said the cross-country adventure Dick-DeRose took with her white girlfriend tops them all. Dick-DeRose went across the country with the first non-nun teacher at St. Joseph's Mission, where Dick-DeRose worked after she finished school.
It was 1954, and rules about what First Nations people could and couldn't do were relaxing, and her friend encouraged her to do all of the things she had been missing out on.
When she and her family came to town when she was growing up, Dick-DeRose said they hadn't been able to eat in restaurants, stay in hotels, dance at bars or drink in pubs. There was a curfew for First Nations people.
Growing up, her family had camped on the edges of town with their horses and wagons.
At the Famous Cafe in Williams Lake, her mother had been called a "dirty Indian" when she'd gone inside to buy her children ice cream cones on a hot summer day.
It was the only place to get ice cream in town.
But on the trip across the country, with the encouragement of her friend, she did a lot of the things she had long been forbidden from doing.
"She said she left some of the stories out," joked Birchwater, as Dick-DeRose recounted going out dancing with francophone men in Quebec - technically illegal at the time.
Dick-DeRose recounts the stories of the challenges with humour and the adventures with a fond recollection, and it appears her charm made an impression, getting her more than one chance to meet Canada's Prime Minister.
At the end of her cross-country adventures, a young Dick-DeRose met Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, a photo of this meeting is the cover for the book.
Many decades later, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited B.C. he met an older Dick-DeRose.
Dick-DeRose had a query for the nation's then leader.
"How come when I was young all of the prime minister's were old and now that I'm old the prime ministers are young," she said she asked the younger Trudeau.
For your own chance to meet the woman who has charmed national leaders through the decades, The Station House Gallery is hosting a book signing event for Cecilia Dick-DeRose and Sage Birchwater on Tuesday, June 24 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
