• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 7 to 12

ReReading Catharine Parr Traill: Stranging the Familiar is a decolonizing memoir and a Truth and Reconciliation project, building on the life jolt Dorothy experienced on re-reading CPT’s 1852 children’s story Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains during the pandemic lockdown. Sixty-five years after last hearing her father read it aloud over several successive Sundays, Dorothy owns the “truth” of her unaware complicity in Canada’s colonization project. She exposes the colonizer messages in Canadian Crusoes—messages that support white supremacy and the Doctrine of Discovery, which must have been “read” into her very cells as a child. Dorothy faces up to the contradictions that her revered “floral godmother” represents.

Dorothy Lander (MAdEd – StFX; PhD – Nottingham) is co-publisher of the social enterprise publishing house HARP Publishing The People’s Press (www.harppublishing.ca), a multi-media publishing house established in 2018 and dedicated to the healing arts and arts for health equity. Dorothy is retired from two careers at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX): Manager of Service Operations (1976 to 1995) and Professor in the Department of Adult Education (1997-2007), serving as MAdEd thesis advisor. Dorothy can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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