The Truth Behind the Stories: The Life and Writings of Richard Wagamese

Early Life and Childhood

The work of award-winning author Richard Wagamese can feel so honest and real at times, it’s impossible not to wonder where he gets his inspiration from. However, the answer is rather unsettling. His parents were forced to suffer the trauma of forcibly attending church-operated residential schools; this had a profound impact on their parenting. In an article published by CBC, a widely known and respected organization, committed to acting on principles of accuracy, fairness, impartiality, and integrity, Wagamese describes his experiences as a “second-generation survivor of the government-sponsored schools, attended by his parents and extended family members” ('Ojibway author Richard Wagamese dead at 61'), including how his parents’ trauma from having to endure time in residential schools affected the way they raised their children.“"The nature of their experience, their common experience in residential schools, really robbed them of their tribal and cultural ability to be nurturing and to be loving parents," Wagamese said” ('Ojibway author Richard Wagamese dead at 61'). At a young age, Wagamese and his siblings were left alone by their parents and, shortly after, taken to the Children’s Aid Society and placed into foster care. In these foster homes, he was subjected to years of abuse, abandonment and neglect. The Canadian Encyclopedia, a reliable organization with over 25 000 articles and over 5000 contributors, including David Suzuki and Margaret Atwood, has quoted Wagamese detailing his experiences in these homes: ““There were beatings and martial discipline that scarred me. There was abandonment and neglect. There was a feeling of melancholy that I carried for years, a haunting I was at odds to explain”” (Lewis). Knowing the context of these experiences and the treatment Wagamese endured as a child allows us to have a better understanding of his writing and the themes within it.

Education, Career, and Awards

After dropping out of high school at sixteen years old, Wagamese began to find comfort in reading and writing. Years later, he would reflect on this period of his life, explaining that the reading he did then would be crucial to his future success as a writer. He worked numerous jobs (tree planter, dish washer, and fish cleaner, to name a few), before finally starting his first reporting job in 1979 for a newspaper called The New Breed. From there, he went on to write for the Calgary Herald, and by 1994, he had published his first novel, Keeper’n Me. It was for this book that he won the Writer’s Guild of Alberta award for best novel. Additionally, he was the People’s Choice Award recipient for his 2012 novel, Indian Horse.

Writing Style

As previously mentioned, Wagamese drew inspiration from his own life, as well as the life experiences of his family, to write the stories that he did. His parents’ years spent in residential schools, in particular, were a major source of inspiration in his work. “In many of his 13 titles from major Canadian publishers, he drew from his own struggle with family dysfunction that he attributed to the isolating church-run schools” ('Ojibway author Richard Wagamese dead at 61'). Jules Lewis, Dora Award recipient and published novelist, who completed his MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Guelph, notes that many aspects of Wagamese’s upbringing and the intergenerational trauma that he inherited as a result of his parents’ experiences can be found in his writing. “Wagamese would later write with forgiveness and understanding about the neglect he experienced from his parents as a result of the abuse and trauma they had suffered in the residential school system” (Lewis). The real experiences that went into these stories are what make Richard Wagamese’s work so painfully authentic, and provide him with a level of insight that forces readers to grapple with the reality of the residential school system and the many ways in which Canada has failed its Indigenous communities.

Works Cited

CBC. “Ojibway author Richard Wagamese dead at 61.” CBC, 11 March 2017, https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/richard-wagamese-obit-1.4020899. Accessed 2 February 2026.

Lewis, Jules. “Richard Wagamese.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 18 April 2017, https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/richard-wagamese#EarlyLifeandEducation. Accessed 2 February 2026.