Tomson Highway facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Tomson Highway
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Highway in 2018
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| Born | 6 December 1951 Manitoba, Canada |
| Occupation | Playwright, novelist, children's author, pianist |
| Language | English, Cree |
| Alma mater | University of Western Ontario |
| Notable works | The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Kiss of the Fur Queen |
| Notable awards | Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, Floyd S. Chalmers Award Winner of the 2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for Permanent Astonishment, a Memoir. The book chronicles the first 15 years of Highways life in the remote Subarctic. |
Tomson Highway OC (born December 6, 1951) is an Indigenous Canadian writer, musician, and artist. He is well-known for his plays, novels, and children's books. His plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing both won major awards, including the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play.
Highway also wrote the novel Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998). He created the words for The Journey or Pimooteewin, which was the first opera ever written in the Cree language.
Contents
About Tomson Highway
Early Life and Education
Tomson Highway was born on December 6, 1951, in northwestern Manitoba, Canada. His parents were Pelagie Cook and Joe Highway. His father was a caribou hunter and a champion dogsled racer.
Cree was Tomson's first language. He grew up following traditional Cree ways. When he was six, he went to a residential school. He stayed there until he was fifteen, only going home for the summer. At this school, he learned English and how to play the piano. He has said that these skills helped him greatly in his career.
He studied at the University of Western Ontario. He earned a degree in Music in 1975 and another in English in 1976. While there, he met the playwright James Reaney.
Working with Communities
For seven years, Tomson Highway worked as a social worker. He worked on First Nations reserves across Canada. He also helped create and organize many Indigenous music and arts festivals.
These experiences gave him ideas for his writing. His novels and plays have become famous in Canada and around the world.
Famous Plays
In 1986, Highway released The Rez Sisters. This play won many awards and was performed across Canada. It even went to the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland in 1988.
In 1989, he published Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing. This was the first Canadian play to be fully performed at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto.
Both of these plays are set on a made-up First Nation reserve called Wasychigan Hill on Manitoulin Island. The Rez Sisters is about seven women planning a trip to a huge bingo game. It features a male trickster character named Nanabush. Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing shows the men's love for ice hockey and has a female trickster.
Rose, written in 2000, is the third play in this series. It includes characters from the earlier plays.
Artistic Director and Novelist
Tomson Highway was the artistic director for Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto from 1986 to 1992. He also led the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig theatre group in Wikwemikong.
Later, Highway wrote a novel called Kiss of the Fur Queen. This book won several awards and was a bestseller in Canada.
After a break from writing plays, Highway wrote Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout in 2005. This play is set in 1910. It is about a visit from the "Big Kahoona of Canada," who was then Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier.
Cree Language Works
In 2010, Highway re-released The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing in Cree. He said that the Cree versions were actually the original ones. The English versions were translations.
His musical The (Post) Mistress first appeared in 2009. It was first a cabaret called Kisageetin. It later became a full musical and has been performed across Canada in both English and French. A music album for the musical was released in 2014. It was nominated for a Juno Award for Aboriginal Album of the Year.
In 2022, an album called Cree Country was released. It features original country songs written by Highway in Cree. His frequent collaborator, Patricia Cano, sings the songs.
Tomson Highway lives in Gatineau, Québec, and also spends time in France and Italy.
Awards and Recognition
Tomson Highway has received many honors. He has been given nine honorary degrees from different universities. These include Brandon University, the University of Winnipeg, and the University of Toronto. He also has two special honors from The Royal Conservatory of Music and The National Theatre School.
In 1994, he became a member of the Order of Canada. This is one of the highest honors in Canada. In 1998, Maclean's named him one of the '100 most important people in Canadian history'. In 2001, he received a National Indigenous Achievement Award for his work in arts and culture.
His memoir, Permanent Astonishment, won the 2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. In 2022, Highway gave the important Massey Lecture.
Works
Plays
- New Song...New Dance - 1986
- Aria - 1987
- The Rez Sisters - first produced 1986; toured nationally 1988
- Annie and the Old One - 1989
- The Sage, the Dancer, and The Fool - 1989
- Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing - 1989
- The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito - 1991
- Rose - 2000
- Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout - 2005
- Kisageetin - 2009
- The (Post) Mistress - 2010
- Iskooniguni Iskweewuk - The Rez Sisters in its original version: Cree - 2010
- Paasteewitoon Kaapooskaysing Tageespichit - Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing in its original version: Cree - 2010
- The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito - 2016
Novels
- Kiss of the Fur Queen - 1998
Children's Books
- Caribou Song - 2001
- Dragonfly Kites - 2002
- Fox on the Ice - 2003
Other Works
- Pimooteewin (Libretto) - 2008
- Chaakapesh: The Trickster's Quest (Libretto) - 2018
- Comparing Mythologies (Critical work) - 2003
- From Oral to Written: A Celebration of Indigenous Literature in Canada, 1980-2010 (Critical work) - 2017
- A Tale of Monstrous Extravagance: Imagining Multilingualism (Essay) - 2015
- Permanent Astonishment (Memoir) - 2021
