Writer uses poetry to share his story

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From dozens of boxes filled with hundreds of thoughts and revelations recorded on scraps of paper, napkins and envelopes, John McDonald, a young Mistawasis Cree writer, has formed his first book of poetry, The Glass Lodge.

"I've always been a person who goes around with a pen and paper and I write down whatever my thoughts were throughout the day so if I was mad I would be swearing all over this piece of paper," said McDonald.

The poems in the book tell the tales of what McDonald saw and experienced while living on the streets of Prince Albert and Calgary. He was 14 when he first found himself on the streets, he said, and it was at the age of 16 when he made the decision to sober up and find a way out. Now at the age of 24, married with a baby on the way, McDonald wants readers to know about his struggles as an Aboriginal street kid and how he is now helping kids who are living that same life he once did.

"The book is a look at what is going on in the mind of a street kid," said McDonald. "It was my life, my story and where I had come from in this world. It's a look through the eyes of an Aboriginal youth and what I had to put up with such as gangs, racism, poverty, substance abuse, eating out of garbage cans."

McDonald said he has no one to blame but himself for the life he lived then. He had an alcohol-and drug-free stable home with a mother who was there all of the time. Despite that supportive environment, he still found himself getting into drugs, he said.

"I was able to hide what I was doing from my mother," McDonald admitted. "I hope that's what the book will be able to do is show that sure, a kid looks like they're having a good go at it, but maybe their not and they could just be hiding it."

For McDonald, compiling all of his writings to produce the book wasn't as much of a challenge as it was getting it published. He said he wrote fancy formal letters to 36 different publishers and received 36 rejections. Then, when he was going through the process of being self-published, he read a story in Windspeaker about Native owned and operated Kegedonce Press, so he thought he would give finding a publisher one last try. This time, instead of writing a fancy letter he simply stated, "I wrote this book. If you like it, you like it and if you don't like it, no problem. I'm going to get it published anyways."

"I sent it in and I got a letter back saying that we like it and we want to see more," McDonald said.

McDonald said he gives credit for a lot of his success to Won-Ska Cultural School in Prince Albert. Without the school, he said, he wouldn't be where he is today-on a healing journey towards a new life.

"It was Won-Ska who gave me back my culture and a sense of who I was," McDonald said. "It gave me this opportunity to write."

McDonald said that an Elder who works at Won-Ska was responsible for his journey. He was having a "really bad day" when the Elder pulled him aside and asked what was wrong.

"I blew him off," McDonald said. That's when the Elder took McDonald by the ear and sat him down at a computer and told him to write. Not knowing exactly what to write, McDonald's first sentence was just that-"What the hell am I supposed to write about?"

"From there, all of this stuff kept pouring out and I was just venting onto this computer,"

McDonald said. "By the time I looked up at the clock, it was 5:30 in the afternoon and I had started at eight in the morning. So, I hadn't moved. I basically just got rid of this garbage, all this shit that was inside of me, and I just spent the whole day writing. It all finally hit me and I realized that. I hit print on my computer and I collapsed to a ball of tears on the floor."

McDonald now shares this story as a public speaker through visits to schools and to his clients at the youth outreach program in Prince Albert. McDonald accessed the program while he was on the streets. After he got his life back together, he began volunteering, which eventually led t a full-time position.

"I work with kids who grew up in the same situation I did. They grew up on the streets and saw the same things I did," McDonald said. "Therefore, I have a chance to give back to them."

Although, The Glass Lodge outlines the harsh realities of life for an Aboriginal kid on the streets, McDonald also writes about the beauty that can be found from a life of despair and that there is a "silver lining."

"Hopefully, by people reading my story and hearing my words, they know that if they are on the streets that they can be survived. But hopefully, it will stop a lot of people from going down that same road I did," McDonald said. "There's a lot to be learned from lessons experienced. I always knew there was a purpose for the things that I was going through and the things that I went through are lessons well learned. After you've cleaned up and things are getting rough, you know that you can do it because you've dealt with tougher."