Métis Family Saga
Review of the Nightwood Editions Kindle edition (October 23, 2021) released shortly after the paperback edition (October 1, 2021)

I should have made her prouder of her history, her people. I shouldn’t have assumed that she would take that for granted, that she wouldn’t have known the beauty and the songs of her Métis culture. Maybe then I wouldn’t have lost her to the cities. They would have all done well in a different time, Charlie, Grandpa, my girl, Granny, even Daniel. But the cities. One day we’re all young, listening to our uncles tell a story, and the next, we wake up old with skyscrapers all around us. All in one lifetime. What kind of world is that? Why can’t it be slow?

Avenue of Champions refers to Avenue 118 in Edmonton, Alberta. The nickname derives from the now defunct Northlands Coliseum ('The House that Gretzky Built') indoor sports arena which was situated at 7424 118 Avenue. Teams such as the NHL's Edmonton Oilers played at that arena. 118 Avenue also marks a dividing line between the poorer neighbourhoods of North Edmonton vs the richer neighbourhoods of South Edmonton in the context of the stories in this book.

Conor Kerr's first novel is a multigenerational family saga of a Métis family over time from living in the bush to the cities. It makes several jumps in time and POV so you have to be prepared to orient yourself accordingly. The main thing to know is that the Granny in the "Prologue: The Last Big Dance" is the grandmother to the young girl in that story, who in turn becomes the Granny to the main character Daniel in the later stories of the book. i.e. the first Granny is the Great-Great-Grandmother of Daniel. I admit to getting confused about that until later in the book.

The book collects several short stories which appeared in Canadian literary journals and anthologies from 2019 to 2021 as described in the Acknowledgements section and adds several others to assemble them together as a novel. The stories are told with good heart and humour and the two different Grannies of the saga stood out for me as the strongest characters, both striving to make a living and a future for themselves and their families even if by the so-called 'illegal' means of moonshining and marijuana cultivation. Although the Daniel character is framed as the main protagonist, his story does take a more depressing path of becoming sublimated and co-opted by bureaucracy.

Quote

The Wet’suwet’en* crisis was the tipping point. Indigenous Peoples started rising up on a scale that settler Canadians paid attention to. The government realized that they didn’t want to deal with that. Reconciliation was great when everyone got to wear a headdress and parade around with cute brown kids and learn about smudging. When it came time for equity though, fuck that. Canadian society spoke up when the protests started and they basically said that they wanted to forget Indigenous Peoples existed. The media turned on us; though they were never really on our side to begin with. The racists got louder. Even the so-called allies decided we were an inconvenience. We realized at that point that we had never actually made any progress.

* This is in reference of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation in the province of British Columbia and its protests against the Coastal GasLink Pipeline being built through its native lands without consultation. Read further about that here.

Other Reviews
Avenue of Champions by Jannie Edwards, Alberta Views, June 1, 2022.

Trivia and Links
Author Conor Kerr is interviewed at CTV Saskatoon to introduce the book here.

If you are reading this before June 27, 2023 you can still register for the Giller Book Club zoom meeting on that day where author Conor Kerr will discuss the book with fellow author Joshua Whitehead. ( )