Emerald and Grey

by Richard Beck Peacock

The story set in 1933 is of a cultural tragedy told through the experiences of a young First Nation boy John and his sister Anna, both trapped in the unyielding and often cruel Canadian Residential School system. Events in the screenplay are based on documented histories.The story introduces a young idealistic Grey Nun, Sister Vivian, full of religious fervour who leaves her convent in Ireland as well as her family to cross the sea to a strange land. Her mission is to teach the heavenly lessons of Christianity to pagan children on Canada's west coast.Neither Sister Vivian nor the innocent First Nation children know what they are getting into. Their plunge into the isolation and stark daily reality of their residential school is mutually mind numbing.For the children, school turns out to be a government sanctioned program whose essential goal is tho strip them of their language, customs, and familial ties. It turns out to be in a grim world of physical and emotional reorientation for both the children and Sister Vivian. Their school experiences are marked by continuous regimentation, runaways, random harsh punishments, unreported molestation, minimal diets, rampant deadly sicknesses, suicide.For the young nun, as she bonds with the young boy and girl, the journey becomes one of reevaluating everything she ever believed. The subtle message of the Great Spirit found in nature transforms her soul. For young John surviving daily life becomes enough. Sister Vivian alone helps him through.Graduation leaves John and other students few good choices: return to villages being by ravaging lumber, mining and fishing industries , or head for a lonely city unprepared for its harsh reality and cultural demands.The story is told bookended between Canadian Parliamentary hearings of The Truth & Reconciliation Commission, that labeled the enforced system "Cultural Genocide". John, now an old man, recalls his cruel childhood and the one person, a nun, who gave him love.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1520837526
• ISBN13: 9781520837529
• Release Date: April 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 110 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"