In 1959, just one step ahead of the law, Ian Ferguson's parents left the sophisticated big-city life of Edmonton and ended up in Fort Vermilion, 846 km due north. It was meant to be a temporary move. Ian's father lasted ten years before he made his escape; his mother remained until recently. Fort Vermilion, once a fur-trapping frontier town, was predominantly aboriginal, the third poorest community in Canada. Like their neighbours, the Ferguson kids-Ian and his six brothers and sisters-grew up without indoor plumbing, central heating or electricity. Living closer to the Arctic Circle than to the American border, without the influences of television or radio, Canada was a dream to them, as faraway and exotic as England or Australia.
Beginning with the dramatic events surrounding his birth-including a paddlewheel ferry heading for destruction, a legendary rowboat trip, and a life-and-death race against time-Ferguson moves on to recreate adventures involving loophole ceremonies, life-saving encounters with indigenous medicines, tea dances, stolen hockey sticks and a boy lost in the woods.
Funny with sad bits-and sometimes the other way around-The Village of Small Houses is an unforgettable story that lives, as Ferguson says, somewhere between Angela's Ashes and Who Has Seen the Wind.
