Discussions

Emily Pauline Johnson was one of Canada's most popular and successful poets and entertainers at the turn-of-the-century.  
 
She was a Mohawk woman born on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario on March 10, 1861 and she died of breast cancer on March 7, 1913.  
 
Johnson was the daughter of a Mohawk Native-Canadian father and an English mother.  
 
She used the Mohawk name "Tekahionwake," pronounced dageh-eeon-wageh, literally meaning: 'double-life.'  
 
Pauline Johnson's most famous poem is, "The Song My Paddle Sings."  
 
Johnson's life, career and travels show that she was a woman who dared to do unexpected things and who was proud of her heritage and where she came from.  
 
In her own time, Johnson was a revolutionary. She had a love for literature.  
 
She travelled through Brandon in 1912 and she wrote this acrostic poem about Brandon.  
 
This poem can be found on page 139 in her book, "Flint and Feather."  
 
B- Born on the breast of the prairie, she  
smiles to her sire-the sun,  
 
R- Robed in the wealth of her wheat-lands,  
gifts of her mothering soil,  
 
A- Affluence knocks at her gateways,  
opulence wants to be won.  
 
N- Nuggets of gold are her acres, yielding  
and yellow with spoil,  
 
D- Dream of the hungry millions, dawn of  
the food-filled age,  
 
O- Over the starving tale of want her  
fingers have turned the page:  
 
N- Nations will nurse at her storehouse,  
and God gives her grain for wage.  
 
Isn't this cool?  
 
Vincent Greyeyes wife, Amanda, shared this with me tonight and I thought that it was so cool, I just wanted to share it with all of you.  
 
Could this poem be prophetic regarding Brandon's future?