kim trainor

In a CBC interview  about his debut collection Crow Gulch, Douglas Walbourne-Gough observes, “I would really hope one of the things that the book speaks, back to me and everyone who reads it, is to offer a counter-narrative to stigma.”

Walbourne-Gough addresses the stigmas of class and Mi’kmaq status in Newfoundland, through the lens of Crow Gulch, a former community on the outskirts of Corner Brook, Newfoundland. The community was located on the site of an old slate quarry and comprised mainly families of Mi’kmaq ancestry. Many of these families were relocated from Crow Gulch in the late 70s to the social housing project of Dunfield Park, known as “the Bean” because it was painted in bright paints that were the colour of jelly beans. The colours were meant to be cheerful, but instead served as further stigma for working class/Mi’kmaq inhabitants…

–see the full review here: review of Crow Gulch, Prismmagazine.ca