Tomson Highway's libretto for Cree opera inspired by real life (fwd link)

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Tomson Highway's libretto for Cree opera inspired by real life

April, 26, 2009 - 12:13 pm Ahearn, Victoria - (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

TORONTO - In October 1990, celebrated Cree playwright Tomson Highway lay on a
Toronto hospital bed beside his dying brother Rene and held him in his arms. As
he fell asleep, he dreamed they were in a boat floating toward an island on a
misty waterway.

"On that island, only one of us was allowed to get off and it was him," the
writer, who was born near Maria Lake, Man., recalled recently during a
telephone interview from his home in the south of France. "I had no choice but
to go back to the mainland in that boat by myself."

The dream, which came a few days before his brother's death of meningitis (he
also had AIDS), helped inspire Highway's libretto for the Cree opera
"Pimooteewin: The Journey" that starts touring northern Ontario on Monday.

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