When Joanne Robertson began shaping Shirley: An Indian Residential School Story (Second Story Press, 2026) with Shirley (Fletcher) Horn, whose lived experiences inform it, she knew what Horn did not want: “to traumatize children with her stories.” What emerged from the collaboration is a genre-defying work that trusts young readers with truth — including loneliness, fear, resilience, and the everyday courage of survival — without ever asking them to look away.
“When Shirley first sat down with me to share her stories, she was aware that it would be a book for younger readers,” Robertson recalls, “and so she told me her stories as she wished kids to hear them.” That intention included difficult truths. “She said she realized that the stories may make them sad, and learning about Canada’s dark history would be disappointing and difficult,” Robertson continues, “but she wanted to tell the truth of her story, and how she survived the loneliness.” The balance of honesty without sensationalism, and care without dilution, became the ethical foundation of the book.
Shirley’s life at residential school
Robertson is clear about where authorship of Shirley begins and ends. “I can’t take credit for Shirley’s voice,” she avers. “When writing her stories down, I could hear her in my ear. I could feel the strength and courage in her voice. I saw her tears. And I heard her giggles and laughs.” Robertson’s first and most sacred responsibility was fidelity: “I tried to capture all those feelings and memories truthfully, as they were shared with me.”
Shirley: An Indian Residential School Story follows Shirley from the age of five, when she is taken from her family by the Indian agent to attend residential school. She loves learning, but here she is separated from her siblings, governed by strict rules, and deprived of any sort of comfort. From her first day walking up the long stone steps of the school, life is re-defined by loneliness and routine. Yet the book refuses to render Shirley as just a victim. She makes friends. She adapts. And she looks ahead to summertime, when she will return home.
Robertson’s refusal to flatten experience — to present residential school life as either unrelentingly bleak or misleadingly benign — was one of the most difficult aspects of the collaboration. “There was more than once that I shared with [Shirley] my concerns about writing her story in a way that came off as ‘it wasn’t so bad—look at all the fun times!’” Robertson notes. Each time, Horn responded with clarity. “She would patiently explain to me — sometimes with tears in her eyes — that they were children, living in an institution. They made choices every day to live, adapting as they went along. ‘What were we supposed to do?’”
Over time, Robertson’s realization shifted. “I finally understood those ‘fun times’ and the shenanigans that she and her friends got up to, knowing there would be consequences for going against regulations,” she says. What once felt contradictory was, in fact, essential. When Robertson voiced this insight aloud—“I think this is how you and your friends got through life in those lonely and cruel institutions”—the response was immediate: “In a firm, strong voice she said, ‘Yes!’”
After residential school
What Shirley endured as a child would go on to inform a lifetime of leadership, advocacy, and truth-telling – all rooted in the same physical site. The former Shingwauk Indian Residential School—the very school where Shirley (Fletcher) Horn’s story unfolds in the book — is now The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC). This cross-cultural research and education initiative is a partnership between Algoma University and the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association (CSAA), a Survivors-led organization of former residential school students, their families, and community members. It is housed on the site of—and is also part of—the Algoma University campus, which occupies several of the historic buildings.
The Centre works with Survivors, educators, First Nations, and church and community partners to research, preserve, and share the histories of residential and day schools across Canada. Horn returned to this site as a leader and advocate, becoming deeply involved with the SRSC through her work with the CSAA. And she even served as Algoma University’s first Chancellor—in the process helping to transform this place of childhood loss into one of remembrance, education, and Survivor-led truth-telling.
The challenge of illustration
Robertson’s illustrations are deceptively simple, a choice that is informed by serious ethical deliberation and a chance encounter with Mo Willems’ Knuffle Bunny.”The rest is history,” she smiles. “I’m aware that my illustration style is cartoony. It’s also childlike,” she explains. “Childlike is good for a young person’s book, but I was concerned about my cartoon style with such a dark part of Shirley’s and Canada’s history. I thought about it for over two years. I didn’t want to cause more harm.”
Her solution was to anchor the drawings in archival truth. “Immediately after my first interview with Shirley, I went to the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) archives to look through their binders of photos saved. I wanted to see the places where Shirley’s stories happened, and to start forming images in my mind of how I would illustrate her story.”The archival photographs, preserved through decades of work by Shirley and the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association, became essential to the book’s visual language. “I believe the photographs from the archives add truth to the story… photos taken before AI was a thing!” Robertson uses them for inspiration, and adds colour for moments of warmth and black and white for “the dark, scary, lonely times”.
The impulse driving Robertson to create the images is deeply personal. “It struck me that Shirley has very few photos from her childhood, the Brownies photo being the only one I could find,” Robertson reflects. “I have tons of childhood pictures, and I think maybe I wanted Shirley to have some images of her childhood with her friends, as well.” One of the book’s recurring motifs—the quilt block surrounding the Indian agent, extends this instinct into material form. The real quilt block was made by Robertson’s mother from old flour bags, the same kind of bags Shirley and her siblings used as pillowcases, and to pack their clothes in. The choice subtly bridges family memory and the historical record.
The power of learning
Learning itself becomes another site of complexity in the book. In the story, Shirley’s love of learning persists – even within a system designed to strip children of culture, family, and agency. When Robertson asked Horn about this, her response was expansive and precise: “The one thing I never was, was bored. I was always high energy. I was always eager to learn. I often volunteered to do things when asked—no matter how mundane the task. So the teachers knew: if they wanted something done, they would think of me.”
Learning also carried material rewards. “By the same token, they would offer me rewards or ask me to clean their rooms for a quarter—which allowed me to catch a bus uptown and back and go to the movies on Saturdays. The opportunity to earn money for movies was the best. Robertson marvelled at this, observing, “So learning had its perks…. it alleviated the boredom of routine, and it was transactional.” Horn agreed without hesitation: “Yes, absolutely. And the competition for jobs was stiff. Lots of girls.”
Cultural and historical learning is a calling for Robertson. Anishinaabe kwe and a member of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, Robertson’s work as an author and illustrator centres Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, and intergenerational responsibility. Her earlier picture book, Nibi Emosaawdang / The Water Walker, is highly acclaimed and widely used in classrooms and libraries for its lyrical storytelling and depiction of water as a living relative. A graduate of Algoma University and Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig, Robertson lives north of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
As Shirley: An Indian Residential School Story finds its way into homes, classrooms, and school libraries, Robertson situates its ideal reception within Horn’s lifelong advocacy. “With all the work Shirley has done with survivors, it’s always her number one hope to help survivors, their families, and their communities to heal from the trauma caused by these institutions,” she says. Healing, she acknowledges, is ongoing: “There are continuing negative impacts. It’s going to take many years for healing and reconciliation to happen.”
And for readers without a direct connection to residential schools, Robertson is hopeful the book can open a door for their learning: “It’s my hope that they go on to learn more about the institution that is, or was, closest to them, and build empathy for the survivors and their families that are their neighbours.” In the end, she returns to Horn herself. “We are living in dark times,” Robertson notes simply. “Perhaps we can all learn something from Shirley’s story and her young warrior spirit that dared to survive.”
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
