ENTERPRISE - Before he died in 2009, Joe Mercredi of Enterprise asked his wife, Amy, to publish a book he had long been working on about his childhood years in residential school.

"He said to me, 'Make sure you get that book printed for me,'" Amy recalled.

She told him she would, and she has now fulfilled that promise.

Recently, she received the first copies of the self-published 'Adventures of a Young Metis Boy in Residential School'.

The small, hardcover book – written at about a Grade 5 or 6 level – is Joe Mercredi's fond recollections on the three years he spent at St. Joseph Mission School in Fort Resolution in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Unlike many other people, the well-known Metis elder's experiences as a child in residential school were positive, and he never witnessed violence or abuse.

In the book, he wrote the work is "in retaliation" to the many negative stories about residential schools.

"We were not all abused and we did not all, as a mass, hate the mission schools and what they were mandated to do," he wrote. "There was a lot of good that was done and we should not throw out the good with the bad."

In particular, he credited residential schools for educating many aboriginal people.

Amy Mercredi said it was important to Joe his book be published because he wanted it submitted to the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

She doesn't believe Joe expected the book to create any controversy over his views on residential schools.

"He just wanted to give a positive picture of not everything that happened in the mission school was negative," she explained.

She said the book has its origins in about 1990 as a series of columns her late husband wrote for The Mackenzie Times, a newspaper he published in Fort Simpson.

Joe was 10 years old when he was sent to St. Joseph Mission School.

His parents sent him and his two sisters from Fort Fitzgerald, Alta., to the school to get an education.

"He looked at it as an adventure," Amy said, saying that's why she gave the book its title.

The book's target readers are former students of the mission school and young people.

Amy Mercredi said Joe had finished writing the book when he died at the age of 70 in February of last year.

"Everything was written," she said. "I didn't add anything to that book. I just took the manuscript as he had it and got it edited by different people."

She also selected old photos to illustrate the stories.

Among other things, the book tells of travelling by barge from Fort Smith to Fort Resolution, meeting other children, exploring the mission, picking berries and going to church.

There is also the story of how Joe and two other boys ran away from the mission school.

"He was homesick and wanted to go home," Amy Mercredi explained. "That was quite an adventure. They got lost in the bush for three days."

The book will be officially launched on Nov. 17 at the NWT Centennial Library in Hay River.

Amy Mercredi also hopes to bring the book to Fort Resolution sometime in November.

She is pleased with the final product.

"I think it's good," she said. "I think it will put a closure to everything that Joe wanted to say."

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