Thunderbird, the Quesnel & the Sea details Bev Lundahl's search for a thunderbird totem, stolen in 1942 and used as HMCS Quesnel's mascot : "Dad, where did the crew get this thing?" I gasped. "It always perched up there, bolted to the crow's nest in the mast," he told me. "We never sailed without it." Having entered service aboard HMCS Quesnel in June 1944, close to the end of the Second World War, Dad knew very little about the origin of the ship's thunderbird mascot. And in the 1940s, he had not asked many questions about it. That it was an Indigenous carving was not a question, but the new millennium would be upon us before our perception began to crack and the significance of a First Nation carving turned World War II mascot became apparent. But what had happened to it at the end of the war? First Nations people have been telling their stories, waking many Canadians up to another reality in our country. Barriers are coming down as Indigenous peoples find their voices. It is the responsibility of all Canadians to listen to those voices and to hear what they are saying. Non-Indigenous Canadians who have discovered stories in their family's history that relate to concerns of injustice, or of Truth and Reconciliation, also have a responsibility to tell their stories. The Thunderbird, the Quesnel & the Sea is one.
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