Person Record

Metadata

Name

Johnston, Basil

Other Names

Basil H. Johnston

Born

1929

Birthplace

Parry Island Indian Reserves

Deceased

Sept. 8, 2015

Deceased

Wiarton

Spouse

Lucie Desroches

Education

He attended elementary school at the Cape Croker Indian Reserve school until the age of 10, after which he attended St. Peter Claver's Indian Residential School in Spanish, Ontario.

He left school for a time before finishing the ninth grade, but soon learned that it would be difficult to support himself without further education. In 1950 Johnston graduated valedictorian from Garnier and then attended Loyola College in Montreal where he graduated with honors, earning a B.A. in 1954. He received his Secondary School Teaching Certificate from the Ontario College of Education in 1962.

Occupation

Basil Johnston is an Anishnaabe writer, storyteller, language teacher and scholar.

From 1955 through 1961 Basil Johnston worked for the Toronto Board of Trade.

He received his Secondary School Teaching Certificate from the Ontario College of Education in 1962, and took a position teaching history at the Earl Haig Secondary School in North York until 1969.

He then joined the Ethnology Department of the Royal Ontario Museum where he worked for the next 25 years with a mandate to record and celebrate Ojibway (Anishinaabe) heritage, especially language and mythology.

Basil Johnston has written at least 15 books in English and 5 in Ojibway to show that there is much more to North American Indian life than what is taught in school curricula. In addition he has written numerous articles that have been published in newspapers, anthologies and periodicals.

Titles & Honours

Queen's Jubilee medal recipient

Sources

Sources:

a) www.hanksville.org/storytellers/BasilJ/
b) Dr. Basil Johnston obituary, The Star - http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?pid=175800640