Canadian Lawyer - sample

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m M A Y 2 0 1 7 23 road. By the time I get home, nothing from the office has survived. I've got a really good separation between work and home." Johnson says he's always been a writer — he could read and write before he started school. He grew into "your typical teenage poet," he says. "I believed 13-year-old poets could save the world." While working in the mining camp, Johnson was writing short stories, working on his craft, he says. "I knew what I was doing — I was practising." When he got to Harvard, he recognized a friend from the University of Saskatch- ewan — Kate Sutherland, who now teaches law and literature at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto. She had a writer's group and invited Johnson to join. "So I went, and every Sunday we met at a little pub," Johnson remembers. "Each week, I brought another chapter to my first novel Billy Tinker and it went over really well; it was a really good group that encour- aged each other." With his latest work, Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (and Yours), his reason for writing a book on the subject of aboriginals and alcohol is simple: "Nobody else was speaking up about it." In his role as Crown prosecutor, Johnson saw "95 per cent of the people who came to court were intoxicated at the time they committed the offence they were judged with. We were dealing with an alcohol problem and not criminality." His motivation stems from a more per- sonal place as well. Johnson, one of nine children, lost two brothers to drunk driv- ers. This was not uncommon in his area, he notes, saying he was at a restaurant near his home one day with four random people, and when he brought up his broth- ers' deaths, three out of the four people had also lost siblings to a drunk driver. It's not just drinking and driving, he says, adding that in the community there are "people who drink themselves to death, people killed or injured in accidents." The book has been well received in both his indigenous community and the legal community. Johnson says he hasn't heard a negative response yet. Firewater, a 2016 finalist in the Governor General's Literary Awards, is described as "a passionate call to action" and looks at the history of alco- hol and the impact it's had on indigenous people, from the perspective of Johnson as a Crown prosecutor in Treaty 6 territory. "When I first heard it, it scared me that it had been nominated," Johnson says. "I had been sitting in my cabin writing and [the books] haven't gone very far beyond Saskatchewan. It's been good and I enjoyed it and I like writing, I've got this little thing going on, and I knew when I got nominated that was all going to change and I wasn't going to be a little writer anymore." The extent of the impact of his book's nomination will be clearer with the next novel he publishes, he says. His most recent book — what he describes as "an autobiog- raphy science fiction" — is with his agent for a final read through before it is submit- ted to publishers, but he adds one publisher has expressed interest already. One of the brothers lost to a drunk driver was a scientist and to honour him "since he loved science fiction so much I wrote his, and my, life story as science fic- tion," Johnson says. Alhough he has donned many hats in his life, perhaps his greatest role yet is one he's been developing in the last year or so. As a Crown prosecutor, Johnson says his circuit is the far north of Saskatchewan — "right up against the Northwest Territo- ries border" — and in 2015, Saskatchewan Deputy Minister Responsible for Correc- tions and Policing Dale McFee came to see what happens on the ground. McFee spent the day with the probation officer, and 35 of the 36 people who reported to her identified alcohol as the problem. Heading back to the airplane at the end of the day, Johnson spoke to McFee about it. "I explained that this is an Indian prob- lem and we have to solve it, and we have to change the story we tell ourselves about it," Johnson remembers. "He said, 'What can government do to help?' I said give me a six-month leave of absence and I'll show you. I got the six-month leave of absence." With a small team — including his wife, Joan — Johnson has been "working at creating community alcohol plans for the communities of La Ronge and Montreal Lake, and we've just recently started work- ing in another community." The work on the plans belongs to them — not to John- son, not to the government, he says. The six months was extended — they've been working on the Northern Alcohol Strategy for just more than a year now — and Johnson notes he retires this August. "I will never be back in the courtroom," he says, but adds he doesn't understand the word "relax." Johnson anticipates writing a lot more and working toward the Northern Alcohol Strategy's goal, although on a part- time basis. "It is too important — we have gone into communities and raised people's hopes," he explains. Between Firewater and his work with the Northern Alcohol Strategy, Johnson hopes to spark a conversation around what can be a controversial issue. He says there's such a thing as a "nocebo" effect — as opposed to a placebo effect — where unlike a placebo story, a nocebo story is harmful. Johnson thinks part of the problem is by repeating exclusively that Canada's aboriginals are "victims of col- onization, that we are victims of residential schools, that we are victims of the Indian Act we are in fact making things worse. "We have to be careful telling those stories and perhaps balance them with the positive stories that are out there. When was the last time you heard 35 per cent of aboriginal people don't use alcohol at all, are completely abstinent and that there are twice as many of us who are completely abstinent than in the general population? That story also needs to be told." WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HEARD 35 PER CENT OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE DON'T USE ALCOHOL AT ALL, ARE COMPLETELY ABSTINENT AND THAT THERE ARE TWICE AS MANY OF US WHO ARE COMPLETELY ABSTINENT THAN IN THE GENERAL POPULATION?

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