The Fire Still Burns

“My name is Sam George. In spite of everything that happened to me, by the grace of the Creator, I have lived to be an Elder.”

Set in the Vancouver area in the late 1940s and through to the present day, this candid account follows Sam from his idyllic childhood growing up on the Eslhá7an (Mission) reserve to the confines of St. Paul’s Indian Residential School and then into a life of addiction and incarceration. But an ember of Sam’s spirit always burned within him, and even in the darkest of places he retained his humour and dignity until he found the strength to face his past.

The Fire Still Burns is an unflinching look at the horrors of a childhood spent trapped within the Indian Residential School system and the long-term effects on survivors. It illustrates the healing power of one’s culture and the resilience that allows an individual to rebuild a life and a future.

Sam George is a Squamish Elder and a survivor of the Canadian Indian Residential School system. A retired longshoreman and semi-retired drug and alcohol counsellor, Sam now works as an educator with the Indian Residential School Survivors Society and speaks with students and community groups about his experiences. Jill Yonit Goldberg is a writer, and a literature and creative writing instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, BC, where she teaches the Writing Lives course in which students collaborate with Indian Residential School survivors who are writing their memoirs. She worked with Sam George to bring his story to the page. Liam Belson, Dylan MacPhee, and Tanis Wilson are students who participated in the Writing Lives class where they worked with Sam George to write his story.

George is unsparing in his accounts of the years lost to drugs and alcohol, and the damage he did to people close to him. But he is also able to tell the story of how reconnecting with his Indigenous roots and culture helped him heal and become a loving, contributing elder in his community…Highly recommended.

It’s a harrowing tale that adds to the growing record of the horrific legacy of residential schools in Canada. George’s personal story culminates with the lessons he learned for rebuilding his life after the mountain of trauma he suffered: by embracing his traditional culture–the very ways the nuns had tried to beat out of him.

"The Fire Still Burns is a formidable rendering of the survivance of the human spirit in residential schools, a book that should be read by Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences as a testament to the power of healing."

Once in a blue moon…I’m faced with a story that creeps into my bones and will not let me forget it. Like Sam George’s recently released memoir…I could not put Sam’s book down…I did not eat, sleep or shower: I read it cover to cover in one day

Unflinchingly honest…