Today our guest is Alber­ta based author, David Orr. We chat about his first book of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion pub­lished by Stone­house Pub­lish­ing: Encoun­ter­ing Riel. Orr’s nov­el revis­its the 1885 North­west Resis­tance from the per­spec­tive of an Anglo­phone mili­tia man in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to vol­un­teers. I chal­lenge Orr about the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of retelling a sto­ry of Métis resis­tance from a non-Indige­nous per­spec­tive, cod­i­fi­ca­tions of Cana­di­an mas­culin­i­ty and Cana­di­an set­tler iden­ti­ty, the lack of healthy rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Indige­nous women, and the role Métis his­to­ri­ans play in revis­ing and recast­ing colo­nial inter­pre­ta­tions of Con­fed­er­a­tion. David is a retired judge and edu­ca­tor from Saskatchewan.