Silent Dawn Productions and the Galiano Concert Society for the Invictus Games

About the Author
Sounding Thunder: the Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, tells the story of Canada’s most highly decorated WWI veteran.

Go on a musical journey into the life of the renowned Ojibwe WWI sniper, decorated officer of the Canadian military and Indigenous political activist, Francis Pegahmagabow. Sounding Thunder is a complex work divided into three acts, exploring Pegahmagabow’s early years immersed in the world of the Anishinaabe spirits, his extraordinary accomplishments in the trenches of WWI, and finally his political life as Chief of the Wausauksing Ojibwe and founder of the early Indigenous political moment in Canada.

Narrated by Francis’ great grandson, Brian McInnes and performed by some of Canada’s greatest classical musicians, Sounding Thunder includes the singing of Jodi Contin Baker and the acting brilliance of Sage Cloud. Music by Juno-nominated Canadian composer, Timothy Corlis and spoken word libretto by award-winning Indigenous writer, Armand Ruffo.

About the Book
In The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, award-winning author Armand Garnet Ruffo brings to life not only the story of the famed WWI Indigenous sniper, but also the complexities of telling Indigenous stories. From Manitoulin Island to the trenches of WWI to the stage, Ruffo moves seamlessly through time in these poems, taking the reader on a captivating journey through Pegahmagabow’s story and onto the creation of Sounding Thunder, the opera based on his life. Throughout, Ruffo uses the Ojibwe concept of two-eyed seeing, which combines the strengths of western and Indigenous ways of knowing, and invites the reader to do the same, particularly through the inclusion of the Anishinaabemowin language within the collection. These are poems that challenge western conventions of thinking, that celebrate hope and that show us a new way to see the world.

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