Misty Lake tells the story of a young Metis journalist from Winnipeg who travels to a Dene reserve in Northern Manitoba to conduct an interview with a former residential school student. What Mary imparts in her interview will change Patty’s life profoundly, allowing the journalist to make the connections to her own troubled life in the city. Patty knows that her Metis grandmother went to residential school when she was a girl. But Patty hasn’t understood until now that she’s inherited the traumatic legacy of residential school that was passed down to her mother from her grandmother. With this new understanding, Patty embarks on a healing journey. It will take her to the Dene fishing camp at Misty Lake, a place of healing, where, with Mary, she will learn that healing begins when you can talk about your life.
About the Authors
Darrell Racine is a playwright from Brandon, Manitoba. His play Owl Calling/IAP, co-written with Dale Lakevold, won Best Play in Theatre BC’s National Playwriting Competition in 2022. His play Stretching Hide, also co-written with Dale Lakevold, won the same award in Theatre BC’s playwriting competition in 2004. It was produced by Theatre Projects Manitoba in Winnipeg and published by Scirocco Drama in 2007. An excerpt from the play was anthologized by Portage & Main Press in 2013. One of Darrell’s most recent plays (also with Dale Lakevold) is Franklin’s Fate, a history play about Lady Jane Franklin’s search for her husband Sir John Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition. The story involves Alexander Isbister, a Manitoba Metis author and lawyer living in London at the time. Darrell is a Metis from the Turtle Mountains in Manitoba. He is a graduate of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Brandon University, and teaches in the Department of Native Studies at Brandon University.
Dale Lakevold is a playwright from Minnedosa, Manitoba. He has had some 50 professional and independent productions of his plays since 1996. His five plays with Darrell Racine form a continuing series that explores Indigenous culture and history in Canada. Their latest play She-She Quois Rattle tells the story of Canada’s Sixties Scoop legacy in the lives of two survivors adopted as children into white families. His play The Speech Bill Pritchard Never Gave was produced at the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike Centenary Conference in Winnipeg in 2019. Dale was a finalist for the Harry S. Rintoul Award for Best New Manitoba Play at the 2018 Winnipeg Fringe Festival for his play Bill Pritchard’s Address to the Jury. He teaches in the Department of English, Drama, and Creative Writing at Brandon University. He has Norwegian- and Hungarian-Canadian roots.