CARIBOU FACTORY is an allegorical novel about Canada which follows relationships between Native and Non-Native Canadians in the form of a marriage between a Cree woman and an Englishman. Although it is loosely based on one of the Hudson’s Bay Company forts, CARIBOU FACTORY is Canada.

Time covers the years from the 17th century to the present, the language of the characters changing throughout the centuries up to modern times. The novel is full of pastiche. Readers may be intrigued if they recognize the sources but the story carries on if they don’t.

What makes CARIBOU FACTORY different from many similar themes is an attempt to balance it, to avoid a Euro Canadian bias, and I’m indebted to First Nations people who contributed to the Native side. My Shushwap friend Mary Thomas is as responsible for the novel as I am; I couldn’t have written it without her. My gratitude is endless to her and her family for their help and support. A person can never know what is in another person’s mind, but with all this help I feel that my Cree characters speak with their own voices, not too much with mine. Some First Nations people seem to think so too, as they have honoured me several times.

As far as possible after much research, CARIBOU FACTORY is based on fact. It is roughly 220,000 words long.
Helen Hawley

Some time in the early 1980s, Helen and I decided to write two books about the changing relationships between the First Nations people and those who settled in Canada mostly from Europe. She would write about those with overseas backgrounds and I would write about the people who were already there, and we’d get both books published together. This didn’t happen. The result was CARIBOU FACTORY, a novel that encompasses all.
Mary Thomas