Tomson Highway is the proud son of legendary caribou hunter and world championship dogsled racer, Joe Highway, and artist-in-her-own-right (as bead-worker and quilt-maker extraordinaire), Pelagie Highway.

A full-blood Cree, he is a registered member of the Barren Lands First Nation, the village for which is called Brochet (pronounced “Bro-shay”) and which village is located in northern Manitoba where it meets Saskatchewan and what is now called Nunavut.

Today, he writes novels, plays, and music for a living. Having studied music and English literature at the Universities of Manitoba (Winnipeg) and Western Ontario (London), as well as in England, he earned both his Bachelor of Music Honours (Piano Performance major, 1975) and the equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts (English major, 1976), both from “Western.”

PATRICIA CANO is a Peruvian-Canadian singer-songwriter/actor born and raised in Sudbury, ON. In 2002, upon her graduation from the University College Drama Program (UofT), Patricia was invited to work with Ariane Mnouchkine’s company, Le Théâtre du Soleil, where she spent four years working alongside Jean Jacques Lemêtre, renowned ‘musicien du théâtre.’ She then lived seven months in Rio de Janeiro, collaborating with guitarist Carlos Bernardo, with whom she wrote and recorded her first album, “This is the New World” (2009).

In 2010/2011, Patricia was a member of the NAC’s English Theatre Company, performing in Peter Anderson’s NATIVITY, directed by Leah Cherniak, and in Michel Tremblay’s Greek chorus of SAINT CARMEN OF THE MAIN, directed by Peter Hinton. Of paramount significance is her long-standing working relationship with celebrated Cree playwright-author-composer, Tomson Highway