‘A very personal excursion’
Reconciling: A Lifelong Struggle to Belong
by Larry Grant, in conversation with Scott Steedman
Toronto: ECW Press, 2025
$26.95 / 9781770417984
Reviewed by Kenneth Favrholdt
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By the time I finished reading Larry Grant’s enthralling book, my eyes were open to a new perspective on Vancouver where I grew up. Grant with the help of publisher Scott Steedman has transported me to places I have known as a settler child, teenager, and university student but had never considered in the context of a First Nations or Chinese person.
Reconciling: A Lifelong Struggle to Belong is the story of Larry Grant, of Musqueam and Chinese parentage, who takes us on a very personal excursion around Vancouver and the Fraser Valley and beyond with Steedman. At each stop along the way, from his birthplace near Agassiz in the Fraser Valley, to the village of Musqueam, to Chinatown, to the Vancouver docks, to the former St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission, the University of British Columbia, and China, Larry Grant opens our eyes to his experiences and the history of places around us.
The title of the book, Reconciling, demonstrates the ongoing process of reconciliation and meaning of Larry’s journey through life. The book opens with a description by co-author Scott Steedman of Larry Grant, “…a short, weathered man of eighty-five years… an Elder of both the Vancouver Chinese community and the Musqueam Indian Band.” Steedman asked Larry if he was interested in writing his life story one day. It took eight years, starting in 2017.
“Larry is writing this book in the hope that all our families and communities come to understand the hardships that many Canadians, especially Indigenous people, still live with today,” writes Steedman. “Hopefully it will get into the school system,” states Larry. “So children that have been indoctrinated into white society privileged get to hear about their school mates of colour. Children of colour experience racism from birth, so non-people of colour should be able to accept and read about it. Children are very good at understanding fairness and equality.”
Larry Grant grew up on the reserve. His grandfather, Seymour Grant was “a cultural authority, boat builder, logger and fisherman born around 1860. Seymour held one of the last great potlatches before they were banned, and gave permission for his daughter Agnes to marry Larry’s father, a Chinese immigrant who had paid the Head Tax to enter Canada.” Larry’s mother was born in 1906 on the reserve. Larry’s father left his family village of Sei Moon in Guangdong, China, in 1920.
Larry was born prematurely in 1936 in an outhouse in a farmer’s field where his mother was working, near Agassiz in the Fraser Valley, picking hops. His mother returned to the Musqueam reserve with baby Larry.
Scott writes Larry’s earliest memories of life on the reserve came “…when he was …only about three years of age.” He has memories of his grandfather Seymour Grant, “…a much respected leader in the community. Over the course of his long life he had been a logger, a fisherman, an itinerant hop picker and a cultural authority who gave one of the last great potlatches before they were banned. By the time Larry really knew him – when he was in his late seventies and early eighties – he was best known as a boat builder.” He built a floathouse on the Fraser River. “Larry …hung around his grandfather all the time and always knew he would become a tradesperson.”
“Larry’s grandmother, Mary Charlie,” Steedman continues, “made cedar-bark and spruce-root baskets of all sizes by hand. It was slow, patient work, often done in a group by women. They would walk up to the Dunbar area, around 41st Avenue, and exchange baskets for food, money or clothing”, says Larry. “In the fall they would also collect berries—wild blackberries, salal berries, huckleberries, salmon berries in the spring….”
Chinatown came into the lives of Larry and his elder brother when they moved in 1940 at four and six years old. They had been struck off the Musqueam band “Indian list” when the Indian agent found out that their mother, Agnes Grant, had married a non-status man. Suddenly, Larry became Chinese.
Larry and his brother boarded at a Cantonese family’s home while their mother stayed on the reserve. The rent was paid by their father, baba, who visited occasionally. His mother had another baby, Howard, who lived on the reserve. Larry learned some Cantonese but understands little today, Steedman says. But Larry ate Chinese food which they got from the Chinese farmers which they preserved as well – pickled cabbage and dried and pickled bok choy.
On his tour with Steedman, Larry recounts how Chinatown has changed. He notices how Chinese is not spoken as much as it was. Steedman writes “what used to be a close-knit Chinese haven, a place to escape to and feel safe in, is becoming more and more like any other Canadian neighborhood, a collection of individuals rather than a community.”
Larry and Gordon started school in 1941 at Strathcona in East Vancouver, where many immigrant groups took root, for the next nine years. Until the federal law was amended in 1951, First Nations were forced to attend an Indian residential school but Gordon and Larry slipped through the cracks. “Larry had always thought of himself as a mix, and though he looked Chinese, he felt more Musqueam because his mother had raised him in that culture,” Steedman states.
Larry finished Grade Eight and graduated from Strathcona in 1951, at 14 years, then started Vancouver Technical High School. By that time Larry was living in Musqueam and by Grade 10 had moved back to the floathouse built by his grandfather on the Fraser River.
On one occasion, Larry visited the residential school that he escaped going to, St. Mary’s in Mission where many of his cousins and friends were sent. The original brick buildings were demolished in 1965. Larry had trouble finding them. The new school closed in 1984, the last residential school in BC. “What is reconciliation?” Larry ponders. “[It] is an ongoing process,” Steedman states. “Like any grieving process, it has steps, none of which can be skipped. The first of these, begun by the TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] in its cross-country hearings, is truth-telling. Next come justice and healing. Only then can true reconciliation begin.”
After graduation from high school in 1955, Steedman writes, “Larry was set on becoming an automotive mechanic,” apprenticing to become an automotive machinist. He spent the next eleven years rebuilding engines, transmissions and rear ends….” Then, from 1968 until 1999 when he retired, Larry worked as a longshoreman on Vancouver’s waterfront. He returned to the reserve in 1985.
Midway through their tour of Vancouver, Larry and Scott discuss the “Great Fraser Midden, or the Marpole Midden” at Musqueam (cəsna?əm). Archaeologist Charles Hill-Tout excavated it in 1892. What has been called the “city before the city” was one of the largest settlements in BC at its height around 2,000 years ago. Many artefacts or belongings were taken and sent to New York, as well as human remains. Larry states, “I call them belongings because people are buried with things that are important to them.”A protest against the development of the burial site lasting 200 days, in which Larry partook, ensued.
On the University of BC campus a large cedar pole carved by Musqueam artist Brent Sparrow Jr. was erected in 2016, known as the Reconciliation Pole. Also on the campus is the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre opened in 2018, which Larry frequents. As well, the Museum of Anthropology welcomes visitors, although for many decades ignored Musqueam, which was not represented.
Larry Grant attended the Musqueam Cultural Centre for a potluck and year-end celebration and graduation for students of the language classes. He describes Larry Grant’s relationship with language. “From the age of fifteen he had rarely spoken his mother tongue, although he was exposed to … the Vancouver Island dialect, through events at the Big House: spirit dancing, namings, memorials, funerals.” Steedman comments about Larry’s connection to the language. “[W]hen Larry speaks it, he feels like he is reaching back to his mother and her parents and grandparents behind them…” “My hope is to one day hear our Musqueam language spoken at all community functions, have it re-introduced as the language spoken within the Musqueam Big House and as an everyday form of speech,” Larry says.
“[Larry] was part of a cohort of Musqueam students who went through four years, four levels, of language cases together,” writes Steedman. Larry was then hired as an adjunct professor by Dr. Patricia Shaw, UBC’s founder and first professor of UBC’s First Nations and Endangered Languages program, who “believed his ancestral knowledge should be given the same recognition as the theoretical expertise of his new colleagues.” Today, 2026, among other positions, Larry is Elder-in-Residence at the House of Learning and interim manager of the Musqueam Language and Culture Department. “He also gives regular Musqueam welcomes across Greater Vancouver,” Steedman adds. Reconciling is an elaboration of the many land acknowledgements and Musqueam welcomes Larry presents. “Vancouver is truly within Musqueam sacred territory,” Larry states.
The book’s cover art relates to Larry’s world. States artist Jess Albert, “I included the bok choy as a nod to his Chinese heritage and the farm his father worked. Above the bok choy are salmon berries which were included to represent the land of BC, and the salmon for his Musqueam heritage and a nod to the Musqueam people’s flag.” Steedman writes the word Musqueam [cəsna?əm] refers to a flowering plant, probably a tall flowering lily from the Fraser estuary, “but we are not too sure what plant it is,” says Larry.
About the image of the double-headed snake on the cover: that was said to live in Camosun Bog which emanates into the Fraser. “When they were playing in the marshes, Larry and his brothers and sister were haunted by the story of the snake told by their Elders,” Steedman writes.
Larry’s reconciling journey continued when a visit by a Chinese half-sister in 2009 prompted a family trip to China in 2013 to the village of Sei Moon. The trip included the production of a documentary film, All Our Father’s Relations.Larry’s reconciling journey continued when a visit by a Chinese half-sister in 2009 prompted a family trip to China in 2013 to the village of Sei Moon. The trip included the production of a documentary film, All Our Father’s Relations. Scott Steedman concludes, “Larry has come to see that recognizing where your family comes from is important.” Now I will have to see the film!
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Kenneth Favrholdt is a freelance writer, historical geographer, and museologist with a BA and MA (Geography, UBC), a teaching certificate (SFU), and certificates as a museum curator. He spent ten years at the Kamloops Museum & Archives, five at the Secwépemc Museum and Heritage Park, four at the Osoyoos Museum, and was past archivist of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. He has written extensively on local history in Kamloops This Week, the former Kamloops Daily News, the Claresholm Local Press, and other community papers. Ken has also written book reviews for BC Studies and articles for BC History, Canadian Cowboy Country Magazine, Cartographica, Cartouche, and MUSE (magazine of the Canadian Museums Association). He taught geography courses at Thompson Rivers University and edited the Canadian Encyclopedia, geography textbooks, and a commemorative history for the Town of Oliver and Osoyoos Indian Band. Ken has undertaken research for several Interior First Nations and is now working on books on the fur trade of Kamloops and the gold rush journal of John Clapperton, a Nicola Valley pioneer and Caribooite. He lives in Kamloops. [Editor’s note: Kenneth Favrholdt has recently reviewed books by Ross Peck, W. Keith Regular, Dr. Jennifer Grenz, k’ʷunəmɛn Joe Gallagher and John Matterson, Leigh Joseph, and James R. Gibson for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
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Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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