Tomson Highway: Permanent astonishment

“Cree is a joyful language and that’s why I laugh all the time.” Tomson Highway

Author, composer, two-spirit, playwright, pianist, and world traveller Tomson Highway is the subject of a new feature documentary commissioned by CBC’s documentary channel. Directed by Cree/Metis filmmaker, Barbara Todd Hager, the film will follow Tomson as he travels to his childhood homeland at Reindeer Lake in northern Manitoba, to the National Arts Centre theatre where his upcoming play, Rose, will premiere in 2026, and to his writing studio in Quebec where his plays and musicals come to life.

Since his first play, The Rez Sisters, premiered at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto in 1986, Highway has gifted the world with multiple award-winning plays, books, cabarets, and albums based on the people, places, and experiences amassed during his seven decades of life.

The documentary, infused with Tomson’s superpowers—laughter and his Cree language—will offer a rare glimpse into the creative life of one of Canada’s artistic icons. It will feature an memorable dinner scene with Tomson and some of the prominent Indigenous writers, actors, and musicians he has worked with over the past 50 years. The film will also see Tomson boating in Reindeer Lake in northern Manitoba, the childhood landscape that where he spent summers exploring islands with his brother René and his father, Joe, a fishing guide, caribou hunter and champion dog sled racer. Tomson’s early experiences at Reindeer Lake, from listening to country music for the first time, going to funerals in Brochet, and hiking through the spellbinding landscape of his childhood, have inspired his plays, books and music today. 

Inspired by his memoir Permanent Astonishment (Doubleday), the documentary will reveal stories from his childhood and later years, while celebrating Tomson’s unique Cree-influenced view of life and storytelling.