‘We’re not allowed to write books…. We’re not allowed to write stories!’

Yellowknife born and raised writer, educator and filmmaker, Jamesie Fournier, is best known for his horror fiction including his debut book, “The Other Ones” that was published in 2022. Since then he has evolved not only in his professional credentials but his connection to his language which has brought him closer to his true self.

Jamesie Fournier: “My name is Jamesie Fournier. I am from Yellowknife originally, but I’ve been living in Iqaluit for the last four years, I moved there to start learning Inuktitut with the Piruvik Language School, and I am a writer and an educator and a filmmaker now. And I also coordinate the Nunavut International Film Festival, and so I spend my years going in between Iqaluit, Toronto, and Yellowknife here, where I grew up, where I have so many family and connections, and that is what brings me here today. Being able to come and talk to you.”

CKLB: “One of the questions I like to ask people is, how did you get here? Tell me about your journey so far.”

Jamesie Fournier: “I guess what it started is I always enjoyed writing growing up. I always enjoyed writing poetry. I think I discovered I liked writing poetry in grade five or six, and my teacher, he had told me once, because I was looking forward to the poetry module in our English class, and he’s like,” you know, you can just do that anytime you want, Jamesie. You don’t have to wait for us.” I’m like, oh, and it’s a big watershed moment for me, as silly as that sounds. And so I really got into just writing little poems when I should be paying attention in class, and then also having like just a great imagination. I grew up, you know, obsessing over movies and comic books, which I still do, and just loving stories and words, and eventually literature when I started writing, reading books. But I wrote a scary story once called The Other Ones and that when I took influence when I was going ice fishing around Fort Smith, and I lost this beautiful ice chisel that someone had made, and I threw it to the bottom of the lake. I chipped through the ice and went whoop.

“He had spent a whole year making this. He hand carved it. He soaked it. He hung it from the rafters for a year and made this beautiful chisel that he put the finish on it. He’s like, okay, wrap it around your wrist. Just whatever you do, we don’t want to lose it. I’m like, got it. And I threw that thing about promptly, almost immediately, into the lake. And there’s nothing we could do but watch it sink to the bottom. And on the top of the ice, we’re like, oh no, I wish there was someone underneath the water who can get that. And that’s remembered from our cultural storytelling. Inuit storytelling, we have we do have a creature who lives underneath the ice. He’s the Qallupiluk, and right then and there, I had my love of horror films and my love of our traditional stories, and they met and like I need to go write this story, and so I wrote the story and I submitted it to Inhabit, and sure enough, they accepted it.

“It’s like wow, wow, this is really happening. I’m going to have a book, and so we started going through the process of editing it and going finding in the right artist and the drafts, and that was a whole lovely thing. And that’s when I heard that there was a language school in Iqaluit who is teaching Inuktitut for Inuit who wanted to learn Inuktitut as a second language. And I was like, wow, that’s exactly like me, like the idea of ever getting more education. It never really occurred to us to me as something I want to do. I got my bachelor of education from Aurora College in Fort Smith, and I was teaching in Fort Smith at the high school for about six years. And you know, I had no designs for getting more education. Like that’s it. I got the job. I’m good to go. And then I heard about this thing about learning native as a second language. I was like, “That’s amazing! I want to do that.” So I asked my publisher. I’m like, Do you guys have a place to stay? Sure, Jamie. Come on this way. We’ll get you a room. Hey, no. Hey, maybe we’ll give you a little project or two. And now here we are, four years later, and I’m directing, doing many projects with them, so that is about it.”

CKLB: “What was a driving force for you?”

Jamesie Fournier: “Driving force for me. I remember just wanting to tell a story before, and I remember meeting Richard Van Camp when he’s going to the high schools and whatnot. And I remember thinking, I was thinking I was in grade five or six when the Lesser Blessed came out, and my first reaction hearing about this is about this guy who had wrote a novel that featured Yellowknife and Fort Smith in it, my and this native guy, Tlicho, and then I’m like, we’re not allowed. We’re not allowed to write books. We’re not allowed to write stories. Who let this guy do that? It’s something so ridiculous a thought that I didn’t really think it was there in my mind until it was challenged. And I’m like, oh my god! Like if he could do it, like that means could I do something, something like that? Like all of a sudden, there was an opportunity I didn’t even know that was there.

“And you got to confront all the things about yourself that are problematic. So it’s a big, big healing journeys. You let your ego go, and I think we all have. To go through that as we as we get older, as the kind of fire of youth is burns away a little bit, then we’re left with this kind of charred fragment. And so I had to look at some of the behaviors I had, and I know that like I had problems with partying and with alcohol, and so having to confront those bits about yourself, right? So I had to start going down that path, and that was not fun, right? And you start learning your emotions all over again. Like, I’m having emotions, and I can’t just run to whatever vice about this. Like, this is terrible. what do I eat? I’m like, I don’t know. What kind of food do I like? Like, I genuinely don’t know these answers to these questions. So, in that, it’s been in the fun part of discovery.”

CKLB: “How do you define success?

Jamesie Fournier: “You know, I think what’s making you happy, right? If you’re doing the work that you love to do, because I know that when I first left school, and I was just working in kitchens, various different restaurants with professionals, and just I liked that working in kitchens at the time because it was very physical. It’s almost like brainless. You can say I enjoyed success doing that, but also, it’s just like it comes at such a heavy cost, right? Being able to be successful is, I guess, enjoying what you do, right? And so I know, like when I was a teacher, you know, what was the best approach to being able to handle this and give a little bit of my experience. Now I get to you know work within stories, film scripts, audio plays. I’m gonna be writing a radio drama now. That’s cool. Producing, directing, and coordinating film festivals. That’s another thing. Is that I have one of those minds where you just have bank up all that useless movie trivia. It’s just a skill that is completely useless, unless you’re organizing a film festival. Because I found like this is the one where like I could use this knowledge. Like I know who that director is, and I know what film that is, and what the actors are, and who made that, and who do I need to contact about this. All of a sudden, like I found a use for this useless trait. Success is being able to see, like you know, I’m kind of lucky to be able to do the work that I am doing now.”

CKLB: “At what point did you know that you made it as a writer?”

Jamesie Fournier: “I think the first moment that I felt like I actually had made it as a writer is not when I had my first book, but for some reason when I got a bookmark made of my own book, like I had my own like swag or something, and I’m like, oh my god! Like, but having that that bookmark from the first book, and it had the spooky, the horror image of the guy shaped. I’m like, that’s real, and none of that. And recently, we just made the trailer for the film for my horror story. We finished making the film, and we have it’s going on the film festivals now across the world. That’s all very exciting. Part of that process is like, well, we need a trailer to promote the film. We had our brilliant editors there at work and with the stop motion department, the production company that did the film, and they made a trailer, and it is fantastic. It is so cool. It is just like you know, a teaser trailer, like 30 seconds, less than a minute long. And after seeing at the end of the trailer, I’m just sitting there, kind of speechless. I have a trailer. I’m like, how cool is that? I’m like, you also have a film for the trailer. Like, it doesn’t matter. I have the one-minute sizzle reel. It’s good enough for me!”

CKLB: “When you were a kid, did you ever think that this was going to be your life? What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

Jamesie Fournier: “When I was kid, no, I never thought that would end up being a writer or a filmmaker. I know I wanted to be. I think when we were young, we started seeing, discovering film as an art form. I know that when I went when I first went away to post secondary, I was taking film studies at Carleton University. I only made it like two years into that before I dropped out because I think I became somewhat disillusioned with it because I didn’t know the difference between film studies and filmmaking. I never really thought that would end up going down this path. I think I can’t quite remember. I think I remember like just wanting to be a cook when I was going out of school, and I you know I went ahead and did that. And yeah, I thought well this is fun, but I can’t see myself doing this like forever.

“But no, I never really saw myself as being a creative full time. It was something I knew that I wanted to be able to do, but I didn’t really believe that it was possible. For me, I had a there’s a bit of a transition period of about a year or so. I said, yeah, that’s great. I’ll just go to work. I’ll write eight hours a day, and then I’ll go at night and just write eight hours a night, and I’ll just do that forever, and it’ll be awesome. And no, it very quickly turned out to be not awesome. Like, what have I done? So having to develop that, I guess that alternate persona. Like, no, there’s work Jamesie, who does these official businessy business of work things and writing projects that I need to. And then being able to make a little bit of time in my off time to pursue the things that I want to be able to do, and so being able to pursue it like that, like still working in the creative industry, and so that part has made it fulfilling of being able to help you know other voices and illustrators and creatives and you know, language academics, and being able to work within my culture, within our culture, and within our language.

“Like that part has been satisfying at a level that I never would have thought of. And so I was really lucky that when I had first moved to Iqaluit to start learning Inuktitut, that has given me this basis that I can you know do things like work with voice actors, right? And being able to kind of proofread and read along with them. Had I not had that extra year of language instruction, I wouldn’t feel confident in in taking on these roles. And so now I get to work within publishing and production, and being able to utilize my background as a teacher and being able to educate youth. We just finished doing a youth workshop in Iqaluit with the youth, so within the Baffin communities, where we taught them the kind of basics of publishing and of digital illustration and design, so that they can see it as something accessible and something that they can work at as a viable career, and being able to avoid burnout and frustration. Right. So, being able to put all these different elements together in a way that’s able to help next generations-that part again is another satisfying element. Again, I would have never seen coming.”

CKLB: “What are some words of wisdom?”

Jamesie Fournier: “Being able to pursue what you love and just having an interest and know that it’s okay to have interests. I think that’s a lot of people can get caught up in the fact of that they’re afraid to like something, and I think being able to maintain that level of curiosity and fascination that we have in the world, I think that is definitely something that we need, and people want to hear that, right? Because no one else sees it the way that you see it, right? That and being able to make a decision, then no matter what industry that is, whether it is going into cooking or education or going into working in publishing or working in production, like a lot of times people will come down to a moment where a decision has to be made. But being okay in a position where it’s okay to make a decision, no matter what, and if it’s the wrong one, that’s the wrong one. That’s okay. Moving on, we’ll deal with that. The important part is being able to choose a direction, and if it’s not the right one, that’s okay too.”

CKLB: “I definitely appreciate the time that you took to chat with us. It is very inspirational to watch you.

Jamesie Fournier: “Thank you, Stacie.”

Stacie Arden Smith, Native Communications Society of the NWT, CKLB Radio, Local Journalism Initiative