November 25, 2025
Small Ceremonies, by Kyle Edwards
As I said a couple of months ago, literary prizes are a scam, AND YET. They’re at their best when they inspire me to read a book I might not have picked up otherwise, in the case of Small Ceremonies, by Kyle Edwards, winner of the 2025 Governor General’s Award for Fiction for English language, and not to be confused with another novel called Small Ceremonies, by a Winnipeg author, Carol Shields’ debut, which isn’t even set in Winnipeg. But in Edwards’ novel, the backdrop is essential, the north end in particular, where friends Clinton Whiteway and Tomahawk “Tommy” Shields are making their way through their final year of high school and playing for the Tigers, their school hockey team, famous for never having won a game, and now the league is trying to push the Tigers out, which makes the prospect of winning more enticing than ever.
The boys have been friends since elementary school, but each one has a different and complicated relationship with the city. Clinton comes from a remote First Nation that his family was forced to leave behind years before after catastrophic flooding destroyed the community, while Tommy grew up in the city and has no experience of rez life, both boys feeling like misfits for different reasons. And the novel follows them and other characters over the course of the school year—Tommy’s sister, a university student; Clinton’s brother, who has just gotten out of jail and back into trouble; Tommy’s mother, adrift in Vancouver’s downtown east side; Clinton’s father, who watches his sons from afar; Clarissa, the intrepid student journalist writing who refuses to stop asking questions about the hockey league’s decision; and Pete Mosienko, who runs the arena, who clears the Tigers’ ice with a shovel and is saving up to finally buy himself an actual Zamboni.
Fierce with humour and heart, this is also a novel that is probably going to break yours, but just let it, and you’ll be glad you did.
