After she and her two children witnessed the shooting of her Métis husband Alex McCauley by a crazed white miner, Cree wife Adelaide McCauley tried nursing him for several days until he died in the remote Robson Valley. Convinced by the friends of her late husband that she must to seek legal justice, she travels 300 miles, mainly on treacherous mountain trails, in the company of her children and also the accused and several witness, to testify at the nearest court in Golden, B.C.--only to have a mistrial declared. Whereas she had a sympathetic translator for the first trial, Adelaide McCauley finds herself overwhelmed by disrespect and prejudice during the second trial--after which her husband's accused murderer is released. Impatient with the white justice system with which she was reluctant to approach in the first place, Adelaide McCauley disappears into the northern wilderness with her children. Margaret McKirdy, a longtime resident of Valemont, uncovered some letters regarding the death of Alex McCauley and recalled the case in The Colour of Gold (Caitlin, 1997). 0-920576-66-4

[BCBW 1997] "First Nations"