Christy Jordan-Fenton

Christy Jordan-Fenton was born on a farm in rural Alberta. Her only dreams were to be a cowgirl, to dance with Gene Kelly and to write stories. As a youngster, she barrel-raced, rode on cattle drives, witnessed dozens of brandings, and often woke up on early spring mornings to find lambs, calves, and foals taking refuge in the bathroom.

Her parents divorced when she was seven, and she moved to town. She remembers the strange noise of the traffic at night and would describe the experience like moving to a foreign country. Luckily, she was blessed with a stepfather who loved the outdoors and often took her and her brother on day-long bike rides, and fishing and camping trips. From a young age, she was very aware of how his experiences as a Native affected both his life and the lives of her step-siblings. She has been passionate about Native rights ever since.

Christy attended a rural high school in Ontario with a population of 500 students collected from six different communities. She preferred a dance studio to the classroom and composed volumes of poetry during math classes. She also managed to read nearly every book by Mordecai Richler before graduating. Most of these were read by stealth during lectures.

Having had her head filled with too many lost generation romantic notions, she joined the infantry reserve and spent the next few years traveling from base to base. She was then accepted to Norwich University (VT) in the Corps of Cadets to study Peace, War and Diplomacy. While there, she was part of the Mountain Cold Weather Special Operations Company, played rugby, and often rode crazy carpets down the school’s ski hill.

She was awarded a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship and used it to study at the University of Queensland in Australia. She then returned to the United States where she worked developing a leadership challenge program for disadvantaged youth, and taught wilderness survival; however, unable to shake the travel bug, she left to spend a year in South Africa. Her fondest memories are of reading stories to street children at night.

Western Canada called her home and she traveled across the prairies working in the oil patch and riding bucking horses, before meeting her husband and settling down. They now live on a farm outside of Fort St. John, B.C., and have three small children, a handful of chickens, two rabbits, three dogs, a llama, and enough horses to outfit a small town.

A desire to raise her children with a healthy sense of self-esteem brought her back to her passion for Native issues. She is eternally grateful to her Inuvialuit mother-in-law for sharing her residential school experiences and was thrilled when the opportunity came for her to write about them in Fatty Legs (Fall 2010).

For Christy, dreams do come true. She is a student of natural horsemanship, is a performing cowgirl poet, and her work has appeared in Jones Ave., a quarterly devoted to poetry and reviews. She is currently working on several children’s stories, a novel for adults, and a short story collection. She has yet to dance with Gene Kelly.