Theirs was the best marriage I've ever seen in my life, bar none. "It was 60 years of love and beautiful, beautiful love. He is the son of legendary caribou hunter and world champion dogsled racer, Joe Highway and bead-worker and quilt-maker artist Pelagie Highway. Tomson described their marriage in Permanent Astonishment as a kind "you can only dream of in Hollywood." "They were married for 60 years," Highway says in this 2021 interview with CBC Radio, tied to the release of his memoir. His caribou-hunting family traversing the tundra, as always in those days, by dogsled, this lake – called Maria (pronounced 'Ma-rye-ah') – is situated some 200 kilometres north of the Indian reserve (Barren Lands) to which he belongs, the village for which is called Brochet ('Bro-shay")." As is described on Highway's own website: "He was born in a tent pitched in a snow bank (in one awful hurry!) on an island in a lake in the remotest reaches of northwestern Manitoba where it meets the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and what, since 1999, has been called Nunavut. He was born the 11th of 12 children on December 6, 1951. Q 19:09 Tomson Highway on Permanent Astonishment and his 'uniquely Canadian' childhood Author and playwright Tomson Highway joined Tom Power to talk about his new memoir, Permanent Astonishment, which explores the joys of growing up in a Northern Cree community. In honour of Highway's latest joyful achievement, we thought we'd run down 10 things about his life and career, with a few notable audio and video clips sprinkled through. "It inspires me, it moves me forward, it makes my spirit dance." "Joy is the very centre of my existence," Highway is quoted as saying on the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards website. And his life outside of his art is just as extraordinary, as detailed in his Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize-winning 2021 memoir, Permanent Astonishment. He is a pianist, songwriter and creator of the libretti for two operas an author of plays, novels, children's books and non-fiction a leader in the creation and development in many Indigenous arts festivals. For this award in particular, Highway is being acknowledged for his work in Canadian theatre, but his creative career is simply too impressive to be reduced to any one category. This weekend, Tomson Highway will receive the Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement at the 2022 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards. This is part of a series of articles about the 2022 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards laureates.