M Time Structures and the Healing Aesthetic of Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road N G   - of the way through Three Day Road , a novel portraying the fictional experiences of two Cree men fighting for Canada during the Great War, the historical figure Francis Pegahmagabow, an Ojibwe soldier known for his success as a World War One sniper, finally makes an appearance. Rumours of Pegahmagabow’s feats have reached Boyden’s protagonist, Xavier Bird, and his best friend, Elijah Whiskeyjack; Elijah in particu- lar is keen to compare exploits with “Peggy,” especially to weigh his own kills against those of the infamous “Indian,” rumoured to be “the best hunter of us all” (187). 1 An important objective of this encounter between fictional and historical figures is to emphasize an extratextual function of Three Day Road, which Boyden explicitly delineates in his acknowledgements: “I wish to honour the Native soldiers who fought in the Great War, and in all wars in which they so overwhelmingly vol- unteered. Your bravery and skill do not go unnoticed” (353). Boyden’s use here of a helping verb phrase of negation — “do not” — draws special attention to the main part of the predicate “go unnoticed,” and thus reveals the irony of his claim; the scene featuring Peggy proposes that Aboriginal soldiers were not at all “honoured” for their service in the Great War, and that this service in fact went quite aggressively “unnoticed.” As Boyden himself admits in a recent interview with Herb Wyile, “I think my acknowledgements were more wishful thinking than anything” (222). Peggy frankly asserts, “You know that the wemistiko- shiw [the white men] do not care to believe us when they hear about our kills in the field. . . . We do the nasty work for them and if we return home we will be treated liked pieces of shit once more” (265). Xavier and Elijah are repeatedly treated as second-class citizens: before they enlist for service they are, for example, made to sit in a separate train