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Book Review: Three Against The Wilderness, by Eric Collier
I've been clearing the bookshelves at Dad's home. Some are definitely to discard: they're of no interest, or they're duplicates; others are plausibly to keep; and others are probably worth a read but unlikely to be kept. This fell into that last category. In many cases it's not clear whether a book was initially Mum's or Dad's; this tale of remote Canadian settlement could go either way (I had increasingly distant family on Mum's side, now lost touch, in British Columbia).
Collier abandoned life in Britain in the 1920s as a young man, disinterested in urban life, and emigrated to Canada. In British Columbia he married a woman of part Native American descent, and obtained a land grant of more than 100,000 acres at least 300 kilometres north of Vancouver. This memoir covers the following 30 years or so, starting with nothing but the woods and a tent for shelter, and horses and a wagon for transport.
There's an irony in the early chapters of the book, where Collier attributes the poor land quality to the hunting to local extinction of the beaver for furs. As Collier describes it, the Native Americans, who hunted the beaver to extinction, blamed the white settlers and colonisers for not understanding the limits of the resources available - so much for the overwhelming contemporary perception that indigenous peoples live in balance with nature. But, in understanding and managing the land, Collier first mimics the beavers' actions in replenishing dams to improve and manage water supply and local irrigation, and later, persuades the authorities to reintroduce beavers to the area successfully. It feels in this area that Collier was ahead of his time - or perhaps of his time, given that this was mostly almost a hundred years ago - that one would get better results by working with nature rather than attempting fruitlessly to conquer it.
Collier tells of various episodes where the family is imperilled by nature: often by severe weather, occasionally by aggressive wildlife. Fortunately he never seems to have had serious incidents with the few other humans in the area, and his writing is never anything but respectful to native peoples. On the other hand, his attitudes to gender haven't aged so well, though his wife certainly played as much of an equal role as she was allowed, and the necessity of his situation perhaps made things more progressive on that score than he was comfortable with. His son Veasy was home-schooled, which also seems unusual and difficult in such remote circumstances, but must have been successful. Even in the remotest parts, the twentieth century intervenes: Veasy negotiates the introduction of a jeep for transport, and towards the end of the book he leaves to join the Canadian army and serves in the Korean war.
I've been clearing the bookshelves at Dad's home. Some are definitely to discard: they're of no interest, or they're duplicates; others are plausibly to keep; and others are probably worth a read but unlikely to be kept. This fell into that last category. In many cases it's not clear whether a book was initially Mum's or Dad's; this tale of remote Canadian settlement could go either way (I had increasingly distant family on Mum's side, now lost touch, in British Columbia).
Collier abandoned life in Britain in the 1920s as a young man, disinterested in urban life, and emigrated to Canada. In British Columbia he married a woman of part Native American descent, and obtained a land grant of more than 100,000 acres at least 300 kilometres north of Vancouver. This memoir covers the following 30 years or so, starting with nothing but the woods and a tent for shelter, and horses and a wagon for transport.
There's an irony in the early chapters of the book, where Collier attributes the poor land quality to the hunting to local extinction of the beaver for furs. As Collier describes it, the Native Americans, who hunted the beaver to extinction, blamed the white settlers and colonisers for not understanding the limits of the resources available - so much for the overwhelming contemporary perception that indigenous peoples live in balance with nature. But, in understanding and managing the land, Collier first mimics the beavers' actions in replenishing dams to improve and manage water supply and local irrigation, and later, persuades the authorities to reintroduce beavers to the area successfully. It feels in this area that Collier was ahead of his time - or perhaps of his time, given that this was mostly almost a hundred years ago - that one would get better results by working with nature rather than attempting fruitlessly to conquer it.
Collier tells of various episodes where the family is imperilled by nature: often by severe weather, occasionally by aggressive wildlife. Fortunately he never seems to have had serious incidents with the few other humans in the area, and his writing is never anything but respectful to native peoples. On the other hand, his attitudes to gender haven't aged so well, though his wife certainly played as much of an equal role as she was allowed, and the necessity of his situation perhaps made things more progressive on that score than he was comfortable with. His son Veasy was home-schooled, which also seems unusual and difficult in such remote circumstances, but must have been successful. Even in the remotest parts, the twentieth century intervenes: Veasy negotiates the introduction of a jeep for transport, and towards the end of the book he leaves to join the Canadian army and serves in the Korean war.