On the eve of Canada Day here’s a submission celebrating some
of what makes this country awesome – vast swaths of wilderness to commune with
nature.
Book: Winner Take
All: The Trans-Canada Canoe Trail
Submitted by: Wesley
Fok
Written by David Lavender and published in 1977, this is one
one of the books in the American Trails Series. A few blurbs from inside:
"First and last it was a commercial highway and in that
respect unique in the English-speaking world. Commerce was not the whole of the
story, however. Adventure, challenge, spaciousness, contact with the Indians
among whom many of the men found enduring loves, the white immensity of winter,
the flash of sunlit water across granite boulders--those things, too, were part
of the lure.
Innocent in their greed, the trail's creators were the first
despoilers of native life, both animal and Indian. But they were not aware of
what they were doing--a doing that many of them cherished intensely. 'They
pulled the wilderness round them like a cloak,' wrote historian Bernard De
Voto; 'they wore its beauty like a crest.' "
--Prologue: A Long Trail Awinding