Fire In The Bones: Bill Mason and the Canadian Canoeing Tradition

by James Raffan

Overview

When Bill Mason set off alone into the wilderness in his red canoe, many people went with him, if only in their imaginations. Now, James Raffan leads us into the heart of the vast landscape that was Bill Mason's own brilliant imagination, on a biographical journey that is entertaining, enriching and inspiring. Bill Mason was a filmmaker who gave us classics such as Cry of the Wild and Paddle to the Sea; he was author of the canoeist's bible, Path of the Paddle; he was the consummate outdoorsman. But few Canadians know that his gentleness and rugged self-sufficiency masked a life of great physical struggles. James Raffan reveals the private, sometimes anguished, man behind the legend.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781443402613
Publisher:	HarperCollins Canada
Publication date:	11/09/2010
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	324
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

James Raffan is one of our foremost authorities on the North, the wilderness and the canoeing tradition. He is the author of Fire in the Bones, the acclaimed bestselling biography of Bill Mason; Bark, Skin and Cedar: Exploring the Canoe in Canadian Experience; and Deep Waters. He is also the editor of Rendezvous with the Wild: The Boreal Forest and The Lure of Faraway Places. Raffan is a fellow and former governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and has served as chair of the Arctic Institute of North America. A recipient of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal, he is the curator of the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough. He lives in Seeley's Bay, Ontario.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgements	ix
	Introduction	xiii
1	The Man and the Red Canoe	1
2	Canoes at Grand Beach	6
3	Red River Days	19
4	First Night Out	29
5	Growing Time	40
6	Weekends in Whiteshell	49
7	Heaven on Earth	65
8	Quetico	85
9	Early Days at Meech Lake	96
10	Paddle to the Sea	122
11	A Rising Star	143
12	Company of Wolves	158
13	Watershed	179
14	Mr. Canoehead	193
15	God on Water	215
16	Impossible Feature	233
17	The Empty Red Canoe	258
	Afterword	273
	Endnotes	275
	Filmography / Bibliography	285
	Index	291

Editorial Reviews

An admiring, rather placid biography of the Canadian filmmaker and wilderness proponent Bill Mason.

Mason is best known for his films: Paddle to the Sea, adapted from a children's book about a little carved Indian canoeing and adventuring from Lake Superior to the Atlantic, and Cry of the Wild, his short feature in praise of wolves. He was also the author of several bestselling books on canoeing techniques and history (Path of the Paddle and Song of the Paddle). He brought to all of his various labors both knowledge and love of the great outdoors, as well as doses of Christian sermonizing. It didn't hurt that just as Mason was refining his artistry, during the 1960s and '70s, a great wave of environmental appreciation and concern broke across North America and Europe, giving his material additional currency and power. Raffan's (Outdoor and Experiential Education/Queens Univ., Ontario) biography is a linear model, starting at the beginning—Mason's early days in Winnipeg, his schooling, with much consideration given to his short stature—on through his start in commercial art and photography, his marriage and family life, his breakthrough into directing films, his abandonment of filmmaking and retreat into painting (no critical success there, nor much self-satisfaction), to his death at 59, in 1988, of cancer. There are plenty of excerpts from his journals and letters, but a clear picture of the man never emerges. Perhaps this has to do with Mason's religious bent, with which Raffan seems uncomfortable; you can almost feel him cringe when Mason talks of nature as "God's creation" and refers to the outdoors as "this blessed wilderness." Raffan is much happier with Mason the environmental advocate, the canoeist, the guy who should have been a voyageur but was born 200 years too late.

Lots of facts, background, and stories, but Mason never gets the breath of life from Raffan.

Kirkus Reviews