Northwords NWT
Box 1256 X1A 2N9 Yellowknife, NT, Canada

My fave books of 2020! Bravo, everyone!! ... Richard Van Camp

2021 Canadian Writing Contests held in Canada

Tonight at 7pm is Jamie Bastedo's virtual book launch! Just click the link in the Facebook event.

Breaking Trail by Fran Hurcomb I’m putting the author’s email right up front because this is a book you should buy [email protected], $25.00, that includes ...postage. I’m also including the Yellowknife Book Cellar, Judith Drennan, 4921 49st, Yellowknife, X1A 2N9. I ordered a copy from Fran as soon as it became available and I have not been disappointed. As a matter of fact as I read her stories about a woman in a man’s world in Northern Canada, it made me wish that some of the women I knew (like my mother) had written about their lives and experiences in the North. Women did cook and clean fish and lift nets and run trap lines. However, they were swamped by their nearly all male worlds. Their voices were drowned out. As Fran says, these are stories about life in Yellowknife in the 70s and 80s. They are also stories about life in northern Manitoba, at the fish camps, and trapping lines and logging areas of the time. She brings that time to life. I met Fran at the annual Northwords Festival two years ago. She gave me a tour of Old Town and new Yellowknife. She had come to Yellowknife not knowing what to expect but there were jobs and Finding Old Town and this shack had sealed the deal for all of us. That was the adventure we were craving. It was a time of young people wanting to leave the city and seek a life more in tune with nature. What appeared were jobs in mines, on exploration crews, in bars, cafes. Life would rapidly change. She says In the south we had all been vegetarians. Lentils, brown rice, chickpeas, eggs, almonds, and vegetables. In two months they were eating fish and then caribou. Her description made me laugh out loud as I remembered lifting nets in winter with my father at his fish camp. When we got back and had supper, I ate not one but two large steaks including every scrap of fat. The cold and the wind whip calories off you and drive your need for meat and fat. She tells stories about the eccentrics who lived in Old Town. There’s Stumpy and Dirty Don, Gord the marijuana grower, and Elvis and Joe, (whose exploits in the bush, on the lake, and in town were the stuff of legends. And Margaret: Queen of the Streets, Master of the Post Office Gang, Ruler of the Unruly who had a heart of gold and fists of iron. When I was in Yellowknife, I was taken not once but twice to the Wildcat Café built in 1937, abandoned, then resurrected. It has since become a proud historic site that serves great food. When I said I had celiac disease, the cook whipped up fresh whitefish and salad. Fran worked as a waitress there shortly after it opened. There’s a lot about dogs in these stories. Fran says that she knew she wanted a dog team when she was ten years old and living in Ottawa with her parents. Maybe that early dream is what sent her and her 1966 Valiant on her trip to Yellowknife. Lots of people like dogs, love dogs, but those are pets. Sleigh dogs are not pets. I’m old enough that I remember dog teams used on Lake Winnipeg by fishermen. My father had lots of stories about the dog team chained in his parents’ yard and how he and his brothers were responsible for feeding them. Sleigh dogs eat fish and Great Slave and Lake Winnipeg were full of fish but if each dog got three fish a day and you had twelve dogs, you needed to catch thirty-six fish a day plus some for yourself. I was terrified of sleigh dogs because when I was in grade three, I watched two sleigh dogs that got loose, attack and tear a classmates small white dog to pieces. In the 70s and 80s snow cats were something new and often unreliable. In the North, unreliable can mean dying in the ice and snow. Sleigh dogs were an essential backup. Fran not only trained her dogs but raced them and one of the stories is about one of her races. I’ve read Breaking Trail once. I’ll read it again. I read it the first time like a hungry man bolting down a meal at The Wildcat Café. The second time, I’m going to savour it. Although it is about early days in Yellowknife and a woman’s place in it, time and again I found myself saying yeah to detail after detail, to attitudes and people. It's a great Christmas gift. You can order it directly from Fran. Her address is [email protected], $25.00, including postage.

A wonderful review by our friend WD Valgardson of Fran Hurcomb’s new book. Now for sale at the Yellowknife Book Cellar