BOOK Grey Owl and Me Stories from the Trail and Beyond by Hap Wilson Illustrated by Hap Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner Hap Wilson has come out with his third memoir, Grey Owl and Me. Like its predecessors, The Cabin and Trails and Tribulations, it takes us on another passionate journey through his outsized life. There are canoe trips across the Barrens, a Hollywood cameo teaching Pierce Brosnan to throw knives, the battle against chainsaws in Temagami and a media-gig-gone-bad when angry Maritime sealers send him fleeing into a wintry night. If you are looking for tips on bush life, he offers those too. “How do you properly cook a loon? You throw a rock in the pot with the loon, and then when you can stick a fork in the rock, you throw away the loon and eat the rock.” Between his wilderness adventures and media profile, he has been swaddled in glamour. If there was an Outside magazine list of the most lithe and ruggedly handsome adventurers of the year, he’d be on it. But scratch the surface and there is peeling paint. Physically he has been hobbled by his harsh outdoor life at the knees, requiring repeated surgery. There is also a tragic trail: broken marriages. It is hard not to see all of these as parallels to the other icon of the Temagami wilds: Grey Owl, the conservationist and author.  About a third of the book is Hap's struggle to come to terms with their distant yet linked lives. The rest of the book covers his adventures. If you enjoyed his other hilarious and jaw-dropping memoirs, you won’t be disappointed. This one, too, is sprinkled with sparks of brilliant and insightful writing. There are pen-and-ink illustrations throughout by Hap and Ingrid Zschogner that complement the narrative. My favourite is Grey Owl riding a Harley. I am an old friend of Hap’s and glad to be on his good side. I would not want to have taken the drubbing he gives Pierce Brosnan. For that rough and tumble tale, you will have to, no, must read the book. — Reviewed September 12, 2010 by Brian Back Paperback: 244 pp, $26.99 CDN Publisher: Natural Heritage Books Availability: Bookstores and Chat Noir Books, New Liskeard   BACKGROUND: Hap Wilson bio                         Books by Hap

BOOK Ontario's Old-Growth Forests A Guidebook Complete with History, Ecology, and Maps by Michael Henry and Peter Quinby It is not often that a book comes along that reveals the uniqueness of Temagami and deepens our understanding of it. This is one such book. Although it is devoted to all of Ontario’s old growth forests, Temagami is in the orchestra seats.

A must read

Michael Henry and Peter Quinby began the book six years ago with the intention of writing a hiking guide to the most interesting and most accessible old-growth stands. I was excited because people wanted to visit these newly revealed Valhallas, but there was no list or published maps to them, except to some stands in Temagami. I was also disappointed because Henry and Quinby are two rare experts on old growth in eastern Canada. No, that’s not a good description. Their knowledge makes them national treasures. They should have been writing more than a guide book. They should have been producing the old-growth Gospels.

McLaren Forest giant off Hwy 11

When Henry asked me to contribute pieces on Alex Mathias and the Red Squirrel blockades, I could see the project growing. Now, I look at the book with its colour photos, colour maps, natural history, human history, and large format, and it has exceeded my hopes. Despite the authors’ scientific pedigree, the writing is down to earth and lively. If you want to learn about old growth — which is not just old trees, but old ecosystems with old trees — this is the book. If you want to see a new dimension to Temagami, this is the book. Ironically, it was made possible by the Temagaminvironmental battle. The Temagami Wilderness Society was fighting the Red Squirrel Road expansion in 1987 and we were trying to learn as much as we could about the forest they planned to log. I was the executive director, but not a naturalist. So I had to learn to explore the forest in a way I had never as a canoeist.

During tours led by foresters of the pine stands designated to be logged, it became obvious that there were similarities to the old growth on the West Coast. But no one had ever made the connection. No one thought of them as remotely old growth. I did. But I got no respect. We needed an independent scientist to say it. I went looking in the winter of 1988, but found no one who had done any research. That is how Peter Quinby, then a newly minted forest-ecology doctorate, and I met. The Temagami Wilderness Society decided to undertake the research, and were calling it the Tall Pines Project. We needed a research scientist. Quinby got the job. After a summer of field research, he was excited by what he found and wrote the original scientific papers on old-growth forest in eastern North America. He went on to become an authority on eastern old growth and launched Ancient Forest Exploration & Research. Quinby recruited Henry to AFER 13 years ago. They have spent that time finding old-growth stands across Ontario along with their inhabitants — red crossbill, pine marten, silver-haired bat, hoary bat, little brown bat and northern long-eared bat. Henry and Quinby found the Blueberry Lake old growth and built the trails. They found the 500-year-old cedar on an island on Lake Temagami. They found the 400-year-old white pine in the White Bear Forest off Snake Island Lake and the one near Marten River. They found a large portion of the Spanish River old growth, the Burnroot Lake hemlock forest in Algonquin Park, and a number of the oldest and biggest trees in Ontario. Their work led to permanent protection for ancient stands across central and northern Ontario. Did you know there is rainforest in Ontario? There is, and it is boreal forest. I had thought boreal rainforest was a nonsequitur. It is rare, and normally close to oceans. Oddly this one lies on the northeast shore of Lake Superior, not on salt water. Old growth stands are not easy to visit, and it was often this inaccessibility that saved them from the saw. But if you want an easy treat you can visit one old giant — 127 centimetres in diameter and likely 400 to 500 years of age — on your next drive north. Look up the McLaren Forest section for directions. This tree, one of the largest in Ontario, is just north of Marten River, 50 metres off Hwy 11! There are guides and maps to a number of Temagami stands: Obabika North, Lake Temagami's Skyline Reserve and islands, Temagami Island, White Bear Forest, Rabbit Lake West Conservation Reserve, Cassels Lake Narrows, Blueberry Lake Forest, and Wolf Lake. These two have their feet planted on the cutting edge of science and discovery. Join them in discovering the new in the old. — Reviewed December 9, 2009 by Brian Back Paperback: 232 pp, $40.00 CDN Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Dimensions: 8 x 10 in. Availability: All bookstores, offered as low as $25   EXTERNAL WEBSITES:  Table of Contents                                    Official book site                                   Ancient Forest Exploration & Research

 

BOOK Trails and Tribulations Confessions of a Wilderness Pathfinder by Hap Wilson Have you ever dreamt of splitting for the freedom of the bush and starting over? If so, you have a mentor in Hap Wilson. Splice together the DNA of Grey Owl, Tom Thomson and Wade Davis, and voila, there's Hap. He was Pierce Brosnan’s paddling and axe-throwing instructor for his role in Grey Owl. Paddler magazine enshrined him as a Canadian Paddler of the Century. His prowess and reputation were birthed and nursed in Temagami. The 1960s marked the death throes of bush life. Trapping, the only source of income to be made from living in the backcountry, could no longer support a family. Ethno-geographer Craig Macdonald's nastawgan map has blank areas because his 1970s research could find no one left from those old neighbourhoods to trace the trails. Hap arrived in Temagami during these sunset years, bent on turning the clock back. As he described in his most-recent book, The Cabin, he spent a few years over-wintering in various buildings he constructed, but those efforts produced no income. At least once, illegal occupation of Crown land had to be terminated before the law caught up. He got a job working for MNR as backcountry ranger — one of the last before the babiche seat was replaced by the swivel chair —and somehow convinced his boss to publish his book of canoe routes. That book, Temagami Canoe Routes, with its hand-drawn maps and pen-and-ink illustrations became the first published maps of the area’s routes. It put the romance in Temagami and Temagami put the romance in it. The book’s success launched his reputation as the monarch of muskeg.   He got no royalties so he scraped together a living in the off-season with art commissions. But he and his wife came up with a better idea: Smoothwater Outfitters, a business that outfitted and guided trips for Yuppies and Europeans. It is still operating today, though Hap is no longer connected with it. That is freedom, you say. He calculates that he has travelled 60,000 kilometres in a canoe – a quarter under it on portages. In four decades he has had more adventures than the rest of us could expect in four lifetimes. Oh, yes, freedom. In the years I have known him, he has never been afraid to say bluntly what was on his mind, even in public, thereby earning a reputation as the Bad Boy of the Bush (to date no indictments have been announced). It didn’t matter if he was bashing MNR, the logging companies or local politicians. That frankness makes Trails and Tribulations a rewarding read.  “In my opinion,” he writes, “Temagami is a rather unprogressive town. It prides itself on its ability not to attract business or tourists.” Many of the chapters delve into threats to the wilderness but often Hap charges after not-so-obvious targets. He cannot tolerate those who oppose the plundering of the forest yet fail to walk softly themselves, even if they are friends like “Mr. Flagging Tape.” Many of us will recognize this thinly disguised villain who has marked portages for clearing with “festoons of the tape, hanging like Tibetans’ prayer flags.” And he doesn’t spare himself when swinging the brush axe. He confesses that he used his outfitting business to try to protect the old growth by assisting people in getting there, but in the act they trampled the ecosystem. “Humans do have a way of ‘loving things to death.’ And I was a part of the problem.” There is no shortage of humour. While spending the night in the Maple Mountain fire tower with some buddies, they urinated out the windows, accidentally spraying his wife as she stepped out of her tent below. That is freedom. While working as a ranger on the Maple Mountain tower trail he encountered someone descending with an aluminum canoe. The portager bragged that he was the first to take a canoe to the top. Hap took morbid pleasure in deflating his reverie by telling him that a Keewaydin guide had done it the year before. These kinds of books usually revel in the glamour and the adventure, but as he relates stories of deranged customers, you realize all is not sunny in paradise. “If you worship the outdoors,” he writes, “if you love Nature in all its splendor; if you are a devoted participant in canoeing, kayaking, hiking or skiing… then my best advice to you is not to go into business as an adventure outfitter.” Why, you ask? “Because you will become bitter, resentful, stale, cynical, jealous…” Though he does admit — thereby proving that I might have chosen the wrong line of work — the sex was great. Although the wilderness stories and essays are not limited to Temagami, the themes are universal to anywhere you can float a canoe. It is his best book yet and does not suffer the poor editing of the last. If you can steal some time from dreaming about your next trip to Florence Lake then read this memoir. As he says, “We lust after other people’s freedom.” But after a lifetime of freedom, was he really free? Read it, and decide. — Reviewed November 12, 2009 by Brian Back Paperback: 216 pp, $26.99 CDN Publisher: Natural Heritage Books Availability: Bookstores and Chat Noir Books, New Liskeard   BACKGROUND: Hap Wilson bio                         Books by Hap

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