If you haven't already read this do yourselves a big favour and get hold of a copy (amazon currently have 2 in used condition for sale) quite possibly the best piece of non fiction I have ever read!
One of the most famous books about Canadian province British Columbia, Eric Collier's gripping Chilcotin memoir `Three Against the Wilderness' (1959) is a classic homesteading account. Born in Northampton, England in 1903, Eric married a girl of Indian descent, Lillian Ross, in 1928. Two years later, in spite of his wife's hip deformity due to a childhood accident, the couple took a wagon, three horses and their 18-month-old son Veasy, along with a tent, some provisions and $33, and reached the Stack Valley where they lived in an abandoned cabin. In a few years they relocated to Meldrum Creek, ten miles away, where they lived in a tent and built their own cabin. He and his wife Lillian had promised her 97-year-old grandmother, LaLa, to bring the beavers back to the area that she knew as a child before the white man came. Collier imported several pair of beaver, and raised the area's water table sufficiently to reinstate the beaver population. He encouraged more humane trapping methods and increasingly turned his hand to writing. In 1949 he was the first non-American to win Outdoor Life's Conservation Award and in the 1950s the staff at Outdoor Life encouraged him to consider writing a book about his experiences as a pioneering conservationist and trapper. Written by longhand and then transcribed onto his Remington typewriter, Collier's recollections of 26 years of family life and 'roughing it in the bush' for Three Against the Wilderness (1959) were a hit, and soon condensed by Reader's Digest and re-sold in at least seven translations around the world.
One of the most famous books about Canadian province British Columbia, Eric Collier's gripping Chilcotin memoir `Three Against the Wilderness' (1959) is a classic homesteading account. Born in Northampton, England in 1903, Eric married a girl of Indian descent, Lillian Ross, in 1928. Two years later, in spite of his wife's hip deformity due to a childhood accident, the couple took a wagon, three horses and their 18-month-old son Veasy, along with a tent, some provisions and $33, and reached the Stack Valley where they lived in an abandoned cabin. In a few years they relocated to Meldrum Creek, ten miles away, where they lived in a tent and built their own cabin. He and his wife Lillian had promised her 97-year-old grandmother, LaLa, to bring the beavers back to the area that she knew as a child before the white man came. Collier imported several pair of beaver, and raised the area's water table sufficiently to reinstate the beaver population. He encouraged more humane trapping methods and increasingly turned his hand to writing. In 1949 he was the first non-American to win Outdoor Life's Conservation Award and in the 1950s the staff at Outdoor Life encouraged him to consider writing a book about his experiences as a pioneering conservationist and trapper. Written by longhand and then transcribed onto his Remington typewriter, Collier's recollections of 26 years of family life and 'roughing it in the bush' for Three Against the Wilderness (1959) were a hit, and soon condensed by Reader's Digest and re-sold in at least seven translations around the world.
. I can undertand why John won't lend his copy I feel pretty much the same about mine 
