Father Goose: The Adventures of a Wildlife Hero

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Few things touch the human soul quite like the sight of migrating Canada
geese. There’s something hauntingly beautiful about the V-shaped
skeins moving across the sky, their soft gabble of goose voices drifting
down to us as if from another world. William Lishman, a sculptor and
tinkerer, was drawn into the magic of the flock in flight and decided he
had to experience the sensation first-hand.

This book is an account of the various threads in Lishman’s life and
how they contributed to his ultimate experience, leading a group of
imprinted Canadas on a migration flight from Ontario to Virginia. In an
ultralight plane of his own contrivance, Lishman led his flock across
Lake Ontario and the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia, through fog
and turbulence, to a wintering site. His reward for this complex and
risky undertaking was both the joy of flying with the geese and the
satisfaction of seeing the flock return to their Ontario home the
following spring.

The book is heavy on specific details and visual images, yet the pace
is brisk and there’s never a sense of the tale being waylaid by the
detail. The photos, although small, are great.

I expected to enjoy the book—and I did—because of my interest in
birds and the mystery of migration. The surprise is that I also enjoyed
it as a portrait of what determination and tinkering can accomplish. The
fly-with-the-geese project was not sponsored by august international
organizations or bolstered by government grants. Lishman and a few
buddies pulled it off using bits of recycled scrap, favors from friends
of friends, a little capital from his wife’s business, and lots of
determined slogging around in muddy fields.

While it is Lishman’s story, at every opportunity he yields the
limelight to the geese; his sense of wonder at these birds is always
close to the surface. The result is very readable nonfiction that both
informs and entertains.