The Lady and the Trapper

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Mary Walker is the “lady” of this title. In October 1989 and March
1990 she chased and caught a dream: that of living the life of a
Northern trapper before this traditional way of life vanishes forever.
Labrador’s Horace Goudie was the man who shared with her the pattern
of his working life—the skills, the joys, and hardships of being a
trapper. Together they tended his trapline in Kenamu. It was an
adventure and an education, which Walker recorded in a detailed diary
and shared with her friend Horace. Few people not born to the North will
willingly share such a gruelling experience; many will envy Walker’s
exposure to the unspoiled beauty of almost untrodden country, but very
few indeed will share the trapper’s apparent nostalgia for the
leg-hold traps he is using for the last time (outlawed in 1990, they
must now be replaced by conibear traps). Illustrated with several
photographs of the author and Goudie on the trapline and at his camp:
badly served by unattractive cover art.