Our Trail Led Northwest

Susan Brown is a B.C. horticulturist, permaculture designer, and early
childhood education instructor.

In 1933 Madge Jones was a young college teacher in Kansas who had a
youthful dream of visiting British Columbia. Soon thereafter she met and
married Joe Mandy, an engineer with the B.C. Department of Mines, and
her quiet, academic life was suddenly replaced by dugout canoes, river
boats, horses, backpacks, and bush planes as she traveled throughout the
B.C. Coast Mountains, the Queen Charlotte Islands, and the Stikine River
region.

Mandy, who completed this book at age 88, describes her western
adventure as follows: “I share some highlights through dramatic and
amusing incidents on the trail, in mining camps and isolated
settlements, in lone cabins and in acquaintance with optimistic
prospectors, hardy pioneers and Indians of the wilds.” Black-and-white
photos accompanying these highlights depict the stunning wilderness.

While an excess of names and logistical details may occasionally become
tedious, this is nonetheless a well-written and involving heritage
story.