The Autobiography of a Fisherman

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review and an instructor
of Liturgy, Anglican Studies Program, Regent College, Vancouver.

A forgotten bit of Canadian fly-fishing history has been returned to us
not by a sports publishing firm, but by an academic publisher. That is a
shame, for it means that flyfishers, the people who will want to read
and talk about such a book, may never know of its existence because
outdoors stores may not know of it to stock it.

First published in 1927 when Nova Scotian Frank Parker Day was 46 years
old, it chronicles his life as he remembers it from age four to 45. The
world view through which he recounts his life is fly-fishing for trout.
At age four he caught his first brook trout with a line, hook, and worm.
For the next 13 years he pursued trout with poles cut from trees
streamside as needed and a worm on a hook. But at age 17 he discovered
fly-fishing, and from that time on fly-fishing for trout on brooks,
lakes, and rivers was his passion. What he chronicles of his
postgraduate studies at Oxford and Berlin is memories of fishing once in
England and watching trout swim in a German stream. He accepted a
teaching appointment at the University of New Brunswick because of the
trout fishing possibilities close at hand. He married Mabel Killam,
“an artist who loved wood and stream as much as I” and they shared
canoe fishing adventures together. World War I is remembered for troops
augmenting their rations with trout killed by dropping Mills bombs in
French streams.

What comes through is the character of a flyfisher who loves the trout,
the woods, and the waters. Day measures others by their “gentle
soul,” which is how he measures himself. This comes from his deep
communion with nature through the gentle art of fly-fishing.