Survival: A Refugee Life

Monika Rohlmann is an environmental consultant in Barrie, Ontario.

Fred Bruemmer is an internationally acclaimed writer and photographer,
best known for his documentation of Arctic animals. In this fascinating,
superbly written memoir, he turns his keen eye and intuitive pen to his
youth, a decade full of fright and flight as he survived the clashes of
Nazi and Soviet rule in his Latvian homeland during World War II.

Before the war, Bruemmer lived a privileged life, his father being a
Baltic nobleman. There were servants, tutors, and a summer home in the
country. The carefree boy loved the outdoors and found the insects and
birds of the Latvian meadowlands especially fascinating. But all that
ended when the Soviets invaded Latvia. Bruemmer’s parents were
murdered, and he was sent to a Soviet labour camp where he witnessed and
experienced disease, hardship, physical abuse, and torture. In 1951, he
was able to emigrate to Canada, sponsored by the mining community of
Kirkland Lake in northern Ontario.

Since then Bruemmer has published 21 books of extraordinary nature
photography. He is probably best known for his shot of a white harp seal
pup which, in 1964, was selected for publication in Photographs That
Changed the World. In 1983, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.

Today, at age 77, Bruemmer still hasn’t slowed down. Even after
undergoing a heart transplant in 1986, he continues to deliver
exceptional images of nature’s beauty. In his latest work, Islands of
Fate, he takes readers on a tour of 25 islands around the world, many of
which are the last refuge for some unique species. Survival allows us to
glimpse the making of the man.