Arctic Journal: A Fifty-Year Adventure in Canada's North

Monika Rohlmann is an environmental consultant in Victoria, B.C.

Bern Will Brown, a parish priest and renowned painter of northern people
and landscapes, has served in Canada’s north country since 1948. He
was posted to a number of communities in the Northwest Territories and
northern Alberta before settling in Colville Lake, N.W.T., in 1962.
Today, he still resides in Colville Lake, a traditional community of the
North Slavey Dene natives.

Arriving on the cusp of a cultural and technological revolution in
Canada’s arctic, Brown was engaged in a lifestyle that is no more. A
skilled carpenter, he built no fewer than eight churches and missions,
along with numerous cabins, boats, and a warehouse of furniture. He not
only ministered to the spiritual needs of the communities but also
filled the role of doctor, shopkeeper, radio operator, photographer,
newspaper editor, recreation director, and community pilot. And judging
from the heft of this volume, he kept a detailed diary. A third of the
book is devoted to Brown’s life in Colville Lake, including his final
career as a lay priest and marriage to Margaret Steen, who was raised in
a traditional hunting and trapping lifestyle along the coastline near
Paulatuk.

Brown is a renaissance man and a pivotal figure in the history of the
western arctic communities. The personable and engaging stories he
presents in this excellent journal document the social, cultural, and
geographic turning points of a half century of northern life. The 50
pages of photographs provide vivid colour images of personalities and
accomplishments.