Clearwater Winter

Jean Johnston was a freelance writer in Mitchell, Ontario.

Eddy Engstrom spent most of his adult life trapping and hunting on the Clearwater River near Fort McMurray. Although he lived in almost complete isolation, only occasionally going outside to socialize, he wrote with skill, humor and vivid imagery, so that one wishes he had written more. His rapport with animals was acute, whether with his own dogs or with, for example, the young moose he rescued from drowning in broken ice (he had intended to shoot the moose, but he spent so much effort rescuing it that he finally let it escape). To his dogs, he was a “little god” whom they trusted implicitly. He suggests that it takes six generations of dogs “to raise one generation of us.

He vividly describes finding a mother lode of silver, then being almost buried in an avalanche. By a miracle he managed to escape, though with a broken foot; his eventual rescue is a spell-binding yarn. He never went back to locate the mother lode: “So what would I do with it? My dogs wouldn’t know.”

Engstrom, Swedish-born, writes in a clear, uncluttered style. His memoirs were found after his death — which, appropriately for him, was from a heart attack while paddling his canoe.