Wild Rivers, Wild Lands

Allen Soroka is assistant law librarian at the University of British
Columbia Law Library.

Ken Madsen is an intrepid wilderness explorer who has taken up the cause
of protecting the northern Canadian wilderness from commercial
exploitation. This book is a personal record of some of his river and
land excursions in four northern watersheds: the Alsek-Tatshenshini, the
Stikine, the Peel, and the Skagway. Madsen concludes the book with a
plea for his “northern dream,” the Yukon Wildlands Project, which is
based on setting aside “large core areas that exclude roads, machines,
industrial development and agriculture.” There are some nice color
photographs of wilderness sites, some of them depicting the plastic
kayaks and high-tech tents the author and his companions used along the
rivers and in the fjords.

A strong advocate of wilderness preservation, Madsen justly attacks the
big mining companies, the electric power corporations, and their
government representatives—all who consider pillage and plunder for
profit their absolute right. But in this book, he often draws his circle
too tightly, displaying a corrosive contempt for anyone—other than his
band of zealots—who ventures into the wilderness. A tourist in a
motorhome on the Klondike highway, a fisherman in a jet boat on the
Stikine—these folks should be won over to support the legitimate
positions Madsen espouses, not condemned out of hand.