Don't Shoot from the Saddle: Chronicles of a Frontier Surgeon

Susannah D. Ketchum, a former teacher-librarian at the Bishop Strachan
School in Toronto, serves on the Southern Ontario Library Services
Board.

“Dr. Al Holley (1924–2000), a pioneering doctor in the Arctic and
the Cariboo, created British Columbia’s first intensive care unit. A
friend extols Holley’s “storyteller’s ability to captivate an
audience,” and reading his autobiography one senses that he probably
was a great raconteur. Sadly, his writing skills are not equal to the
task of a book-length autobiography. There is little narrative flow.

Although Holley was “among other things … a Justice of the Peace in
the Northwest Territories, a cowboy, an author, a stagecoach driver and
actor in Barkerville, a historian, an artist, a hunter, an explorer, a
rodeo doctor, … a husband, a father, and a grandfather,” we learn
almost nothing about the artist, the historian, or the family man. And
yet there are still far too many stories. Many episodes unfold in a
single paragraph. Individuals appear for a short time then disappear,
never to return. The autobiography would have been far more interesting
had Holley rigorously reduced the number of his stories and then told
the remaining ones in greater detail. His choppy, inconsequential style
is further marred by undue use of “folksy” vernacular. Words like
“booze,” “ass,” and “bugger” appear unnecessarily often.

On the credit side, the many black-and-white pictures are surprisingly
evocative. Two useful maps are included, and the index, though flawed,
is helpful.