The Silence of the North

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

Olive Fredrickson never made it to school, but that didn’t stop her
from writing her memoirs. With her own unique style of spelling, she
recorded her family’s pioneering lifestyle. Veteran outdoors writer
Ben East translated her notes. Together they have produced one of the
most remarkable accounts of frontier life in Canada.

Instead of going to school, the young Olive stayed at home alone caring
for her ill mother and helping out with farm chores. When her mother
died, the family moved north along the Klondike trail. Her family
settled on a tract of land in the open country of northern Alberta.
Olive was 19 when she married and followed her husband into the
wilderness. They lived through some of the hardest times imaginable:
starvation on the trapline, near-drownings, and a tent fire. All the
while, Olive was pregnant and would become so again after the birth of
her first child.

At the end of eight years, Olive refused to follow Walter north again.
The sad news came one day that Walter had drowned. Olive was left with
her three children in northern British Columbia, homesteading on 160
acres during the Depression. The physical labor of clearing land for hay
and garden was exhausting, and the moose hunting trips in a dug-out
canoe were harrowing. Not until her children were teenagers did Olive
remarry. John Fredrickson and Olive shared a passion for wild places.
Together they took several month-long trips into the bush to hunt moose
and pan for gold. Olive shares the story of their marriage, their
logging businesses, and their eventual retreat to town life.

Born in 1901, Olive Fredrickson is the Canadian grandmother of frontier
life; in this book, her harsh yet fulfilling life is recounted in words
brimming with color, spirit, and love.