Product Description

Fifteen years before Lewis and Clark, Scotsman Alexander Mackenzie, looking to open up a trade route, set out from Lake Athabasca in central Northern Canada in search of the Pacific Ocean. Mackenzie travelled by bark canoe and had a cache of rum and a crew of Canadian voyageurs, hard-living backwoodsmen, for company. Two centuries later, Robert Twigger decides to follow in Mackenzie's wake. He too travels the traditional way, having painstakingly built a canoe from birchbark sewn together with pine roots, and assembled a crew made up of fellow travelers, ex-tree-planters and a former sailor from the US Navy. Several had tried before them but they were the first people to successfully complete Mackenzie's diabolical route over the Rockies in a birchbark canoe since 1793. Their journey takes them to the remotest parts of the wilderness, through Native American reservations, over mountains, through rapids and across lakes, meeting descendants of Mackenzie and unhinged Canadian trappers, running out of food, getting lost and miraculously found again, disfigured for life (the ex-sailor loses his thumb), bears brown and black, docile and grizzly.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52753 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'Witty and vivid... Entertaining throughout'

Review
'Witty and vivid... Entertaining throughout' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

Marcus Berkman, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'It's a genuinely delightful piece of work and i thoroughly recommend it.'

Customer Reviews

Authenticity leaps from every page
When so many 'non-fiction' works are being shown to be made up or based on three days research in a library it is refreshing to come across a magnificent account which reminds me of nineteenth century travelogue (or even an 18th century journey, given the trip follows the diabolical route of MacKenzie in 1793 across North West Canada, from Lake Athabasca to the Pacific) where the key signature was toughness and a do or die willingness to open new routes for trade and sometimes conquest. Twigger is clearly a throw back in that he is obviously as tough as old boots and seems to relish nightmare conditions which most of us would prefer to watch on the National Geographic channel on television. But he has modern sensibilities and the pen of a poet.

This book cost three years and much sweat and toil from Twigger and his later day crew of Voyageurs. They covered over two thousand miles - and if that doesn't impress, one thousand was against the current. (Like running from Lands End to John O'Groats up a down escalator!) This book is a must read for anyone who wonders if the daily struggle simply to commute to the office is really a defining challenge and who might yearn to escape into the vast unpeopled water-wilderness of the Canadian landscape.

In summary a quite brilliant book by one of the most original travel writers now working.

Staggeringly Brilliant!
I never read travel books, I never watch road movies, and autobiographies bore me. However, a friend of mine bought me this book for my birthday, so I thought I'd better thumb through it before we met again.

It is brilliant! Twigger doesn't try justifying this totally bonkers escapade, but from page one the reader is caught up in a whirlwind of enthusiasm. The balance between travelog and adventure story is perfect; the word-pictures so artfully painted that the included photos were no more than a distraction.

Enhance your library by reading this book, and make a friend by buying another copy!

fascinating
I'm a big fan of Robert Twigger's books, and this latest is no disappointment. In fact it's better than even I had expected. I can only marvel at how someone can go to all those lengths to row his way across the Canadian outback. And what adventures along the way! And as ever, there is a sense of a greater journey, and a greater purpose behind what he is doing. The best travel books give you an insight into other worlds, not just other parts of the World, and Twigger is a master at doing this. Highly recommended.