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Northward to Eden

by Kenneth Conibear

240 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0069; ISBN 1-55212-405-3; US$24.00, C$27.50, EUR19.50, £14.00

In the late 1920s, a fur trapper went to Edmonton to find a wife. After marrying the first woman he spoke to, the story is of the people, the environment and the trials and tribulations they experienced in an isolated area of northern Canada.

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about the book      about the author      reviews      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book In the late 1920's a fur trapper, Jimmie Allen, leaves 'down north' Canada for the first time in his life in order to find a wife. Working at a restaurant in Edmonton, Grasille Jansen dreams of the richer and more exciting lives she has read about in popular magazines as she goes about her work as a waitress. While serving Jimmie, Grasille realizes that Jimmie is a very unusual customer but definitely not a silent man. Words come readily to his tongue and his enthusiastic outpouring of exciting stories of his North (some true, some not) lead to an Othello-like wooing and a speedy marriage when Grasille is convinced that she will find her dream with Jimmie. Together, in a cabin they built together on the Quatre-Fourches River, the real drama of the story - loneliness - is fought out. Knit into this main strand you have the moving story of Susie, Jimmie's part-Indian friend and trapping partner, who was accepted as equal by whites and who refused to take treaty money - except once. He is memorable, even in defeat. Also we have the Cowdrays who run the inevitable, all-purpose store in Fort Chipewyan on the usual liberal, if not generous, credit terms. Grasille has no idyllic time as a trapper's wife and faces many difficulties. She is game and she wins through, with the aid of a remarkable not to say, dramatic, phenomenon of nature.

About the Author Kenneth Conibear, was born in Orrville, Ontario in 1907, and moved with his family to the Northwest Territories in 1912, travelling there by rail, stagecoach and barge. He was raised in Fort Smith and, other than one year of formal education at the Fort Smith mission school, was educated to the grade 10 level by his parents and friends within that community. He was sent out to Edmonton to formally complete grades 11 and 12, and continued on to the University of Alberta where Kenneth majored in English and Philosophy. He was selected as the Alberta Rhodes Scholar in 1931 and spent 3 years at Oxford studying English. He spent the next three years in England writing and had his first novel, "Northland Footprints" published in 1936. He was referred to as 'The Kipling of the North'. In 1937 his publisher, Lovat Dickson, hired him to travel with and manage Grey Owl's speaking tour of England, and because of that close association, Kenneth has often been consulted as an expert on Grey Owl. In 1938 he returned to the Northwest Territories and had "Northward to Eden" published, followed in 1940 by the novel, "Husky" written in collaboration with his brother Frank, the inventor of the Conibear trap. In 1995 his fourth novel, "The Nothing Man" was privately published and his fifth is 'in the works'. All of these novels are based on his knowledge and love of the people, then northern environment and the animals of the north. Kenneth's careers 'down north' were writer, hunter, trapper, storekeeper and, following his service with the Canadian navy from 1943 to 1946, he returned to the territories and operated freight boats on the Mackenzie River system, chiefly on Great Slave Lake, while continuing his writing. These 'down north' careers were followed by his "outside" careers as executive secretary of the B.C. Hospital Association, part-time English instructor in English at Simon Fraser University, departmental assistant and student advisor in S.F.U.'s English department, lecturer in continuing Education for Senior Citizens and, following his retirement in 1977, Program Co-ordinator in the Dean of Arts Office, part time. In 1979 he became associate director of S.F.U.'s Senior Citizens Certificate program and is still an honorary associate director. This background makes his own life 'the stuff of novels'.

Reviews

Scotland: Dunfermline Press

Scotland has suffered grievously at the hands of sensational and sentimental writers; so too has the Canadian North. It is especially refreshing, therefore, to find a book in which the Canadian North is not written up artificially but is revealed with a balanced, understanding pen. Mr. Conibear brings an unusual combination of assets to his task. He is a scholar and he has himself been a trapper. Looking back over this tale one finds hardly a page that is dull, and yet they are all free from hectic, unhealthy excitement. The life in the wilds is hard, trying, both physically and mentally, but it demands certain qualities which only strong types can muster day after day. The true strength of the Canadian North lies more in stubborn courage than in dramatic high-lights. ...
You will revel in the impressive natural background of this story, and you will make real friends with a few characters set in this vast, scenic loveliness. Jimmie is a strong but not a silent man. Words come readily to his tongue and innate friendliness makes him wholly and widely liked. He is a simple, great-hearted soul. Out of Edmonton's hurrying crowds he plucks a waitress (product of a farm) and carries her off to his remote trapping grounds. There the real drama of the story - loneliness - is fought out. Knit into this main strand you have the moving story of Susie, Jimmie's Red Indian friend, who was accepted as equal by whites and who refused to take treaty money - except once. He is a type to remember even in defeat. Also we have the Cowdrays who run the inevitable, all-purpose store on the usual liberal, if not generous, credit terms. At least Mrs Cowdray runs it, with the frustrated husband in attendance who worships culture more intermittently than passionately.

There is no great interplay in these pages of the violently contending human emotions that are the raw material of drama, but there is always the underlying drama on a more austere plane of the man versus his environment. It is a struggle whose issue is always in doubt unless the man is fiercely unremitting, and even so he has a brief victory, for the North is not for those with the least suspicion of waning in their physical powers. The dedication is significant "... and to all women who have gone to the far places of the earth with their men. These are the true pioneers." The ex-waitress, Grasille, has no idyllic time as a trapper's wife but the wings of love surmount difficulties. She is game and she wins through, with the aid of a remarkable not to say, dramatic, phenomenon of nature. Mr. Conibear is to be commended as much for eschewing the temptation of cheapening the Canadian North as for giving us a tale quietly convincing in its restrained telling.

As the author has been a trapper, and lived for years among the Indians, half-breeds, and white hunters of the region in which his story is set, it is not surprising that this romance of the Canadian north gains much from its superbly expressed natural background. In essence the tale of the life of a fur trapper, the narrative owes its real attraction and power to its fine descriptions of wild life, of the profuse seasonal blooming of myriad flowers, of the rapid ripening and decay of vegetation in a short five months into which are crowded spring, summer, and autumn. Mr. Conibear's knowledge of the everyday life of the humans and the animals in the Far North strengthens the fabric of his story and makes it the more enjoyable. Jimmie, kind-hearted and ignorant of all but his own mode of life, takes his young wife back from Edmonton to his trapping base on the Quatre-Fourches river. There they build their own log-cabin and begin to enjoy life in complete harmony. With winter loneliness comes for Grasille, and the young wife's desire for a change of scene destroys the former joy of their existence. The river seems the way to freedom, but when she sets out in a canoe she sees the baselessness of her fears and her hatred of solitude. The Quatre-Fourches is a river on which the phenomenon of a reversible current can be seen, and it is the hated, tempting stream which finally carries her back to her home and happiness.
Mr. Conibear is a most expressive writer. His characters are alive. With ease they carry along this colourful romance.

"Northward to Eden" by Kenneth Conibear, is a Canadian romance which starts in Edmonton, moves on to Chipewyan, and culminates in the loneliness of the country still further north, on the banks of the Quatre-Fourches river, with its strange reversible current. It is written by a former Rhodes scholar who lives in the North-West Territories at Fort Smith. Mr. Conibear brings to the telling of this romantic story the two advantages of a vigorous style and an intimate knowledge of the Northland and of its human inhabitants - trappers, Indians and others - and also its animals. The plot is well worked out in a setting full of colour and wild beauty and the characters are admirably drawn.

Romance Braves Vast Expanses Of the North - In a novel primal as the North Country of which he writes, Kenneth Conibear follows his successful first venture, "Northland Footprints," with a tale of two wilderness lovers and the vicissitudes which are theirs before they come to a perfect understanding. 'Northward to Eden' is a book rich in significance to the western reader. It is written by a former Alberta Rhodes scholar, who couples a gift for spinning a yarn with obvious experience of the hinterland where trails come to a full stop.

Trapper Jimmie Allen comes to Edmonton, fresh from a winter in the back-of-beyond. At Edmonton, Grasille Jansen dreams of a richer life as she goes about her work as a waitress. An Othello-like wooing in which tales of the back-of-beyond play their part, ends in speedy marriage, and the couple are soon bound north along the waterways to the trapper's cabin home. The woods are strange to the girl reared on the open acres of an Alberta ranch - strange and pressingly hostile. The river which eddies past the cabin is an eternal reminder of the outside world which she has quitted. The love and simple kindliness of her husband are her barriers for a time against loneliness, then the wilderness crowds in upon her overwhelmingly. How understanding comes to her - how the north claims her when her future is in the balance, is Mr. Conibear's masterful climax.

The author has lived in the land. Once a trapper himself, he weaves a background of refreshing authenticity for his story.

In the forward, Mr. Conibear claims that his picture of the Canadian backwoods is no glamorised version, but, so far as it has been in his power to reproduce it, a true picture of a country he knows well. Without first-hand knowledge it is impossible to weigh how far he has succeeded, but on face values, his book has the impress of honesty and knowledge. This is the story of a trapper's existence and of his love. The characters play their part against a background of forest, river, lake, and snow. Without any beg-pardons, Mr. Conibear has set out to write a romance, and he has done it, introducing in addition to the two principals, all the types to be found in the country he writes of - lumbermen, Indians, half-breeds, trappers, and a few women.

'Northward to Eden' is a homely, charming story of a trapper's life and love in the Canadian North. His novel is not one of those exaggerated romances of the 'Mounted.' He loves the land he knows so well too keenly to make a Hollywood scenario out of it.
'Northward to Eden' is a plain but very appealing love story, romantic if you like, but not over-sentimentalised, told against the magnificent natural background of the Canadian North.
The characters are drawn from life. The lumbermen, the half-breeds, and the hunters are authentic. Mr. Conibear has been a trapper himself and knows the life intimately.
A colorful novel, simply and attractively written.

All the grandeur of the great Canadian North is brought to the reader in this tale of a trapper's life, and love for the woman who shares his hazards, in the wild regions where the beaver, silver- fox, and muskrat abound. Few modern writers possess the authority of Mr. Conibear to deal with such a theme. He knows intimately the Indians, the 'Mounties,' the lumbermen, half-breeds and hunters, whose qualities he makes the warp and woof of this stirring tale.

There are in the far north of Canada - if Mr. Kenneth Conibear is to be believed - several non-tidal rivers which have the peculiarity of flowing from their source to their mouth in normal fashion for the greater part of the year, but which for a season revers the direction of their flow. This phenomenon has provided him with a motif for his second book and first novel 'Northward to Eden.'

Mr. Conibear, a Rhodes scholar, won his literary spurs - or, if you prefer it, cut his literary teeth - with 'Northland Footprints,' a sensitive study of animal life in the country, written by one who has himself been a trapper. He is likely, one would predict, to make a much greater name with this touching story of a trapper's life and love on an island Eden in the Catfish River (cartographers call it the Quatre Fourches, but Jimmy Allen spoke trapper's pidgin English).

Mr. Conibear is unduly concerned, at the start, and occasionally in the course of this narrative to 'debunk' the romantic writers of the Northland. He might well have left them to take care of themselves. The setting of this story is so essentially subservient to his unflinching purpose that it may be taken as an honest account of the surroundings in which Jimmy and Grasille lived their life. What others may have said surely does not matter. The places he names may be found on the map; he claims to know them all - with one exception which he acknowledges - and the reader will soon perceive that Mr. Conibear knows also the secret places of the heart. It is a graceful, unhurried tale. The writer has a nice turn of phrase and a facility of simile (there is one delicious chapter in which Mother Nature, Fate and Evolution are personified). In effect, there are three main elements in his story - Jimmy, Grasille, and a half-caste Indian called Susie Mary the Violet (he was known in Government records as Joseph Maria Laviolette). Susie had been Jimmie's pardner before the white trapper's impetuous marriage to Grasille on a visit to Edmonton, but when winter descends on the Northland and the trapper and his wife go northward to their new Eden, things are not too easy for Susie.

The story resolves itself into a highly successful attempt to convey the winter of loneliness which settles on Grasille's soul while she and her Adam are isolated in their remote cabin. ...

Sample Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

IN THE small cafe on 96th and Jasper, Jimmie Allen was a man apart. As he came through the swing door it seemed that there was forest moss under his feet, his legs bent as on snowshoes, the stars and the clear skies were over his head; and as he proceeded he bumped into tables, chairs, customers and waitresses with the careless abandon of a Great Dane at a ladies' tea party. It was clear that he belonged to another, a larger, and presumably a less populous world.

Blissfully unconscious of the disturbance his passage had created, he found a table, sat down, grinned at the man opposite, glanced at the folded newspaper which instantly rose like a barrier between them, cocked his head askew in a brief attempt to read upside down, then relaxed and gazed about him as Columbus may have gazed when his keel first grounded in the Caribbean. He was a small man, darkly, healthily and handsomely tanned, dressed in a blue serge suit of conspicuous and uncomfortable newness. A waitress stood beside him, a fair-haired girl with a broad, smooth forehead and wide- set, dreamy blue eyes. She, too, belonged to another world, was as much apart from the other knowing, self-assured waitresses as the small man was from the other uniform, city-wise men. But whereas Jimmie Allen clearly felt completely at home here, would feel at home anywhere, Grasille Jansen as clearly did not. She lacked self-confidence; she lived in a dream-world apart, came out of it gladly, almost pathetically anxious to please, and yet sometimes with a jar of adjustment, to make contact with her fellow-men and women, retired shyly into it when the contact was done. She looked, and was, about nineteen years old. Most of the other waitresses looked somewhere about twenty-five; few of them were over seventeen.
Jimmie favoured the menu with a short stare, the girl with a long one. In anyone else it might have been rudeness; in him it could not be. His eyes, his whole attitude, expressed an engaging and all-embracing friendliness. He found the world a good place, thought everyone a good fellow, expected and invited everyone to agree with him on both points.
"I'd kinda like some pie," he said.
"We have apple, raising, blueberry, lemon m'rang, cus"
"Blueb'ry, thassa stuff," he interrupted. "Y' know, nice big slice 'bout size uv a hunk o' cheese that'd go down purty nice." He spoke at a speed that made her feel breathless, running his words together till they lost all individuality.
"À la mode, sir?"
"Alamud? I guesso'shore'parley-voos français ding-dong with a broom-handle? An' say, what's this stuff they call ice-cream? How 'bout a pailful o' that? Can y'eat'm together?"
Grasille explained, more primly than she wished, that in the language of her calling "pie à la mode" meant pie with ice-cream on it, that the two together made a very popular dish. She wanted to ask him how it was that he had never eaten ice-cream before, but she did not. As she walked towards the serving-grille she was pleasantly aware that his eyes followed her. When he was served she looked about for other customers, saw none waiting, and sat down behind the grille with a magazine. For a moment she found it difficult to fix her attention on the story she had been reading; then she turned a page, saw a picture, and was held.

Born and bred on a farm in central Alberta, Grasille had found much of her life a tedious round of milking dun-coloured cows; she had escaped from them to Edmonton a year before, where her existence was now a monotonous routine of serving dun-coloured customers. The romance and excitement which she asked of life she had so far found chiefly in her books and her vivid imagination. She was quite unaware that both were now knocking at her door. The knocks came as a series of orders for blueberry pie "alamud". Five helpings Jimmie called for, and was wondering whether his stomach could possibly manage a sixth, before she spoke.
"Gee," she exclaimed, "ain't you et anythin' for a week?"
Grasille's sister-waitresses would have credited her with very few points for this imitation of the gay back-chat in which they indulged with their customers; but as her first attempt at any such thing it was significant. And it certainly produced wonders.
"In my country," Jimmie began, "y'eat when yuh got it. Yuh don't when y'ain't."
"What is your country?" she asked and he was off, amazing both her and himself with the ready flow of a tongue which had allowed many a winter to pass in the almost unbroken silence of his own northern land. He was a trapper from the Chenal des Quatre-Fourches, in the remote wilderness of sub-Arctic Alberta. He had arrived on the train from the north that morning, having come to this Mecca of northern bachelors for the specific purpose of finding himself a wife. He had not been speaking five minutes before he considered that he had the project well in hand...

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