Here are 31 short stories with many black and white photos, written by women who went north to work, for adventure, or to join a fiancé or husband. The stories span from 1937 to the present. They were cooks, nurses, teachers, and wives. Some married there, many had babies there, most worked in and out of home. The experience changed each one. They embraced life in the north with its difficulties and joys and came away feeling far richer for their experience. They had adventures with bears or wolves, they had stories about honey buckets, no indoor plumbing or fresh milk, and ball gowns for formal dances and doing their laundry in a bucket with water that had already served for each family member's bath. They brought warmth to the north and gentleness to the otherwise harsh environment. Journey through the north and the years with these wonderful warm, brave and resourceful women as they recall their lives there. You will wish you could have known them.
Read an interview with Toni Graeme at bookreviewcafe.com
Toni Graeme, born and bred in Vancouver, British Columbia, of adventuresome Scottish stock, is a rolling stone gathering little moss as she wends her way through the world. She has lived in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, US, UK and India. In the North she traveled extensively and came to know and love the people and the land, within the tree line as well as on the barren lands. She and her partner built a house at Prelude Lake, 25 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife (in the bush), and as a passionate gardener, grew an abundance of vegetables and flowers, and raised Samoyed dogs. Her organically fed chickens produced many dozens of eggs for her family and others. Toni now lives in Victoria, BC.
In Yukon, Toni waitressed, was a secretary, was then the Resource Person for the Yukon Status of Women in 1978/79. After moving to the NWT, she was a secretary briefly, then Women's Employment Counsellor for Yellowknife, the Central and High Arctic for the federal government, CEIC, now HRDC and co-ordinated the training-hiring selection of northerners for the Zama-Norman Wells pipeline. In 1984 Toni was chosen to be the NWT government's first Executive Director of the Women's Secretariat and Status of Women Council from 1984 to 1988 She also served seven years as the first woman on the NWT Apprenticeship Board.
Visit Toni's website at www.tonigraeme.com