Northward to Eden

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'.