Fire In The Bones
Bill Mason and the Canadian Canoeing Tradition
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
When Bill Mason set off alone into the wilderness in his red canoe, many people went with him, if only in their imaginations. Now, James Raffan leads us into the heart of the vast landscape that was Bill Mason's own brilliant imagination, on a biographical journey that is entertaining, enriching and inspiring. Bill Mason was a filmmaker who gave us classics such as Cry of the Wild and Paddle to the Sea; he was author of the canoeist's bible, Path of the Paddle; he was the consummate outdoorsman. But few Canadians know that his gentleness and rugged self-sufficiency masked a life of great physical struggles. James Raffan reveals the private, sometimes anguished, man behind the legend.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Born in 1929 in Winnipeg, Mason was raised in a family dominated by his fundamentalist Protestant grandmother, so religion played a major role in his life. An asthmatic from birth and an undersized child, he was 4'7" and an object of ridicule until he reached puberty at the age of 18. Throughout his life he was plagued by gout, had a near fatal heart attack at 36 and died of cancer at 59. But he overcame physical ailments to become one of Canada's best-known and most respected outdoorsmen. He made two documentary films, a series of three on wolves and four in the Path of the Paddle series; the latter established him as the ranking expert on canoeing in North America. Raffan, a professor of outdoor and experiential education in Canada, has researched Mason's life with care, but at times his writing seems more rhapsodic than the subject demands, as when he waxes poetic about a pedestrian summer colony set up by the Canadian National Railroad for its employees, the spot where Mason began to love the wild. Photos.
