The Complete Gentleman Homesteads In The Bush

Image Gallery

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

HOMESTEADING IN CANADA

All over Canada and the United States, people — both old and young — are attempting to get "back to the land". Wonderful! I'm quite in favor of such action, even when taken to the extreme of turning one's back on civilization and striking off into the woods . . . as long as the folks involved are capable and know what they're doing. I strongly feel, however, that a number of would-be pioneers — especially those who are city-born and bred and whose only knowledge of wilderness living comes from the library — should be warned that homesteading in the bush may not be as simple and serene as they've imagined.

Sure. We've all read books that tell how Joe Fedup took his wife and three-year-old daughter into a remote area of British Columbia where they carved a ranch house out of the wilderness and a few old fir trees. There really are such people. But most generally they had some prior experience in bush living, the necessary skills and the proper frame of mind to see them through the difficulty of getting started. They weren't, in other words, rank tenderfeet when they made their big move.

Now I'm not saying that the stereotyped "Perils of the North" — things like an avalanche or attacking wild animals — will immediately do in any neophyte who tries to settle Back of Beyond. As a matter of fact, although I was once forced to kill an angry she-bear to save my own life, such glamourized dangers are extremely few and far between. You stand an infinitely greater chance of being mugged in New York's Central Park.

No, it's the unexpected little things that can relentlessly drip, drip, drip like the Chinese water torture until they drive you from the woods: Opening the door on a winter's morning to find your path blocked by a roof-high snow drift; spitting out mouthfulls of black flies during the first three weeks of summer; having the smoke from a stuffed-tip fireplace force you out into an 18-below night. These can all be both scary and dangerous.

There's even littler things: Finding you're out of sugar with the roads blocked may not seem like much but it can be damned hard on the person with a sweet tooth. Spending day after day after night after night after night with the same face or faces (even if you really love the people behind them) can occasionally hone your nerves to a raw edge.

Of course, such minor irritations are just that — minor and irritations only — to anyone with average common sense. The incidents are dangers solely to the dreamy individuals who waltz off into the woods completely unprepared: Folks who try to use 30-30 cartridges in a 303 rifle; "mighty hunters" that expect to live off the land with a bow and plastic arrows; Flower Children who plan to subsist on fish and herbs . . . but don't know how to clean a fish and wouldn't recognize a herb if one fell on them. I met all of these, by the way, on a recent trip to British Columbia.

Chances are, though — since you read MOTHER — you don't fall into that last category. Let's assume you're about as I was a few years back and start there:

I had returned to Canada from a stretch in Korea as a war correspondent. I was tired, I no longer had a marriage, I didn't want to shoot any more TV film, I didn't want to work as a newspaperman and I didn't much want anything to do with people.

There are few jobs that allow a man to opt out of society when he chooses but I was lucky enough to be moderately talented at two of them: Writing and painting. Neither a writer nor an artist need have much direct contact with mankind to earn enough for food, clothes and the odd movie.

But how and where was I going to establish myself and practice my trades the way I wanted to practice them? It may seem strange but, in the middle of my turmoil, the very medium that many of the back-to-the-landers reject started me on the road to peace of mind.

I was watching a TV program on the early settlers of the Canadian west and saw a bit about building a sod house. Through clever editing, the whole erection of a well-built home was shown. From the laying out of a site to the painting of the roof, I was given a capsule lesson in the art of constructing a sod house. It looked easy. I decided then and there that I would homestead in a fairly remote area, build a sod house and settle in for some uninterrupted writing and painting.

So, did I immediately draw my savings from the bank and rush out to stake a claim in the handiest remote area? Indeed, no! The first thing to do is not — repeat NOT — get the land. The land will always be there. You begin by making plans and lists.

In my case, I plotted moves, step by step, the way a general prepares for a battle. I studied lists of tax-forfeited lands, built up a library of favorite books, checked out the construction of simple furniture and made lists of everything I would need . . . from ant paste to a small zerox machine.

I left nothing out because I knew that one small misstep could be a source of irritation or trouble later. By the time I had finished planning, making lists and reading up on wilderness living, I knew what I was about and I was confident that any mistakes made in the future would be relatively minor and the result of only a passing stupidity.

With the basic plan in mind, I rented a garage in which to stockpile the tools, equipment, materials, books, clothes and groceries I would need and then I set out to beg, buy and scrounge those items. I began by ordering a good but cheap Acorn fireplace and an oil burner. I also started sifting through the bargains in second-hand furniture stores.

One of my earliest stops was the Salvation Army (Sally Ann, as we say in Canada) store where I purchased five large trunks and three very outsized suitcases. I took this luggage to my storehouse, repainted each piece and marked its future contents on each case. Then I took my grocery list and started out.

Every major city in the United States and Canada has large food stores that offer substantial discounts on damaged canned goods. These are "crushed can outlets" or what my daughter, when she was five, called a "used food store". Here in Toronto, we have the House of Usher where you can buy tinned English steak and kidney pie (ordinarily more than a dollar) for forty-nine cents. They also sell five to ten pounds of powdered milk at a bargain price, tins of stew for a quarter and large tins of fruit juice for less than half their usual cost.

I next visited a wholesale grocery for some items. By the time I finished I had enough tinned food, staples and breakfast foods to last me all summer and well into the winter . . . all for about sixty-five dollars. In addition, I left a standing order for the wholesale store to send me a fresh supply in late November.

Why did I buy all this tinned stuff and lots of peppermint tea? Because I'm not a mighty hunter nor could the land I was buying grow much and I was moving to the wilds to write and paint . . . not sweat over a hot plow or stove. Besides, only a damned fool does it the hard way. I was going to be building a sod house and that is backbreaking work enough so I made it easy on myself in the meals department.

By nature, I like creature comforts and a well-ordered way of living. Peeling potatoes and such after a hard day's work would only result in a tired man eating a half-cooked meal and that wasn't for me. So I packed three of the trunks with canned goods, flour, salt, etc. and went back to "Sally Ann" for two more.

Now I had seven trunks, three outsized suitcases and a backache . . . and I was only getting started.

I packed all my books into one of the trunks and put writing tools, paper, carbon sheets, four dictionaries, a Writer's Yearbook and spare typewriter ribbons into a suitcase. Another case held artist's materials.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print