THE NORTHERN
By
G. W. Thomas
The
first modern "Western" is considered to be Owen Wister's The Virginian
(1902) and is the protoype of a multitude of magazine, comics, Pulp tales, novels
as well as films, radio and TV shows. The "Northern", being a similar
kind of story, set in the north, usually Alaska or Canada, and features such icons
as Mounties, dog-sleds, lumberjacks, gold-miners, Native Americans, animals like
wolves, bears and caribou, thrived during a similar time period, though this sub-genre
never managed to become the massive category of story-telling that claims John
Wayne and Louis L'Amour. When most people think of a Northern they usually envision
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald warbling "When I'm Calling You" in
Rose Marie (1936) or Johnny Horton singing "North to Alaska"
for the John Wayne film of the same name (1960).
Between
the years of 1892-1954 the Northern was popularized by writers like W. A. Fraser,
Gilbert Parker, Jack London, Rex Beach and many others who wrote for general subject
magazines like Popular Stories and The Argosy. Later Pulps specialized
in Northerns. These included North West Stories, North-West Romances and
Complete Northwest Novel Magazine with stories by Wm. Byron Mowery, Walter
W. Liggett, Anthony M. Rud, Frederick H. Chase, Frederick L. Nebel, Chart Pitt,
A. De Herries Smith and Harry Sinclair Drago. The movies gave us The Riders
of the Plains (1910), The Flame of the Yukon (1926), Renfrew of
the Royal Mounted (1937) Murder on the Yukon (1940) and Pony Soldier
(1952) TV and radio had Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and Renfrew of the Royal
Mounted.
Despite
the lowest-common-denominator version of the Northern, there is a body of significantly
entertaining fiction (especially from the years between the World Wars) that represents
an early stage of Canadian fiction not often acknowledged by academics. But to
the fan of adventure fiction Canadian fiction belongs in the Klondyke, on snow-swept
prairies or on lonely forest lakes. This article attempt to will offer up some
of the best of the Northern writers (Canadian and otherwise) and the artwork that
went along with those great tales. Best of all, most of these works are now in
the public domain and fairly easy to find with a bit of searching on the Web.
The
end of the Northern as a viable sub-genre of popular culture begins in the mid-1950s
with the category being absorbed by Western films. In literature the northern
setting became part of the mainstream, being more historical than genre based.
Occasionally the setting is revived as in the Disney film White Fang (1991)
and its sequel. The idea of brave Mounties and rough-and-tumble miners became
unpopular as filmmakers and writers examined previous attitudes about Native peoples,
authority figures and history in general. The counter-culture of the '60s and
'70s had no place for the Northern. The Jay Ward-Bill Scott cartoon Dudley
DoRight, based on the early silent film melodramas, poked fun at the entire
sub-genre in the late '50s-early '60s.
Writers like Farley Mowat have won back some of the mystique of a Canadian setting
with Never Cry Wolf (1963) and Lost in the Barrens (1956) which
ironically won the Governor General's Award - an award created by John Buchan,
a Northern writer himself . Paul Gross, Canadian filmmaker and actor, took back
a little of the Mountie image in the TV show Due South (1990-1994). Even
today, writers selectively use the North in new stories, though with a sensitivity
to modern issues such as First Nations history, environmental concerns and future
use.
Here
are the classic writer arranged by their birth dates. Links to public domain etexts
are included:
W.
A. Fraser (1857-1933)
Born
in Nova Scotia but was raised in the US, Fraser worked in oil exploration in Western
Canada, Burma and India. He was a friend of Rudyard Kipling. It was Fraser who
conceived the idea of the Silver Cross for mothers of soldiers killed in action
in WWI. Fraser went onto write 250 stories including the popular Bulldog Carney
series that was set in British Columbia during its Cariboo Gold Rush (1858-1865).
Fraser was a popular writer of detective stories set both in Canada and New York.
In Mooswa and others of the boundaries (1900) and The Outcasts (1910)
Fraser writes in the animal genre made popular by Charles G. D. Robert.
The Outcasts (1901)
Bulldog
Carney (1919)
Charles
G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)
Roberts
has won himself a place in Canadian letters as a poet alongside Archibald Lampman
and Bliss Carmen but he also wrote fiction as well. Like Ernest Seton Thompson,
he wrote about animals in the wild in realistic terms, not sentimental ones, inspiring
later writers like Jack London and Felix Salten's whose 1923 novel Bambi
isn't a cute little Disney story but a realistic depiction of a deer's life.
Earth's
Enigmas (1896)
The
Watchers of the Trail (1904)
The
Haunters of the Silences (1905)
The
Backwoodsmen (1906)
The
House in the Water (1907)
Kings
in Exile (1907)
Children
of the Wild (1922)
"Ralph
Connor" (Reverend Charles Gordon) (1860-1948)
"Ralph Connor"
spent time doing missionary work in the Northwest. His first book Black Rock
(1898) was a hit in Canada but his second The Sky Pilot (1899) sold over
a million copies and set his reputation.
Black Rock A
Tale of the Selkirks (1898)
The
Sky Pilot (1899)
The
Prospector (1904)
Corporal
Cameron of the Northwest Mounted Police(1912)
The
Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail (1914)
Sir
Gilbert Parker (1862-1932)
Born
in Canada, Parker was a teacher, a lecturer, and finally one of England's top-selling
authors in the UK and the US. He was chosen by the government during WWI to head
their propaganda machine to try and lure the US into the war. He was knighted
in 1902 for his services to Canadian literature. His book Pierre
and his People (1892) was the first book to be written about Canada. His
works include many about the French-Canadiens as well as Canadian history:
A
Romany of the Snows (1898)
Northern
Lights (1909)
Roger
Pocock (1865-1941)
Pocock was a constable for
the North-West Mounted Police as well as an officer in the Boer War. He formed
the paramilitary Legion of Frontiersmen to help with Britain's military preparedness
in 1905. In 1899-1900 he rode 3600 miles from Fort McLeod, Alberta to Mexico along
the infamous 'Outlaw Trail', where he met several bandits including Butch Cassidy.
He wrote about the experience for Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper. He also wrote
for Argosy and other magazines.
The
Man in the Open (1912)
Harold
Bindloss (1866-1945)
Bindloss was a popular English
novelist who set many of his books in Western Canada where he had farmed for a
while. The town of Bindloss,
Alberta is named after him.
Lorimer
of the NorthWest (1909)
The
Gold Trail (1910)
Vane
of the Timberlands (1911)
The
Long Portage (1912)
Prescott
of Saskatchewan (1913)
The
Lure of the North (1918)
The
Wilderness Mine (1920)
Other
Books
Alan
Sullivan (1868-1947)
Sullivan was born in Montreal, moved to Chicago as a child and witnessed
the Great Fire. Later he worked for the railroad and eventually mined in Western
Canada. He was a captain in the RAF during WWI. His poems and stories appeared
in the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's.
The
Passing of Oul-i-but, and other tales (1913)
Under
The Northern Lights (1928)
Caribou Road (1946)
Susan
Carleton Jones (1869-1926)
S.
Carleton Jones was born in Nova Scotia. She wrote for the Pulps under several
pseudonyms including S. Carleton, Guy Carleton, Helen Milicente and S. Carleton
Jones.
A
Girl of the North : A Story of London and Canada (1900)
"The
Lame Priest" (Atlantic Monthly, December 1901)
The Forest Runner
(1925)
Agnes
C. Laut (1871-1936)
Laut was a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction for magazines like The
Outing. The Randolph Scott film Cariboo Trail (1950) was not based
on Laut's work.
Lords
of the North (1900)
The
Story of the Trapper (1902)
Freebooters
of the Wilderness (1910)
Cariboo
Trail (1916)
H.
A. Cody (1872-1948)
Reverend Hiram Alfred Cody,
like "Frank Connor", spent time doing missionary work in the Northwest.
The
Frontiersman: A Tale of the Yukon (1910)
The
Fourth Watch (1911)
Rod
of the Lone Patrol (1916)
Glen
of the High North (1920)
Jess
of the Rebel Trail (1921)
Robert
W. Service (1874-1958)
Service won fame as
the poet of the Gold Rush, "The Canadian Kipling" despite the fact that
he wasn't Canadian originally. Born in England and raised in Scotland, he came
to the Klondike, not as a miner, but as a bank clerk. The popularity of his writing
allowed him to retire from banking. His poems in Songs
of a Sourdough (1907) gave us Dan McGrew and Sam McGee, but Service also
wrote fiction including The
Trail of 98: A Northland Romance (1910).
Arthur
Stringer (1874 - 1950)
Stringer was born and raised
in Ontario, had a celebrated educational career before writing for newspapers
and magazines. He wrote many novels with different settings. A few were set in
the North. He has a school named after him in London, Ontario.
The
Prairie Wife (1915)
The
Prairie Mother (1920)
The
Prairie Child (1922)
The Wife Traders: A Tale of the North (1936)
The
Ghost Plane: A Novel of the North (1940)
John
Buchan (1st Baron Tweedsmuir) (1875-1940)
It was not uncommon for
English gentlemen to be honored in Canada. Lord Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) who
gave us "It was a dark and stormy night." was one of these. His name
was given to the town of
Lytton, BC in honor of being the British Colonial Secretary. John Buchan was
also recognized and was appointed Governor General of Canada from 1935 to 1940.
(He created the Governor General's
Award or GeeGees to help promote Canadian culture.) Most of Buchan's tales
take place in Scotland or elsewhere but his last works were set in the North:
"The Faraway People" (1941) features a lost race of people who pre-date
the Inuit and Sick Heart River (1942) follows a terminally ill man to a
remote valley in Canada.
Jack
London (1876-1916)
Jack London is without
doubt the author we most associate with tales of the Klondike, though he wrote
many other kinds of stories including Science Fiction and South Sea tales. Most
of the adventure fiction that remains, the very best of the Northern legacy, were
written at the beginning of London's career, cut short by illness. London, unlike
later writers, actually went to the Yukon on July 12, 1897 at the age of 21 along
with his brother-in-law James Shepard. He returned a year later no richer from
panning gold but filled with a wealth of story material. His novels Call of
the Wild and White Fang helped popularize realistic fiction about animals.
Son
of the Wolf (1900)
The
God of His Fathers (1901)
Children
of the Frost (1902)
A
Daughter of the Snows (1902)
The
Call of the Wild (1903)
White
Fang (1906)
Tales
of the Klondike (1906)
Love
of Life and Other Stories (1907)
Brown
Wolf and Other Stories (1963)
Hesketh
Prichard (1876 - 1922)
Pritchard
was a British writer who wrote for markets in the UK and the US. (Along with his
widowed mother he created the occult detective Flaxman Low
writing as E. and H. Heron) His series of stories collected as
November Joe: detective of the woods (1913) features a Canadian backwoods
setting that reflected his leisure hours spent hunting and fishing.
Rex
Beach (1877-1949)
The "Victor Hugo of the North," Beach, like Jack London spent time
in the North prospecting. After five years without striking it rich he turned
to writing about the Gold Rush. His tough guy style was lamented by later critics
but his novels though formulaic are filled with accurate details about Alaska
and the North. Beach's works were made into many films. His first novel The
Spoilers (1906) was filmed five times, starring Gary Cooper in the fourth
(1942) and John Wayne in the last (1955).
Pardners
(1904)
The
Barrier (1908)
The
Silver Horde (1909)
The
Iron Trail (1913)
The
Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure (1916)
Laughing
Bill Hyde and Other Stories (1917)
James
Oliver Curwood (1878-1927)
Curwood was an American writer and conservationist. A trip to Canada in 1909
inspired a series of stories that gave him enough money to explore the Yukon and
Alaska, fodder for his 30+ novels. An avid hunter in his youth, he became a proponent
of conservation in mid-life. Curwood was commisioned to write about Canada by
the Canadian government as a way of popularizing the country. Curwood spent much
of his money on his home, a castle-like chateau in Owosso, Michigan known as Curwood
Castle.
The
Courage of Captain Plum (1908)
The
Wolf Hunters (1908)
The
Gold Hunters (1909)
Steele
of the Royal Mounted (1911)
Kazan,
The Wolf Dog (1914)
The
Grizzly King (1916)
The
Alaskan (1923)
Other
Books
Hulbert
Footner (1879-1944)
Footner was a Canadian writer who started out to be an actor in New York.
His first writing was about travels along the Hudson River, then he wrote about
the Northwest Territory and along the Peace, Hay and Fraser Rivers. In his later
career he turned to detective fiction.
Two
on the Trail (1911)
New Rivers of the North (1912)
The Sealed Valley
(1914)
The
Fur Bringers (1920)
The
Woman From Outside (1921)
The
Huntress (1922)
James
B. Hendryx (1880-1963)
A
pulp writer who specialized in Westerns and Northerns.
His father owned a newspaper in Minnesota. he later made his home in Michigan.
Some of his Westerns were made into films in the silent picure days.
The
Promise (1915)
The
Gold Girl (1920)
Connie
Morgan in Fur Country (1921)
The
Challenge of the North (1922)
Bertrand
W. Sinclair (1881-1972)
A
Scotsman who came to America as a boy, Sinclair grew up in Montana before immigrating
to British Columbia where he made his final home. He wrote about Vancouver and
its surrounding area.
Raw
Gold (1907)
North
of Fifty-Three (1914)
Big
Timber (1916)
By no means is this all
the Northerns there are (literally hundreds I haven't mentioned) but this is a
good place to start. Enjoy
the adventure!
