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Wolf Man Joe Laflamme: Tamer Untamed
Imagine a strapping Canadian trapper raising timber wolves to pull his sleigh; mushing them down Bay Street and Broadway; travelling by plane with untethered and un-caged wolves; surviving wolf mutinies and a plane crash; trucking a live moose to the International Order of the Moose convention in Ohio; accompanying his moose to a tourist show on ABC radio in New Yorkand now imagine that simultaneously he is bootlegging his moonshine to make ends meet and spice up his life in the north country bush of Gogama, midway between Sudbury and Timmins. Well, no need to imagine. Joe Wolf Man LaFlamme did all this and more during the 20s, 30s, and 40s. His love of boreal forest animals combined with his own untamed spirit to turn him into a true Canadian original whose story Suzanne F. Charron has recovered from over 265 almost forgotten media articles. Supported by a selection of remarkable photos, Wolfman Joe Tamer Untamed introduces Joe to new generations of readers, and into the canon of Canadian legends.
255 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 2, 2018
The good:
I feared there wouldn't be enough about Joe LaFlamme's wolves, but, luckily for me, the author's fascination with them brought Joe's wolves into focus. At first, Charron wanted to write a novel based on LaFlamme's life. She wrote a biography instead, and it's just as compelling as a work of fiction. I had a feeling throughout as if it were some lost story set in a world of London or Curwood.
Charron chose the most interesting facts & events instead of boring the reader with dry data that no one cares about. I admit, I'm not that interested in the man himself as I am in his days as an animal tamer. We get a glimpse of his life outside of that, of course, but just enough and not to the point of making you skip the pages to reach the good stuff.
The bad:
The editing. It's not that bad, but you can definitely tell the editor either fell asleep or wasn't there. It's a second edition, for crying out loud, how can you leave the same sentence repeated twice on the very first page of a preface to the second edition? I thought, then and there: this is going to be a disaster. It wasn't, but you get my point.
The photos. For one, the quality is just plain bad. The. Pixels. I could count them. Not all the pictures were like this, but enough of them to make me mad. Especially since you can find them in great quality on simple google search. Speaking of which, where are these photos anyway? I googled the man and came up with some amazing pics which should've been in the book. The author even asks in the preface to the second edition to send her any photos of Joe that she didn't have prior to this edition's release. Didn't she have access to the internet? The only explanation I can come up with is that she couldn't get permissions to use them. That or GettyImages is too expensive.
The lenght. The book is just short. 1/3 of it is the notes, the bibliography and the index. But I guess it's better to leave it fascinating and short rather than long and boring.
The treatment of animals. I don't blame the book for it, obviously, but I just need to mention it. It doesn't look like Joe was consciously mistreating the animals, but you can't trap a wild wolf and harness him to a sled full of dogs or, worse still, other unrelated wolves. There's bound to be fighting, and fear, and stress. Keeping wild animals in captivity is a mistreatment in itself. We read that the wolves would flee the first chance they got. That young wolves harnessed with dogs to a sled would cower in fear. That the animals were taken from the wild and kept as pets. I guess it was normal at the time. Just as with Lois Crisler and her husband, who took wolf pups from the wild to raise them for documentary filming.
That being said...
It was still fastinating to read that Joe actually succeeded in making a full wolf sled team, with 10 timber wolves and a lead wolf named Calgary.
I feared there wouldn't be enough about Joe LaFlamme's wolves, but, luckily for me, the author's fascination with them brought Joe's wolves into focus. At first, Charron wanted to write a novel based on LaFlamme's life. She wrote a biography instead, and it's just as compelling as a work of fiction. I had a feeling throughout as if it were some lost story set in a world of London or Curwood.
Charron chose the most interesting facts & events instead of boring the reader with dry data that no one cares about. I admit, I'm not that interested in the man himself as I am in his days as an animal tamer. We get a glimpse of his life outside of that, of course, but just enough and not to the point of making you skip the pages to reach the good stuff.
The bad:
The editing. It's not that bad, but you can definitely tell the editor either fell asleep or wasn't there. It's a second edition, for crying out loud, how can you leave the same sentence repeated twice on the very first page of a preface to the second edition? I thought, then and there: this is going to be a disaster. It wasn't, but you get my point.
The photos. For one, the quality is just plain bad. The. Pixels. I could count them. Not all the pictures were like this, but enough of them to make me mad. Especially since you can find them in great quality on simple google search. Speaking of which, where are these photos anyway? I googled the man and came up with some amazing pics which should've been in the book. The author even asks in the preface to the second edition to send her any photos of Joe that she didn't have prior to this edition's release. Didn't she have access to the internet? The only explanation I can come up with is that she couldn't get permissions to use them. That or GettyImages is too expensive.
The lenght. The book is just short. 1/3 of it is the notes, the bibliography and the index. But I guess it's better to leave it fascinating and short rather than long and boring.
The treatment of animals. I don't blame the book for it, obviously, but I just need to mention it. It doesn't look like Joe was consciously mistreating the animals, but you can't trap a wild wolf and harness him to a sled full of dogs or, worse still, other unrelated wolves. There's bound to be fighting, and fear, and stress. Keeping wild animals in captivity is a mistreatment in itself. We read that the wolves would flee the first chance they got. That young wolves harnessed with dogs to a sled would cower in fear. That the animals were taken from the wild and kept as pets. I guess it was normal at the time. Just as with Lois Crisler and her husband, who took wolf pups from the wild to raise them for documentary filming.
That being said...
It was still fastinating to read that Joe actually succeeded in making a full wolf sled team, with 10 timber wolves and a lead wolf named Calgary.
September 27, 2014
Joe Laflamme was an interesting man and his way of life was not like any other. I was hoping for a chronology of his life but the book covered events mostly. There was no continuation but rather noteworthy timelines. I read this book rather quickly and enjoyed reading about a different kind of lifestyle but would have enjoyed the book even more had it been more about his life from the beginning to the end.
December 10, 2013
what an amazing man was this Joe LaFlamme-biography well research and nicely documented
January 8, 2014
I was expecting be very good book half way of book stop reading it !!!!!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews