The rainbow chasers

by Ervin Austin MacDonald

This first-hand account of a Canadian pioneer the next title in TouchWoods Classics West series tells the story of a hard-won wilderness home and of the self-sufficient father and brothers who built it. Their tale of wanderlust begins in 1839 in Bytown, Ontario (later called Ottawa), with father Archie MacDonald, who reached his peak as an Ottawa Valley bull of the woods by age 29, prospected for silver and gold from Leadville, Colorado, to Sonora, Mexico, drove Montana cattle to the remote CPR camps in B.C. and carved out a ranch near Fort Colville, Washington. Ervin was motherless by age four, and he and his brothers and sisters were sent to an orphanage. He was reunited with his father when he was 13, and the MacDonalds homesteaded southeast of booming Edmonton. But the prairie disagreed with the mountain man in Archie, who dreamed of the Cariboo. Thus he and his teenage sons embarked on a pack journey across the Rockies via the Yellowhead Pass without map or compass, and using makeshift rafts to cross rivers in search of the special site that would become their Lac des Roches in the Bridge Lake area of the Cariboo.

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 2008

Reviews

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

I normally wouldn't even pick up a pioneer novel. One of my fellow bookclubbers picked this as our April read and I rolled my eyes. BUT, I loved it!!!! I read it in 2 days.
I had no perspective on farming or life before electricity. This book had me on the edge of my seat at times and often cheering the characters on.
Read if you love the outdoors and have a sense of adventure!

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

These memoirs of BC, particularly Cariboo, ranching are my favourite genre. I enjoyed the book, which read something like a long visit over coffee. The love, admiration, and respect the author feels for his father is quite obvious, but I have to say it seems to me that quite often their poor luck and mishaps are driven by bad choices and sometimes downright foolishness on their father's part.
Still, it is a unique and interesting account of our province's early days and I intend to keep it in my personal library.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story about supermen, logging and survival in BC's wilderness.

[Jessika]

It just makes you want to get a horse and cross the country on it. This book is full of adventure.