In August, 1943, Gordon Miller’s mother, Alice and his eleven-year-old sister, Lillian, flew from the town of Gogama in Northern Ontario to visit family in Biscotasing. The small plane in which they were travelling crashed on landing in Lake Biscotasing killing its passengers. That tragedy altered life forever for twelve-year-old Gordon and his father, James Wishart Miller. Gordon Miller brings to life a bygone period and the transition to urbanization of Canada’s north. For more than two hundred years his Indigenous, Scottish, Irish and English ancestor played many roles in Canada’s fur trade, as voyageurs, trappers, and traders with the Northwest Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. His memoir looks back on an era of trading posts, trap lines and canoe brigades in Canada’s North, and to some of the characters like Archie Belaney (Grey Owl) and Tom Thompson, who were lured North by its “romantic” ethos.

Gordon Miller is a writer and visual artist of white and Indigenous descent, living in Oakville, Ontario. He is a member of Mattagami First Nation.