A Life in the Bush: Lessons from My Father

Toronto: Viking, 1999. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo. SIGNED by author to title page. Orig. grey paper boards. 374 pp. Some light bumping to edges of dust jacket, else fine. In 1929, at the age of twenty-two, Duncan MacGregor, the son of a lumberman, greatgrandson of a voyageur, and an avid reader and ardent baseball fan, headed off into the largest tract of preserved bush in the world: Ontario's Algonquin Park. When he got there, he was home for the rest of his life. Working as a lumberman until a terrible accident ended his career at age 73, Duncan MacGregor was neither conventional nor predictable. He loved his labour in the bush, but mourned the careless way trees were destroyed. He knew the land intimately, but could not name its plants and insects. His knowledge about the world was vast, but he never travelled. He could talk on any subject, but was a man of few words. He saw relatively few people, but could charm anyone. He adored his children, but did not live with them. In this beautifully crafted memoir of his father, Roy MacGregor paints an intimate portrait of an unusual man and spins a spellbinding tale of a boy's complex relationship with his father. He also evokes, perhaps for the first time in Canadian literature, the bush the way bush people see it, an insider's view of life in the totemic Canadian wilderness.