The 50th anniversary edition of this BC classic, now in hardcover, will make a timeless keepsake.This is a biography and astonishing adventure story of a woman who, left a widow in 1927, packed her fi
The 50th anniversary edition of this BC classic, now in hardcover, will make a timeless keepsake.
This is a biography and astonishing adventure story of a woman who, left a widow in 1927, packed her five children onto a 25-foot boat and cruised the coastal waters of British Columbia, summer after summer.
Muriel Wylie Blanchet acted single-handedly as skipper, navigator, engineer and, of course, mum, as she saw her crew through encounters with tides, fog, storms, rapids, cougars and bears. She sharpened in her children a special interest in Haida culture and in nature itself.
In this book, she left us with a sensitive and compelling account of their journeys.
M. Wylie Blanchet
was born Muriel Wylie Liffiton on May 2, 1891, in Montreal, Quebec. She married Geoffrey Orme Blanchet in 1909, but was widowed in 1926, leaving her to raise five children on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. For several summers Muriel, her children, and the family dog set off in a twenty-five foot motorboat, the Caprice, to explore the waters between Vancouver Island and the rugged Canadian mainland. They were on their own, with Muriel as captain, anchoring in secluded coves to tramp the wilderness, examining architecture and burial grounds in deserted native villages, and meeting the region's various human and animal inhabitants.
Muriel wrote about their journeys, and was successful in having articles published in magazines such as Blackwood's and Atlantic Monthly. In 1962, the year Muriel died, Blackwood & Sons of Edinburgh, Scotland published The Curve in Time, which described several summers of the family explorations. In 1968, Gray Publishing in Canada printed a second edition of The Curve in Time, and since then it has earned a reputation as a Canadian classic.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Timothy Egan has written for the New York Times for eighteen years. His books include The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (a National Book Award winner), The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, and most recently The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. He lives with his family in Seattle, Washington.
This introduction, originally entitled "Capi," was written for a special Canadian anniversary edition of The Curve of Time. Gray Campbell was the original Canadian publisher of the book and a close friend and neighbour of Muriel Wylie Blanchet.
Eileen Blanchet is the daughter of the author M. Wylie Blanchet.
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"A superlative text of travel writing and of the Pacific Northwest."
— The New Yorker Recommends (2019)
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