The Man from Glengarry (New Canadian Library) [Mass Market Paperback]

Ralph Connor (Author), Alison Gordon (Afterword)

Book Description

Series: New Canadian Library | Publication Date: May 1, 1993

Ranald Macdonald’s roots are in the forest of Ontario’s easternmost county and his character was forged in the small Presbyterian church near his home. When he leaves to test his idealism and faith in the rough world of the lumber business, he brings pride to the minister’s wife who was the model for his life.

Met with international acclaim when published in 1901, The Man from Glengarry is a tale of courage and an exciting portrait of life in 19th-century Canada.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Ranald Macdonald's roots are in the forest of Ontario's easternmost county and his character was forged in the small Presbyterian church near his home. When he leaves to test his idealism and faith in the rough world of the lumber business, he brings pride to the minister's wife who was the model for his life.

Met with international acclaim when published in 1901, The Man from Glengarry is a tale of courage and an exciting portrait of life in 19th-century Canada.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Open River
 
The winter had broken early and the Scotch River was running ice-free and full from bank to bank. There was still snow in the woods, and with good sleighing and open rivers every day was golden to the lumbermen who had stuff to get down to the big water. A day gained now might save weeks at a chute farther down, where the rafts would crowd one another and strive for right of way.
 
Dan Murphy was mightily pleased with himself and with the bit of the world about him, for there lay his winter's cut of logs in the river below him snug and secure and held tight by a boom across the mouth, just where it flowed into the Nation. In a few days he would have his crib made, and his outfit ready to start for the Ottawa mills. He was sure to be ahead of the big timber rafts that took up so much space, and whose crews with unbearable effrontery considered themselves the aristocrats of the river.
 
Yes, it was a pleasant and satisfying sight, some three solid miles of logs boomed at the head of the big water. Suddenly Murphy turned his face up the river.
 
"What's that now, d'ye think, LeNware?" he asked.
 
LeNoir, or "LeNware," as they all called it in that country, was Dan Murphy's foreman, and as he himself said, "for haxe, for hit (eat), for fight de boss on de reever Hottawa! by Gar!" Louis LeNoir was a French-Canadian, handsome, active, hardy, and powerfully built. He had come from the New Brunswick woods some three years ago, and had wrought and fought his way, as he thought, against all rivals to the proud position of "boss on de reever," the topmost pinnacle of a lumberman's ambition. It was something to see LeNoir "run a log" across the river and back; that is, he would balance himself upon a floating log, and by spinning it round, would send it whither he would. At Murphy's question LeNoir stood listening with bent head and open mouth. Down the river came the sound of singing. "Don-no me! Ah oui! be dam! Das Macdonald gang for sure! De men from Glengarrie, les diables! Dey not hout de reever yet." His boss went off into a volley of oaths –
 
"They'll be wanting the river now, an' they're divils to fight."
 
"We give em de full belly, heh? Bon!" said LeNoir, throwing back his head. His only unconquered rival on the river was the boss of the Macdonald gang.
 
Ho ro, mo nighean donn bhoidheach,
Hi-ri, mo nighean donn bhoidheach,
Mo chaileag, laghach, bhoidheach,
Cha phosainn ach thu.
 
Down the river came the strong, clear chorus of men's voices, and soon a "pointer" pulled by six stalwart men with a lad in the stern swung round the bend into view. A single voice took up the song –
 
'S ann tha mo run's na beanntaibh,
Far bheil mo ribhinn ghreannar,
Mar ros am fasach shamhraidh
An gleann fad o shuil.
 
After the verse the full chorus broke forth again –
 
Ho ro, mo nighean, etc.
 
Swiftly the pointer shot down the current, the swaying bodies and swinging oars in perfect rhythm with the song that rose and fell with melancholy but musical cadence. The men on the high bank stood looking down upon the approaching singers. "You know dem fellers?" said LeNoir. Murphy nodded. "Ivery divil iv thim – Big Mack Cameron, Dannie Ross, Finlay Campbell – the redheaded one – the next I don't know, and yes! be dad! there's that blanked Yankee, Yankee Jim, they call him, an' bad luck till him. The divil will have to take the poker till him, for he'll bate him wid his fists, and so he will – and that big black divil is Black Hugh, the brother iv the boss Macdonald. He'll be up in the camp beyant, and a mighty lucky thing for you, LeNoir, he is."
 
"Bah!" spat LeNoir, "Dat beeg Macdonald I mak heem run like one leetle sheep, one tam at de long Sault, bah! No good!" LeNoir's contempt for Macdonald was genuine and complete. For two years he had tried to meet the boss Macdonald, but his rival had always avoided him.
 
Meantime, the pointer came swinging along. As it turned the point the boy uttered an exclamation – "Look there!" The song and the rowing stopped abruptly; the big, dark man stood up and gazed down the river, packed from bank to bank with the brown saw-logs; deep curses broke from him. Then he caught sight of the men on the bank. A word of command and the pointer shot into the shore, and the next moment Macdonald Dubh, or Black Hugh, as he was sometimes called, followed by his men, was climbing up the steep bank.
 
"What the blank, blank, do these logs mean, Murphy?" he demanded, without pause for salutation.
 
"Tis a foine avenin' Misther Macdonald," said Murphy, blandly offering his hand, "an' Hiven bliss ye."
 
Macdonald checked himself with an effort and reluctantly shook hands with Murphy and LeNoir, whom he slightly knew. "It is a fery goot evening, indeed," he said, in as quiet a voice as he could command, "but I am inquiring about these logs."
 
"Shure, an' it is a dhry night, and onpolite to kape yez talking here. Come in, wid yez," and much against his will Black Hugh followed Murphy to the tavern, the most pretentious of a group of log buildings – once a lumber camp – which stood back a little distance from the river, and about which Murphy's men, some sixty of them, were now camped.
 
The tavern was full of Murphy's gang, a motley crew, mostly French Canadians and Irish, just out of the woods and ready for any devilment that promised excitement. Most of them knew by sight, and all by reputation, Macdonald and his gang, for from the farthest reaches of the Ottawa down the St. Lawrence to Quebec the Macdonald gang of Glengarry men was famous. They came, most of them, from that strip of country running back from the St. Lawrence through Glengarry County, known as the Indian Lands – once an Indian reservation. They were sons of the men who had come from the highlands and islands of Scotland in the early years of the last century. Driven from homes in the land of their fathers, they had set themselves with indomitable faith and courage to hew from the solid forest homes for themselves and their children that none might take from them. These pioneers were bound together by ties of blood, but also by bonds stronger than those of blood. Their loneliness, their triumphs, their sorrows, born of their common life-long conflict with the forest and its fierce beasts, knit them in bonds close and enduring. The sons born to them and reared in the heart of the pine forests grew up to witness that heroic struggle with stern nature and to take their part in it. And mighty men they were. Their life bred in them hardiness of frame, alertness of sense, readiness of resource, endurance, superb self-reliance, a courage that grew with peril, and withal a certain wildness which at times deepened into ferocity. By their fathers the forest was dreaded and hated, but the sons, with rifles in hand, trod its pathless stretches without fear, and with their broadaxes they took toll of their ancient foe. For while in spring and summer they farmed their narrow fields, and rescued new lands from the brûlé; in winter they sought the forest, and back on their own farms or in "the shanties" they cut saw-logs, or made square timber, their only source of wealth. The shanty life of the early fifties of last century was not the luxurious thing of to-day. It was full of privation, for the men were poorly housed and fed, and of peril, for the making of the timber and the getting it down the smaller rivers to the big water was a work of hardship and danger. Remote from the restraints of law and of society, and living in wild surroundings and in hourly touch with danger, small wonder that often the shanty-men were wild and reckless. So that many a poor fellow in a single wild carouse in Quebec, or more frequently in some river town, would fling into the hands of sharks and harlots and tavern-keepers, with whom the bosses were sometimes in league, the earnings of his long winter's work, and would wake to find himself sick and penniless, far from home and broken in spirit.
 
Of all the shanty-men of the Ottawa the men of Glengarry, and of Glengarry men Macdonald's gang were easily first, and of the gang Donald Bhain Macdonald, or Macdonald More, or the Big Macdonald, for he was variously known, was not only the "boss" but best and chief. There was none like him. A giant in size and strength, a prince of broadaxe men, at home in the woods, sure-footed and daring on the water, free with his wages, and always ready to drink with friend or fight with foe, the whole river admired, feared, or hated him, while his own men followed him into the woods, on to a jam, or into a fight with equal joyousness and devotion. Fighting was like wine to him, when the fight was worth while, and he went into the fights his admirers were always arranging for him with the easiest good humor and with a smile on his face. But Macdonald Bhain's carousing, fighting days came to an abrupt stop about three years before the opening of this tale, for on one of his summer visits to his home, "The word of the Lord in the mouth of his servant Alexander Murray," as he was wont to say, "found him and he was a new man." He went into his new life with the same whole-souled joyousness as had marked the old, and he announced that with the shanty and the river he was "done for ever more." But after the summer's work was done, and the logging over, and when the snap of the first frost nipped the leaves from the trees, Macdonald became restless. He took down his broad-axe and spent hours polishing it and bringing it to an edge, then he put it in its wooden sheat...

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: New Canadian Library (May 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771098901
• ISBN-13: 978-0771098901
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,028,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Canadian scottish culture, November 20, 2000

By 

Wendy McInnis (canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Man from Glengarry (New Canadian Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

I studied this book in Canadian Lit at St. Francis Xavier University, and the whole class loved it. Our professor tied it in with our Scottish heritage and culture, which is very strong in Nova Scotia and in rural Ontario. It may be hard to believe but the values in the book were the same I was taught growing up 25 years ago, even the Gaelic phrases were familiar. Our class came to the conclusion that the book could explain a great deal about the roots of the so-called Canadian Identity. If you want to read about the real Canadian pioneers, this is it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Novel about the wilds of logging in the Canadian wilderness., August 16, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Man from Glengarry (New Canadian Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

It was hard to believe that this novel I was reading was published in 1901! It kept thinking that the fiction writers of the turn of the century were very similar to the young adult writers of today.

Connor wrote a book which was an accurate recount of life in the Canadian wilderness, and did it in a way that was not offensive in vernacular or boring in content.

Truly a timeless novel that your children should read. It very refreshing compared to some of the acidic laced young adult "literature" of today. (but they do need some of that to get a perspective on the real world, as it is now)