Customer Reviews

Three Against The Wilderness: The Amazing True Story of a Modern Pioneer Family and the Miracle They Wrought in the Barren Northern Wilderness

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There was a time when, I think, every public and every school library stocked at least one copy each of Three Against The Wilderness, Go North Young Man, and Crusoe of Lonesome Lake. That was before video games and role playing captured our youth's attention. Now, all three are quickly disappearing from our libraries.

Three Against is a heart-warming story of one Britisher finding himself in a remote area of Canada's British Columbia. In a search for a life he could enjoy among nature, he finds a badly damaged remote tract of land and decides to make a life for himself and his new wife (Native American) by restoring nature's grandeur by introducing beaver.

The story is one of courage and sacrifice and helps explain not only the early days of conservation but of how one man could make a difference in his environment by acting locally. Margaret Meade would have been proud as punch.

After you read this book, read Go North Young Man by Gordon Stoddard, and Crusoe of Lonesome Lake. You will probably do as I and keep a copy for reading every couple of years to remind yourself you can dream, you can improve your world, and you can enjoy living without too greatly harming the environment - C. William Anderson.

One of the most famous books about Canadian province British Columbia, Eric Collier's gripping Chilcotin memoir `Three Against the Wilderness' (1959) is a classic homesteading account. Born in Northampton, England in 1903, Eric married a girl of Indian descent, Lillian Ross, in 1928. Two years later, in spite of his wife's hip deformity due to a childhood accident, the couple took a wagon, three horses and their 18-month-old son Veasy, along with a tent, some provisions and $33, and reached the Stack Valley where they lived in an abandoned cabin. In a few years they relocated to Meldrum Creek, ten miles away, where they lived in a tent and built their own cabin. He and his wife Lillian had promised her 97-year-old grandmother, LaLa, to bring the beavers back to the area that she knew as a child before the white man came. Collier imported several pair of beaver, and raised the area's water table sufficiently to reinstate the beaver population. He encouraged more humane trapping methods and increasingly turned his hand to writing. In 1949 he was the first non-American to win Outdoor Life's Conservation Award and in the 1950s the staff at Outdoor Life encouraged him to consider writing a book about his experiences as a pioneering conservationist and trapper. Written by longhand and then transcribed onto his Remington typewriter, Collier's recollections of 26 years of family life and 'roughing it in the bush' for Three Against the Wilderness (1959) were a hit, and soon condensed by Reader's Digest and re-sold in at least seven translations around the world. See abcbookworld for more details of this and other books related to British Columbia.

Soft-spoken and usually unassuming, Eric Collier moved his family to Riske Creek in 1960. He sold his 38-mile trapline on March 26, 1964 for $2,500. He died at Riske Creek on March 15, 1966. Collier's wife and trapping partner Lily moved to Williams Lake and died in 1992. Their son Veasy, schooled by correspondence, served in the Korean War, married Judy Borkowski, and settled at Williams Lake. Erected in 1946, the Collier's much-deteriorated, second, four-room log home at Meldrum Creek was slated for demolition in 1989, under the auspices of the Chilcotin Military Reserve north of Riske Creek, but local protests in Cariboo encouraged Captain Paul Davies and the Canadian Army Engineers to resurrect the remote dwelling and its log barn with new roofing, shakes, doors and windows. A very rough road leads 40 kilometres off Highway 20 to the site--one of the few literary historical sites that have been preserved in British Columbia.

I read a `Companion Book Club' version of this book as a boy (about 11) and loved it. It must have been condensed though, so I would recommend an original 1959 to 1960 hardback. Amazon resellers often have them for sale (mine was published by Hutchinson, London around 1960). They aren't expensive (a fiver or so) and have piccies of the log cabins, the family and local moose. The book has 270 pages of (quite small) text. I loved this book as a kid back in the sixties, it opened a window on another world. The book was lying about as part of my fathers 'bookclub' selections, but went missing years ago. I've since purchased a better 2nd hand copy from Amazon for a few dollars. The Collier's story would actually make quite a good film, and its very sad that the book is now virtually unknown to the younger generation.

My first contact with this story began in 1959 when my mother read the condensed book section in the Readers Digest to me and to two other small boys from up the road. She said that we sat spellbound. It was a good story then; it has been each of the multiple times that I've read it. The story is of a man whose father wanted him to be a lawyer in England but who came to B.C. in about 1921 and ended up on 150,000 acre registered trap line ---to which he reintroduced the beaver. It is an intensly personal and heartwarming story of a family as it faced the wilderness into which they had come. The world of ecology today needs to remember that there were those who took serious the simultanous protection and the use of the environment before today's jealots were born.

This true life story provides inspiration and excitement as author Eric Collier tells of his family's struggles and triumphs living isolated in the Canadian wilderness with only his wife and son. This is a book that you will treasure as I have. You can not help but discover a renewed respect for nature. More importantly, though, you will be privelaged with a unique insight in to one family's devotion , commitment, and reliance on one another that makes "Leave it to Beaver" and "The Waltons" seem disfunctional.

My father introduced this book to me when i was a young boy and ive been drawn back to it in the fall of every year since.I can tell you that you`ll find your self transported to a time when family was the number 1 thing in your life,it had to be because you totally realied on one another for everything.It gives you a feeling of hope that is allmost undiscribile.The collier family take me into there life every year and at that time i feel as if i am apart of their story. My thanks to them and i hope you have the same wonderfull experiance that i have had again and again.

This books was surprisingly interesting. I leave it on the coffee table for friends to view when they visit - this always leads to conversations about the west!

its always funny that it sometimes takes a person from another country to recognise the beauty. this is a beautiful story and anyone who is seeking soemthing a bit uplifting of an environmental story will enjoy this

Wonderful book. While I had read a story written many years ago by the author I had never read the whole book. The author wrote many articles for nature magazines back in the 50-70's I believe. He was an environmentalist long before it became popular to be such.

It's simply a great book. IF you like true stories of adventure and nature then this is one for your library.

You won't be sorry.

It's an uplifting story about the rejuvenation of wetlands previously made barren for cattle farming. I just ordered a copy for a friend. It would be a wonderful book for high school students to read as it involves adventure, animals, and the influence we (and the beaver)can have over the environment. I love this book.

Eric Collier's story should be much better known than it is. Eric was a trapper and hunter, which I know some people think is wrong, but he was also an extremely dedicated conservationist who expended much time, care, and backbreaking labor to restore wildlife habitat in Canada. The truth is his hunting and trapping were done with such care and awareness of natural systems that he did far more good than harm to the animal kingdom, by helping to restore balance to the land. For instance he would trap wolves that killed the beavers which created habitat for all the animals, but other wolves he would leave alone. It also has plenty of adventure, from near freezing to encounters with attacking bear and moose. If you like the outdoors, this is a good read for a fair price.