Six Salmon Rivers

Six Salmon Rivers and Another is not just for anglers. It is a classic of Canadian life — a luminous account of the author’s lifelong love affair with the rivers of New Brunswick and their wilderness landscapes. It is a treasure trove of tales told by old-time guides and real-life stories about backwoods eccentrics, early explorers, and fellow sportsmen.

George Frederick Clarke was a man of broad and passionate interests — writer, archaeologist, environmentalist and lifelong angler. Six Salmon Rivers and Another is full of thrilling stories of salmon caught and salmon lost on New Brunswick rivers. But what makes it more than an angling classic is the “other river” that threads through it.

Time and again Clarke puts into words the intangible things that make anglers love their sport: the saltiness of the guides; the camaraderie of the campfire; and above all the sights, scents and sounds of the wilderness — “so interesting, so primitive, so remote from the usual haunts of men.”

The “other river” is, in a word, contentment; the deep delight in the flow of time and place that wilderness woods and rivers can impart. “A day off is a day gained,” says Clarke; his book tells us why.

George Frederick Clarke (1883-1974) was the author of thirteen books and dozens of short stories. He lived in Woodstock, NB.

Mary Bernard is George Frederick Clarke’s granddaughter. She was born in Quebec in 1941. For many years she spent summers at her grandparents’ home in Woodstock, NB. She studied at the University of New Brunswick and at Harvard and Cambridge. A writer and photographer, she is the author of two novels, Truth and Consequences and Friends and Lovers.

She is the editor of the George Frederick Clarke Project and is preparing his books for republication by Chapel Street Editions. She lives in England.