Birchbark Canoe: Living Among the Algonquins

Good read. Gives good starting insight into an alternate social system and the evolution caused by contact with today's society. Brings back memories of birch bark canoes and hand made boats from my youth. I didn't see any particular bias in the presentation. It was a reasonable account based on his observations. Like the Amish or some of the South American and African tribes, these folks are all too soon locked into modern society by economics. Unlike coverage by author John Perkins of some of the South American tribes, there isn't a presumption of evil on behalf of capitalism or communism. The observation rather chronicles the assimilation and shrinkage of the Algonquin legacy brought about by increasing social, economic, and political pressures.

I'm hard-pressed to expand upon the comments of the previous reviewer (Mr. Wheaton), except to say that I thought the book was highly readable, enjoyable, and very informative. I especially appreciated the author's attention to the Algonquin language. Gidmark intersperses many Indian words and phrases throughout the text, giving the reader a feeling for the tongue's complexity and beauty. I recommend the book to anyone interested in canoeing, and the north.

I came to a quite different opinion about David Gidmark's book than did the first reviewer; I think it is a very elegant book that combines practical information about birchbark canoes with a very human approach to the relationship between the White and the Native cultures. Gidmark addresses fundamental questions of how one should live in this world and comes to conclusions based on his personal experiences.He discusses Thoreau's interest in the birchbark canoe, and says, "I admired innumerable things about Thoreau, but one with which I most empathized, and most wanted to emulate, was his idea that people could best flourish by living on the borderline, literally, between civilization and wilderness, thereby deriving the greatest benefits from each." Gidmark goes on to describe his simple lifestyle in his cabin by a "lake with no name," and concludes that he was "far ahead of four billion people-at least-on the planet in terms of material possessions. I had a truck, all the food I wanted and needed, the money and time to travel freely to various countries, and money for clothes and books. In peace of mind I was immensely richer than hundreds of millions of people, particularly in North America, who are so wired into the contemporary consumer society that both husband and wife have to work outside the home and have neither time nor money for significant travel, for instance." Perhaps this is "holier-than-thou," but that could be said about any book that advocates the benefits of an exercise program, for example.Gidmark criticizes the "materialistic" society only from the standpoint that it leads to stress. I'm sure that he is happy to have people buy his books. The book, by the way, includes a sixteen-page insert of beautiful color photographs of Jim Jerome and Jocko Carle building a birchbark canoe at Rapid Lake, Quebec.I highly recommend it to anybody interested in birchbark canoes.