Trap Lines North

Winter was near, and with Big Lindsay laid up, it looked as if the Vanderbecks were in for a hard time. Winter way up north in the Thunder Bay District of Ontario is a serious matter. It is long and bitter and there is much work to be done that requires experience and woods wisdom and courage. This winter it was up to eighteen-year-old Jim Vanderbeck and his younger brother Lindsay to take their father’s place on the trap-lines. Upon their efforts, pitted against real dangers and hardships, depended the annual catch of fur and the income of the family. Jim felt the responsibility but he also felt the adventure of being all on his own. Trap-Lines North is the story of that winter. So realistically does Stephen Meader retell it that the reader is virtually taken into the woods with Jim in the fall. He tramps from line camp to line camp, followed by the staunch old sled dogs, Bruno and Pat. He sleeps in rough pole lean-tos, eats moose meat, catches fish through the ice, and from time to time feels a chill along his spine when he comes upon the tracks of the lone gray killer—the biggest wolf in Canada. Jim Vanderbeck is a real person.