A Life in the Bush
Lessons from My Father

National Bestseller

Winner of:
The CAA-Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography
The 2000 Ottawa-Carlton Book Award
The (U.S.) Rutstrum Award for Best Wilderness Book

In 1929, at the age of twenty-two, Duncan MacGregor, the son of a lumberman, great-grandson of a voyageur, and an avid reader and baseball fan, headed off into the largest tract of preserved bush in the world: Ontario's Algonquin Park. When he got there, he was home for the rest of his life.

In this beautifully crafted memoir about his father, Roy MacGregor paints an intimate portrait of an unusual man and spins a spellbinding tale of a boy's complex relationship with his father. He also evokes, perhaps for the first time in Canadian literature, the bush the way bush people see it, an insider's view of life in the totemic Canadian wilderness.

From the true nature of fishing to the harsh realities of raising a family in the woods, from the role of fear in the bush to the small nuances of family relationships, A Life in the Bush is painted on a canvas both vast and richly detailed, with immense Algonquin Park the ever-present backdrop. A story that captures the tough physical demands, the rich life of the senses, and the unselfconscious freedom that comes from living apart from town and city.

Complex, colourful, and capable on many levels, Duncan was a man of contradictions, not the least of which was his choice of a 19th-century existence in a 20th-century world. A lumberman until an accident finally forced him out of the park in his 70s, MacGregor père was a skilled outdoorsman, passionate angler, avid reader, amateur historian, lifelong baseball fan, and a remarkably present father for someone who lived away from his family for most of the year. "He was always there for us," the son stresses, "only 'there' was in the bush, where he could be counted on."

PRAISE

"A portrait of a true original." — Hamilton Spectator

"It's in the many ways Duncan ultimately could be counted on—as a father and as a man—that make him such a full and memorable character. If he hadn't been so real, it would have taken a writer of his son's exceptional ability to create him. That he had the genuine article to work with makes A Life in the Bush all the richer." — Jeff Silverman

"No ordinary man, Dunc MacGregor will live on by grace of this vivid, extraordinary book."— Maclean’s

AUTHOR

A native of Huntsville, Roy MacGregor has been a journalist for more than twenty years, and for the past decade, a regular contributor to Cottage Life magazine with his immensely popular "Weekender" column. He is the author of numerous bestselling and award-winning books, including Escape, Canoe Lake, A Life in the Bush, The Home Team, and the popular children's mystery series The Screech Owls. He now lives in Kanata, Ontario.

DETAILS

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 2007
Category: Biography, autobiography, and reminiscences
ISBN: 978-0-14-305331-6
Price: $16 CDN/USA paperback
Format: 392 pages 5.25 x 8.25 in