Leonard Budgell - Arctic Twilight: Leornard Budgell and Canadas Changing North

Arctic Twilight, Claudia Coutu Radmores fine collection of letters from Leonard BudgellArctic adventurer, radio and naval expert, fur trader, raconteur, life-long Servant of the Bay, and a whole lot moreprovides an illuminating portrait of life in the changing Canadian North during much of the twentieth century. Budgells account of his well-travelled life, at once autobiography, history, and yarn, ranges from the riotously funny to the deeply moving. It is the fascinating story of one of twentieth-century Canadas true pioneers. Arctic Twilight deserves a wide readership.

A.B. McKILLOP, Professor of History, Carleton University, Ottawa; author of Pierre Berton: A Biography

Arctic Twilight takes us into the mind of a gentleman of another timea man of high intelligence, good sense and deep loyalty to The Hudsons Bay Company. Providing a thousand rich details regarding day-to-day life in the Arctic, Leonard Budgells letters will delight history lovers, students of the North and fiction writers in need of background material. We should be grateful to Claudia Coutu Radmore for this valuable collection.

BERNICE MORGAN, author of Random Passage and Cloud of Bone

Len Budgells letters are one of the greatest legacies anyone could have left Canada and its people. With incredible insight and sensitivity he painted a remarkable picture, particularly of the aboriginal peoples of the Canadian north and their humanity. This work is extremely powerful in what it says about the humanity of first nations peoples, about the negligence and racism of mainstream Canada. It puts real life to the conditions of the north.

DR. FRITS PANNEKOEK, Professor of History and President of Athabasca University

Of all the books Ive worked on, this is my favourite. Len Budgells letters are filled with wonderful storiesstories full of feeling, humour, wonder and courageand descriptions of such beauty that you have to stop and re-read them. I want all my family and friendseveryoneto read it.

DOMINIC FARRELL, editor; author of the forthcoming book The Flag and the Pole, Canadas experience in the northern archipelago

Over the years Ive become so jaded by manuscripts that have come my way, even by those on the verge of being published. In Arctic Twilight I surely wasnt expecting to find (a) excellent writing, (b) subjects that touched me directly, or (c) glimpses of simple, unaffected, literary genius. But all three are here, in abundance.

Lens letters to Claudia Coutu are abundant and sparkling, original, engaginghow completely wonderful. What a blessing that these two formed such a bond, and I think the fact Claudia is now sharing a manifestation of that bond with the world, is tremendous.

In short, I am enchanted, riveted even, but the kind of riveted where one wants to proceed slowly, to relish each bit. I confess Ive taken to bringing the manuscript for Arctic Twilight with me from room to room, to have it close by for moments in between other occupations, snatches of time when I can pick it up again.

KAREN MOLSON, historian; author of The Molsons: Their Lives and Times

CLAUDIA COUTU RADMORE began a written correspondence with Leonard Budgell in the early 1980s, which continued even when she was training teachers in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu for several years. Claudia recognized the educational and historical value of the wonderful stories Len related in his letters of his experiences living and working in Canadas North. Arctic Twilight makes Lens stories available to all.

Photo: Claudia in 1987, in an aluminum runabout on the way to the island of Mota Lava in Vanuatu. J. PATTERSON

LEONARD BUDGELL was born in 1917 in the remote Labrador settlement of North West River and grew up 80 miles to the east in Rigolet, where his father managed the Hudsons Bay Company trading post. Officially joining the Company himself in 1935, Len remained a Servant of the Bay until his retirement in 1982. He and his wife, Muriel, whom he met when she went to Labrador as a nurse, raised a family of four. Len Budgell died in 2000.

In the first letter from Leonard Budgell in this selection, Len writes from a St. Boniface Hospital room in Manitoba. He has had a spell, which eventually would be diagnosed as a heart condition too dangerous for the bypass surgery recommended. If this had been diagnosed when he was a child, he would have been advised to lead a sedentary, careful life, and yet Len would lead a life in which he guided small boats into hazardous waters, wintered in famine conditions close to the North Pole, and hunted in snowstorms in the treacherous Torngat Mountains. He would marry, raise a family of four, and manage Hudsons Bay Company posts in North Labrador and in the eastern and western Arctic. He would know ships, native peoples, the workings of outports, dogs, the habits of northern animals and birds, and sea animals. He would become one of the pioneers in radio in the North, and in time, be acknowledged as a primary source on the North for historians, with his oral and written resource materials held in The Hudsons Bay Company Archives.