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THE NORTHERN HORIZONS OF GUY BLANCHET: INTREPID SURVEYOR, 1884-1966. By GWYNETH HOYLE. Toronto, Ontario: Natural Heritage Books, The Dundurn Group, 2007. ISBN 978-1-55002-759-4. 240 p., maps, b&w illus., notes, bib., index. Softbound. Cdn$24.99; £13.99.
"Make up your mind. Don't stand on one foot; do whatever you think is best, but do it" (p. 131). Guy Houghton Blanchet's philosophy stood him in good stead for 50 years as a surveyor, though it was not easy work. The complications often came from supervising others and his interactions with institutions.
Born in 1884, Blanchet was the ninth of 11 children of a Quebec family that traces its roots back to an original French family in the new world (Finnie, 1985). Gwyneth Hoyle's biography of Blanchet places the man firmly in his times, usually in context, and always on the snowshoes, in the canoe, and along the survey line that were his life for five decades. Meticulously crafted, this detailed review of the life of a little-known northern legend illuminates the individual as well as the type.
By his early twenties, Blanchet was a mining engineer in the Canadian West, where he was to work for most of his life. He inhabited that slice of Canadian history between the explorers and the settlers, helping to draw the invisible lines across the land that forever changed the landscape and made way for a type of progress he questioned. For example, while he was staying in an igloo with a family, the seal oil lamp flickered out as they were settling in for the night. "How natural strange situations really are," he wrote, "when you yourself are...