Name: Bannock and Beans
Brand: Royal BC Museum (CA)
SKU: 9780772660602
Price: 12.99 GBP
Availability: InStock

Bannock and Beans

A Cowboy's Account of the Bedaux Expedition

By (author): Bob White, Foreword by: Jay Sherwood, Edited by: Jay Sherwood

Published by Royal BC Museum (CA)

£12.99

in stock

Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Illustrations: b/w photos
ISBN: 9780772660602
Publication Date: 01-Jun-2009

Subjects:
Memoirs
History of other lands
Geographical discovery & exploration
Horses & ponies
Expeditions
Canada
British Columbia

Quantity

In 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression, millionaire Charles Bedaux spent $250,000 in an attempt to cross northern British Columbia in five motorized vehicles. The Bedaux Expedition ranks as one of the most audacious and unusual events in the province's history. Bannock and Beans tells the story of this extravagant failure from the perspective of one of the cowboys who worked on Bedaux's team. Bob White's reminiscences, recounted in the tradition of the cowboy storyteller, describe the hardships of cutting trails and hauling supplies on horseback, the beauty of the wilderness landscape and many of the unique aspects of the expedition. Bannock and Beans also reveals the complex character of the expedition's leader, Charles Bedaux, a French entrepreneur who made his fortune in the United States. The book includes White's experiences in Bedaux's attempts to develop a ranch in northern BC after the expedition. Editor Jay Sherwood supplements with original Bedaux Expedition correspondence and photographs to show Bedaux's strong attachment to the remote wilderness area of northern BC from 1926 to 1939. Bannock and Beans provides new information and a fresh perspective on this unique event in BC's history. White's memoirs take us back to the campfire stories of people who were part of the vast wilderness that still covered much of the northern part of the province 75 years ago.

Bob White (1902-86) was a career cowboy, born and raised in the remote Cypress Hills region of southwestern Saskatchewan. As a young man, White yearned for adventure, so headed west with a friend and ended up trapping and working on pack trains in northern BC, where he was hired to work for Charles Bedaux. In 1983, long after he had returned to Saskatchewan, White wrote his account of the Bedaux Expedition.

Jay Sherwood started his career in surveying before becoming a teacher-librarian. He is the author of nine BC history books, including the four-book series about the career of surveyor Frank Swannell. Two of his works have been BC Book Prize finalists, and three have received BC Historical Federation awards. Ootsa Lake Odyssey won the 2018 Jeanne Clarke Memorial local history award. His most recent publications have been the two-part series on the Alberta-BC boundary survey. Sherwood is retired and currently lives in Burnaby.

Indeed, in terms of the cowboy, Whites narrative is imbued with an ethos of hard work, perseverance, and humour. The figure of the cowboy comes alive in Whites personable, comforting, matter-of-fact tone... I find Whites narrative compelling not only for its description of the cowboy life but also for how he sees and encounters the BC landscape and how he makes his readers a part of it. BC Studies 167