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Sep 20, 2000

Canada's Kipling revisited

Contact: the author via e-mail

Arctic Adventures with the Lady Greenbelly

by Kenneth Conibear ISBN 1-55212-441-X

Subject: The author's dangerous and humorous travels down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean - and back, with his notoriously inept freight scow, the Lady Greenbelly.

Ken Conibear, Northern pioneer, Rhodes Scholar and author writes of his exciting, dangerous, and humourous experiences taking his 30 foot, motorized freight scow, the Lady Greenbelly, over 1000 miles from Fort Nelson down the majestic and rugged Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean - and back. Arctic Adventures with the Lady Greenbelly, an autobiographical novel, is Conibear's fifth novel of life in Canada's far north.

He took on this Arctic adventure for two reasons. First, he intended to carry freight to the Arctic communities with his newly acquired Lady Greenbelly, and then sell her there for a handsome profit. Second, Bill Sweet, an elderly, retired insurance salesman from Seattle who had read Conibear's previous books, had convinced Conibear to take him on a side trip, a wilderness filming expedition up the relatively unmapped Rat River. During the course of the trip, everything that could go wrong with the Lady Greenbelly did go wrong, and Bill Sweet himself caused more than a few problems because of his unbounded, but inept, enthusiasm, and excessive politeness.

The many people met on the trip provide their own stories including the Eskimo whalers who cheerfully gambled away their year's earnings; Mike Krutko, a storekeeper in Fort Providence who always remained cheerful, even as provisions for his store sank with the Lady Greenbelly; and the fur trappers, Jake and Izor, who went Outside to find a wife for Izor and instead adopted a 12-year-old English war orphan, and then headed back north with all the supplies they believed any 12-year-old would need. Using an axe, their team of sled dogs and the only butcher's chopping block in the North, they were among many who used northern creativity to came to the rescue of the notoriously inept Lady Greenbelly.

News travels fast in the North, and the Lady Greenbelly's reputation had spread so that she was impossible to sell, at any price. Stuck with her, Ken had to return south up the many treacherous rapids of the Mackenzie and Liard Rivers, facing more adventures and life-threatening situations, always with courage, a lot of luck and never-ending good humour.

Kenneth Conibear was born in Canada in 1907, and moved with his family to the Northwest Territories in 1912. He was raised in Fort Smith, and was home-educated to the grade 10 level by his parents and friends within that community. He was sent out to Edmonton to complete grades 11 and 12, and continued on to the University of Alberta where he was selected as the Alberta Rhodes Scholar in 1931. Following 3 years at Oxford, he spent the next three years in England writing and had his first novel, the highly acclaimed "Northland Footprints", published in 1936. It was then that reviewers referred to him as 'The Kipling of the North'. In 1937 his publisher hired him to travel with and manage the Canadian Indian naturalist Grey Owl's speaking tour of England, and he has often been consulted for his knowledge of Grey Owl. He currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

More:
To purchase copies, or read excerpts online, please go to http://www.trafford.com/robots/00-0106.html

For review copies or interviews, contact the author directly via email at conibear@ultranet.ca

Arctic Adventures with the Lady Greenbelly
by Kenneth Conibear
158 pages; paperback; $19.50 CDN (approx. $12.67 US)
published by Trafford Publishing
ISBN 1-55212-441-X

More 'just released' information from Trafford Publishing.

Bill Loeppky, editor/publisher at Inditer dot Com interviews
Bruce Batchelor, Co-founder and CEO of Trafford On Demand Publishing

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