Book Review: The Incomplete Anglers, by John D. Robins

The other morning at work, B drops by my desk with a bag of books. They belonged to a former newspaper columnist, no longer with us, B was asked if she knew any fly fishermen. The bag contained a copy of Walton, a copy of Haig-Brown's Primer, a couple books of stories, and a book called The Incomplete Anglers, by John D. Robins, that turned out to be a treasure.

This book is copyright 1943, and it was a Governor-general's Award winner for Creative Non-Fiction. The first thing that struck me is that this was written by a Canadian author about the 'near-north' of Ontario. It is the chronicle of a canoe trip taken by two not-very-experienced paddlers, into the interior of Algonquin Provincial Park in search of Salvelinas Fontinalis - the brook trout.

The Incomplete Anglers was a delightful read, and it charmed me from the first page.

Here is an excerpt:

I had nicely crawled into my pinned-up sleeping-bag before I realized that there was a small, somewhat pointed stone embedded in part of the soil area, just about where my lumbar region should have rested, but could not. I was unwilling to disarrange my completed retirement for one little stone, and tried to move away from it. I could do this, but so diabolically situated was it that as soon as my vigilance was relaxed through drowsiness I rolled exactly upon it. I finally gave up the effort to avoid it and squirmed round and out enough to reach my tormentor, cursing myself for not having done so before. It was so difficult to get at, and so surprisingly tenacious of its position that I was forced to come still farther out. I grubbed around that stone, no longer small. It was a stone apart. I knew that, for I could wiggle it slightly. At last, I abandoned the attempt to clear away the obstruction to my peace while remaining in bed, and emberged. I scratched madly at the ground, like a dog burrowing under a root. I had not imagined there was as much soil in the whole district as I was throwing up around me. The stone grew larger as it went down and down. Suddenly there was the crackle and the flash of a match.

"Hey, what are ou doing? Burying a bone?" Tom called out.

Then he roared with ill-timed laughter. I was undoubtedly a sight, but I was in no mood to appreciate merriment. I thought it abominably ungrateful, because for half a moment I almost persuaded myself that I had deliberately taken this side of the bed to spare him the stone. Actually, of course, I was on the side which custom assigned to me; custom as set up by myself the first night of the trip. However, I said nothing to him, even when he switched on the flashlight. By that time I was down about a foot, and the boulder was uncovered, a great brute of a pyramid that could not hold its own against my seething wrath when its earthy protection had been removed. I heaved it up, flung aside my carefully piled dunnage, raised the tent-wallopposite, and rolled the damned thing outside. The rest of the night I spent settling into and crawling out of the hole into which the stone had fitted