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Pender Harbour Cowboy: The Many Lives of Bertrand Sinclair (Touchwood $18.95)
Of the great B.C. writers you've never heard of-D.M. Fraser, Hubert Evans, A.M. Stephen, Frederick Niven and Bertrand Sinclair-the most successful was Sinclair.
Bertrand "Bill"; Sinclair was a logger, fisherman, social activist, broadcaster and unionist poet. He changed from being a patriot to a pacifist, then back to a patriot; along the way two of Sinclair's 15 novels were made into silent movies, North of '53 (1914) and Big Timber (1916). He moored his beloved 37-foot troller Hoo Hoo at Pender Harbour, the community with which he was associated for 60 years, before his famous boat was burned for an episode of The Beachcombers in 1985.
After more than 15 years of on-again, off-again research, biographer and historian Betty Keller of Sechelt has prepared Pender Harbour Cowboy: The Many Lives of Bertrand Sinclair (Touchwood $18.95).
Bertrand Sinclair was born as William Brown Sinclair in Edinburgh, Scotland on January 9, 1881. After immigrating to Regina with his mother in 1889, he lived in Alberta's Peace River country and Saskatchewan's Qu'Appelle Valley during his early teenage years. He ran away from home to become a cowboy in Montana at age 15.
In 1905, he married novelist Bertha M. (Muzzy) Bower, who wrote more than 60 Westerns under her first husband's surname, Bower. The protagonist of her best-known work, Chip of the Flying U, was based on Sinclair.
Dismayed by the phoney depictions of cowboys he found in romance novels, Sinclair turned his hand to fiction after he moved to San Francisco. His early, Jack London-influenced Westerns included Raw Gold (1908) andThe Land of the Frozen Suns (1909). From 1907 to 1911 Sinclair and his wife lived mostly in California, raising one daughter. Contrary to some reports, he was not a cousin of one of America's most progressive and successful authors, Upton Sinclair, but Bertrand Sinclair did admire Upton Sinclair's work.
Divorcing his first wife, Sinclair married her cousin Ruth and returned to Canada. By early 1912 he had settled in an apartment in Vancouver, first at the Englesea then later at the Sylvia Court, and bought property at Pender Harbour in 1923. They had one daughter. In British Columbia he began to adapt his melodramatic, heroic stories to depict the lives of loggers, fishermen and ranchers.
After publishing North of '53, Sinclair-like Martin Allerdale Grainger before him, and like Roderick Haig-Brown and Peter Trower after him-became interested in writing about logging. He observed logging operations for three years at Harrison Lake before writing Big Timber: A Story of the Northwest (1916). Increasingly popular, Sinclair had four editions of his next novel, Burned Bridges (1919), published in as many months.
Bertrand Sinclair's most famous novel, Poor Man's Rock (1920), was written after Sinclair did some research as a commercial fisherman. A Hardy-esque romance about family pride and corporate exploitation in the fishing industry, it reputedly sold 80,000 copies.
The story concerns a recently-returned World One vet, Jack MacRae, who returns to the West Coast. Before his father dies, he learns that his father had eloped with his sweetheart, Bessie, only to be overtaken at sea by her father, her grandfather and a monied suitor named Horace Gower.
Sworn to pacifism by his beloved, MacRae Sr. had been knocked unconscious by Gower's attack with a pike pole. He drifted and was shipwrecked on Squitty Island (Lasqueti Island). Gower married Bessie and for the next 30 years his wealthy clan waged a silent, economic war on the unlucky MacRae Sr., slowly divesting him of his property due to the Gowers' clout in the Packers Association.
MacRae Jr. vows to appease his disinheritance, repurchase family property and "take a fall out of Horace Gower that would jar the bones of his ancestors.";
Jack, the hero, realizes how the Packers Association discourages competition by monopolizing cannery sites and licences. He concludes "the wholesaler stood like a wall between the fishermen and those who ate fish.";
By offering fair prices to independent fishermen, MacRae scuttles Gower's control and ultimately marries Gower's daughter, Betty, with the blessings of her father. The capitalist father-in-law confesses to MacRae Jr. that wealth never made him a happy man.
The title Poor Man's Rock is drawn from a real place, a rock off Lasqueti Island. Dense kelp and swirling currents around its base prevented large, motorized fishing boats from approaching, restricting fishing there to hand trollers.
"Only a poor man trolled in a rowboat,"; Sinclair wrote, "...Poor Man's Rock had given many a man a chance.";
Striving for increased social relevance, Sinclair examined the aftermath of World War I with Hidden Places (1922), a poignant romance about a facially-mutilated and emotionally shattered veteran and a blind woman named Doris Cleveland who establish a home up Toba Inlet.
Even more political, The Inverted Pyramid (1924) was inspired by the failure of the Dominion Trust Company. It was followed by Wild West (1926), Pirates of the Plains (1928) and Gunpowder Lightning (1930). In Down the Dark Alley (1936) he described rumrunning during Prohibition.
Throughout most of his later work, according to critic and friend Lester Peterson, Sinclair showed a "general disgust for the mere entrepreneur, the man who manipulates but does not actually produce goods or services...
"Monetary gain must not, in the Sinclair philosophy, be derived by means which destroy beauty or create waste-a creed which led Sinclair to oppose what he recognized, earlier than most, was senseless despoliation of natural resources.";
From 1932 onwards, Sinclair chiefly depended on commercial fishing. He wrote short stories and novelettes during the winters until 1940. Although he produced 15 novels, as well as dozens of novelettes and short stories in magazines such as Popular Magazine, Adventure and Short Stories, after 1940 he mostly contributed poems to the Fisherman newspaper and made popular VHF broadcasts to other fishermen on a program called The Sinclair Hour.
In the 1950s he began writing again, publishing westerns called Both Sides of the Law (1951), Room for the Rolling M (1954) and The Man Who Rode By Himself (1958). He didn't retire from fishing until age 83; he died at age 91 in 1972 in Pender Harbour. His ashes were scattered over Poor Man's Rock off Lasqueti Island, the setting for his most important novel. Bertrand Sinclair is most often remembered today for providing the lyrics for a ballad, "Banks Trollers";, the unofficial anthem of West Coast commercial fishermen. 0-920663-72-9
[BCBW WINTER 2000]
Bertrand "Bill"; Sinclair was a logger, fisherman, social activist, broadcaster and unionist poet. He changed from being a patriot to a pacifist, then back to a patriot; along the way two of Sinclair's 15 novels were made into silent movies, North of '53 (1914) and Big Timber (1916). He moored his beloved 37-foot troller Hoo Hoo at Pender Harbour, the community with which he was associated for 60 years, before his famous boat was burned for an episode of The Beachcombers in 1985.
After more than 15 years of on-again, off-again research, biographer and historian Betty Keller of Sechelt has prepared Pender Harbour Cowboy: The Many Lives of Bertrand Sinclair (Touchwood $18.95).
Bertrand Sinclair was born as William Brown Sinclair in Edinburgh, Scotland on January 9, 1881. After immigrating to Regina with his mother in 1889, he lived in Alberta's Peace River country and Saskatchewan's Qu'Appelle Valley during his early teenage years. He ran away from home to become a cowboy in Montana at age 15.
In 1905, he married novelist Bertha M. (Muzzy) Bower, who wrote more than 60 Westerns under her first husband's surname, Bower. The protagonist of her best-known work, Chip of the Flying U, was based on Sinclair.
Dismayed by the phoney depictions of cowboys he found in romance novels, Sinclair turned his hand to fiction after he moved to San Francisco. His early, Jack London-influenced Westerns included Raw Gold (1908) andThe Land of the Frozen Suns (1909). From 1907 to 1911 Sinclair and his wife lived mostly in California, raising one daughter. Contrary to some reports, he was not a cousin of one of America's most progressive and successful authors, Upton Sinclair, but Bertrand Sinclair did admire Upton Sinclair's work.
Divorcing his first wife, Sinclair married her cousin Ruth and returned to Canada. By early 1912 he had settled in an apartment in Vancouver, first at the Englesea then later at the Sylvia Court, and bought property at Pender Harbour in 1923. They had one daughter. In British Columbia he began to adapt his melodramatic, heroic stories to depict the lives of loggers, fishermen and ranchers.
After publishing North of '53, Sinclair-like Martin Allerdale Grainger before him, and like Roderick Haig-Brown and Peter Trower after him-became interested in writing about logging. He observed logging operations for three years at Harrison Lake before writing Big Timber: A Story of the Northwest (1916). Increasingly popular, Sinclair had four editions of his next novel, Burned Bridges (1919), published in as many months.
Bertrand Sinclair's most famous novel, Poor Man's Rock (1920), was written after Sinclair did some research as a commercial fisherman. A Hardy-esque romance about family pride and corporate exploitation in the fishing industry, it reputedly sold 80,000 copies.
The story concerns a recently-returned World One vet, Jack MacRae, who returns to the West Coast. Before his father dies, he learns that his father had eloped with his sweetheart, Bessie, only to be overtaken at sea by her father, her grandfather and a monied suitor named Horace Gower.
Sworn to pacifism by his beloved, MacRae Sr. had been knocked unconscious by Gower's attack with a pike pole. He drifted and was shipwrecked on Squitty Island (Lasqueti Island). Gower married Bessie and for the next 30 years his wealthy clan waged a silent, economic war on the unlucky MacRae Sr., slowly divesting him of his property due to the Gowers' clout in the Packers Association.
MacRae Jr. vows to appease his disinheritance, repurchase family property and "take a fall out of Horace Gower that would jar the bones of his ancestors.";
Jack, the hero, realizes how the Packers Association discourages competition by monopolizing cannery sites and licences. He concludes "the wholesaler stood like a wall between the fishermen and those who ate fish.";
By offering fair prices to independent fishermen, MacRae scuttles Gower's control and ultimately marries Gower's daughter, Betty, with the blessings of her father. The capitalist father-in-law confesses to MacRae Jr. that wealth never made him a happy man.
The title Poor Man's Rock is drawn from a real place, a rock off Lasqueti Island. Dense kelp and swirling currents around its base prevented large, motorized fishing boats from approaching, restricting fishing there to hand trollers.
"Only a poor man trolled in a rowboat,"; Sinclair wrote, "...Poor Man's Rock had given many a man a chance.";
Striving for increased social relevance, Sinclair examined the aftermath of World War I with Hidden Places (1922), a poignant romance about a facially-mutilated and emotionally shattered veteran and a blind woman named Doris Cleveland who establish a home up Toba Inlet.
Even more political, The Inverted Pyramid (1924) was inspired by the failure of the Dominion Trust Company. It was followed by Wild West (1926), Pirates of the Plains (1928) and Gunpowder Lightning (1930). In Down the Dark Alley (1936) he described rumrunning during Prohibition.
Throughout most of his later work, according to critic and friend Lester Peterson, Sinclair showed a "general disgust for the mere entrepreneur, the man who manipulates but does not actually produce goods or services...
"Monetary gain must not, in the Sinclair philosophy, be derived by means which destroy beauty or create waste-a creed which led Sinclair to oppose what he recognized, earlier than most, was senseless despoliation of natural resources.";
From 1932 onwards, Sinclair chiefly depended on commercial fishing. He wrote short stories and novelettes during the winters until 1940. Although he produced 15 novels, as well as dozens of novelettes and short stories in magazines such as Popular Magazine, Adventure and Short Stories, after 1940 he mostly contributed poems to the Fisherman newspaper and made popular VHF broadcasts to other fishermen on a program called The Sinclair Hour.
In the 1950s he began writing again, publishing westerns called Both Sides of the Law (1951), Room for the Rolling M (1954) and The Man Who Rode By Himself (1958). He didn't retire from fishing until age 83; he died at age 91 in 1972 in Pender Harbour. His ashes were scattered over Poor Man's Rock off Lasqueti Island, the setting for his most important novel. Bertrand Sinclair is most often remembered today for providing the lyrics for a ballad, "Banks Trollers";, the unofficial anthem of West Coast commercial fishermen. 0-920663-72-9
[BCBW WINTER 2000]
Submitted on July 4, 2003 in By David.
