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In Camels Always Do (Orca $19.95)
Camels stink. They frighten mules. They bite, kick, spit, and their feet are made for traversing sand, not rock-strewn roads of the Cariboo Gold Rush.
But businessman Frank Laumeister knew none of this when in 1862 he dreamed up the Dromedary Express. Convinced camels, with their legendary toughness and endurance, would be ideal for transporting supplies to the gold fields, he and several naïve cohorts imported 21 of the animals.
Laumeister was unaware the two-humped camels they received were, in fact, Bactrians, not the single-humped Dromedaries their venture was named for. The short-legged Bactrian, while slower than an Arabian racing dromedary, could travel much longer but that mattered not a whit to the miners who soon came to despise the foul-smelling, evil-tempered creatures. Laumeister, forced to cut his losses, simply abandoned the camels to fend for themselves in the Cariboo countryside.
In Camels Always Do (Orca $19.95), Lynn Manuel recalls this unlikely piece of British Columbia history through the eyes of young, camel-mad Cameron who has a dream of striking it rich with his gold panning father and someday crossing the ocean to see real camels. On a trip into town, he's astonished to discover camels have come to him!
Signing on as packers to take the Dromedary Express through the rocky
canyons of the Fraser River to the northern gold fields, Cameron and his father find themselves dealing with camel-sized problems. Always resourceful, Cameron fashions canvas and rawhide into camel shoes. He bathes the stinky creatures in rose water. In the end, Cameron can't make the camels adapt as pack animals in the Cariboo.
Kasia Charko, who recently illustrated Julie Lawson's Arizona Charlie and the Klondike Kid, has used watercolours and coloured pencil to fabricate the rough mining camps, the vast Cariboo landscape and 21 shaggy, toothy, double-humped camels. 1-55143-284-6
--by Louise Donnelly
[BCBW 2004] "kid lit"
But businessman Frank Laumeister knew none of this when in 1862 he dreamed up the Dromedary Express. Convinced camels, with their legendary toughness and endurance, would be ideal for transporting supplies to the gold fields, he and several naïve cohorts imported 21 of the animals.
Laumeister was unaware the two-humped camels they received were, in fact, Bactrians, not the single-humped Dromedaries their venture was named for. The short-legged Bactrian, while slower than an Arabian racing dromedary, could travel much longer but that mattered not a whit to the miners who soon came to despise the foul-smelling, evil-tempered creatures. Laumeister, forced to cut his losses, simply abandoned the camels to fend for themselves in the Cariboo countryside.
In Camels Always Do (Orca $19.95), Lynn Manuel recalls this unlikely piece of British Columbia history through the eyes of young, camel-mad Cameron who has a dream of striking it rich with his gold panning father and someday crossing the ocean to see real camels. On a trip into town, he's astonished to discover camels have come to him!
Signing on as packers to take the Dromedary Express through the rocky
canyons of the Fraser River to the northern gold fields, Cameron and his father find themselves dealing with camel-sized problems. Always resourceful, Cameron fashions canvas and rawhide into camel shoes. He bathes the stinky creatures in rose water. In the end, Cameron can't make the camels adapt as pack animals in the Cariboo.
Kasia Charko, who recently illustrated Julie Lawson's Arizona Charlie and the Klondike Kid, has used watercolours and coloured pencil to fabricate the rough mining camps, the vast Cariboo landscape and 21 shaggy, toothy, double-humped camels. 1-55143-284-6
--by Louise Donnelly
[BCBW 2004] "kid lit"
Submitted on October 12, 2004 in By David.
