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Return to Northern British Columbia (Royal BC Museum $39.95)
Charles Bedaux was once famous in B.C. as a wealthy French businessman who proposed driving five Citroens (equipped with caterpillar tracks) from Edmonton to Fort St. John, across the wilderness, to Telegraph Creek and the Stikine River, supposedly to benefit science, in 1934.
Bedaux was based out of the Chrysler Building in New York, but he had visited northern B.C. on hunting trips in 1926 and 1932. When Bedaux wanted to hire a surveyor to map his progress along the mostly roadless route of discovery, B.C.'s surveyor-general wasted no time in recommending Frank Swannell.
As described in Jay Sherwood's Return to Northern British Columbia (Royal BC Museum $39.95), that's how veteran photographer and topographer Swannell joined the Bedaux-Canadian 1934 Explorations of Sub-Arctic Regions described in a press release as "one of the most elaborately equipped private scientific ventures ever undertaken in North America.";
The press soon dubbed it "the champagne safari."; The 30-person cavalcade included Bedaux's wife, Fern, and his mistress, Madame Chiesa, a Spanish maid, a Scottish gamekeeper who doubled as a valet, 60 horses and Floyd Crosby, a well-known Hollywood filmmaker who was hired to record the heroics.
After Swannell and his assistant Al Phipps left Victoria on July 1 and met the Bedaux Expedition in Edmonton, it soon struck Swannell that Bedaux was not primarily motivated by science so much as his need to do something unprecedented. Departing from Edmonton on July 6, the caravan made a promising start, reaching Fort St. John only eleven day later, after 550 miles.
Movie-making took precedence. By August 9, forced to abandon the Citroens (they were only getting two miles to a gallon, and they required rafts to be built each time they crossed a river), Bedaux admitted defeat and decided to destroy the vehicles in order to make dramatic footage for his movie.
Bedaux found "a darling place for destruction."; His car No. 4 was to go down the Halfway River on a raft. "A beautiful descent down the rapids. The car looks like a toy."; But the planned dynamite explosions fizzled. Al Phipps noted, "the car sailed gaily on to land undamaged on a sand bar.";
Two remaining Citroens were simply abandoned. Reaching Fort Ware in early September, Frank Swannell noted the expedition had taken 54 days to travel 356 miles, averaging only 6 ½ miles per day. Remarkably, Bedaux persisted, reaching the Finlay River on October 16-and reaching Hudson's Hope soon afterwards, returning to Edmonton on October 24. The five Citroens had
only covered about one-fifth of the planned route.
Charles Bedaux's quixotic escapades are just one of the adventures outlined in Return to Northern British Columbia, subtitled A Photojournal of Frank Swannell, 1929-39, marking the close of Swannell's career. It's Jay Sherwood's third book derived from Swannell's archive of over 4,000 images, taken between 1900 and 1940.
Some of Swannell's images connect with classic books written about the northern BC wilderness and are doorways to fascinating people who appear in these works, such as the famous packer Skook Davidson, bush-pilot Grant McConachie and the shady mining speculator One-Armed Brown.
Shown in a 1931 photo with his partner, Loveseth, and Skook Davidson, One-Armed Brown met Swannell in the gold mining area of McConnell Creek on September 18. Swannell describes One-Armed Brown as a "typical American blowhard... Says they have 10-12 lb. gold, but only produces two nuggets which certainly never came from here.";
Swannell could be a shrewd judge of character, as well as landscape. In the back of his 1931 diary Swannell pasted a newspaper article from the spring of 1932 with the headline: Rich Gold Field Likely to Draw Rush of Miners: M.J. Brown predicts discoveries in northern British Columbia that will rival Klondike finds.
One-Armed Brown also appears in the classic memoir of life in the northern B.C. wilderness, Driftwood Valley, by Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher.
Swannell, a World War I veteran,
also met and photographed Karl Hanawald, a veteran of the German Air Force, in 1931. Hanawald's trading post at Bear Lake was about a day's journey from the Stanwell-Fletchers' cabin in Driftwood Valley and their closest source for supplies.
As in his previous two books, Jay Sherwood peppers his narrative with excerpts from Swannell's journals. The result is another treasure trove of life in the remote areas of the central and northern part of the province. Return to Northern British Columbia also includes Swannell's surveys of the Columbia River and Vancouver Island.
978-0-7726-6283-5
[BCBW 2011]
Bedaux was based out of the Chrysler Building in New York, but he had visited northern B.C. on hunting trips in 1926 and 1932. When Bedaux wanted to hire a surveyor to map his progress along the mostly roadless route of discovery, B.C.'s surveyor-general wasted no time in recommending Frank Swannell.
As described in Jay Sherwood's Return to Northern British Columbia (Royal BC Museum $39.95), that's how veteran photographer and topographer Swannell joined the Bedaux-Canadian 1934 Explorations of Sub-Arctic Regions described in a press release as "one of the most elaborately equipped private scientific ventures ever undertaken in North America.";
The press soon dubbed it "the champagne safari."; The 30-person cavalcade included Bedaux's wife, Fern, and his mistress, Madame Chiesa, a Spanish maid, a Scottish gamekeeper who doubled as a valet, 60 horses and Floyd Crosby, a well-known Hollywood filmmaker who was hired to record the heroics.
After Swannell and his assistant Al Phipps left Victoria on July 1 and met the Bedaux Expedition in Edmonton, it soon struck Swannell that Bedaux was not primarily motivated by science so much as his need to do something unprecedented. Departing from Edmonton on July 6, the caravan made a promising start, reaching Fort St. John only eleven day later, after 550 miles.
Movie-making took precedence. By August 9, forced to abandon the Citroens (they were only getting two miles to a gallon, and they required rafts to be built each time they crossed a river), Bedaux admitted defeat and decided to destroy the vehicles in order to make dramatic footage for his movie.
Bedaux found "a darling place for destruction."; His car No. 4 was to go down the Halfway River on a raft. "A beautiful descent down the rapids. The car looks like a toy."; But the planned dynamite explosions fizzled. Al Phipps noted, "the car sailed gaily on to land undamaged on a sand bar.";
Two remaining Citroens were simply abandoned. Reaching Fort Ware in early September, Frank Swannell noted the expedition had taken 54 days to travel 356 miles, averaging only 6 ½ miles per day. Remarkably, Bedaux persisted, reaching the Finlay River on October 16-and reaching Hudson's Hope soon afterwards, returning to Edmonton on October 24. The five Citroens had
only covered about one-fifth of the planned route.
Charles Bedaux's quixotic escapades are just one of the adventures outlined in Return to Northern British Columbia, subtitled A Photojournal of Frank Swannell, 1929-39, marking the close of Swannell's career. It's Jay Sherwood's third book derived from Swannell's archive of over 4,000 images, taken between 1900 and 1940.
Some of Swannell's images connect with classic books written about the northern BC wilderness and are doorways to fascinating people who appear in these works, such as the famous packer Skook Davidson, bush-pilot Grant McConachie and the shady mining speculator One-Armed Brown.
Shown in a 1931 photo with his partner, Loveseth, and Skook Davidson, One-Armed Brown met Swannell in the gold mining area of McConnell Creek on September 18. Swannell describes One-Armed Brown as a "typical American blowhard... Says they have 10-12 lb. gold, but only produces two nuggets which certainly never came from here.";
Swannell could be a shrewd judge of character, as well as landscape. In the back of his 1931 diary Swannell pasted a newspaper article from the spring of 1932 with the headline: Rich Gold Field Likely to Draw Rush of Miners: M.J. Brown predicts discoveries in northern British Columbia that will rival Klondike finds.
One-Armed Brown also appears in the classic memoir of life in the northern B.C. wilderness, Driftwood Valley, by Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher.
Swannell, a World War I veteran,
also met and photographed Karl Hanawald, a veteran of the German Air Force, in 1931. Hanawald's trading post at Bear Lake was about a day's journey from the Stanwell-Fletchers' cabin in Driftwood Valley and their closest source for supplies.
As in his previous two books, Jay Sherwood peppers his narrative with excerpts from Swannell's journals. The result is another treasure trove of life in the remote areas of the central and northern part of the province. Return to Northern British Columbia also includes Swannell's surveys of the Columbia River and Vancouver Island.
978-0-7726-6283-5
[BCBW 2011]
Submitted on March 10, 2011 in By David.
