Wilderness Reading Group discussion

Dear Jack and Valerie,

I note that Valarie is an author and Jack a voracious reader (I've read "Longitude" on his list).

The Hubbard and Wallace saga, which unfolded a hundred years ago in Labrador and today's northern Quebec, has been a passion of mine for the past 10 years as I retraced the routes and studied the archival material.

As you will see, I've just published a biography on Dillon Wallace. It is the latest in a list of about 10 books published on the saga starting back in 1904, but the first on Dillon Wallace. In addition to being out in print form, it is available in all of the different eReader formats.

The books, Great Heart, and the biography on Mina Hubbard, The Woman Who Mapped Labrador, are the two best books in the modern era on the saga.

It intrigued me as I delved into the saga, why Wallace seemed to come off as the heavy or fraudster in the saga in recent years. Modern writers began to assume that since Mina Hubbard hated him so much it must be due to unsavory actions on his part, even if unrecognized in his era where he had a legendary reputation. One of Canada's greatest modern day writers on the north, Pierre Berton, (I'm a Canadian) suggested that Wallace's book, The Lure of the Labrador Wild, one of the finest books ever written on the North, could only have been written by a ghost writer. This accusation was echoed by others, most or all of them not knowing or not caring how Wallace had managed to publish a total of 27 books in his life time.

What really got me into the debate and finally resulted in the biography was when I was invited to be one of the presenters at the Mina Hubbard Centennial in 2005 at North West River in Labrador, thanks to my canoe trips in Labrador up to that point.

Do you think the saga would be an interesting topic to discuss in the Wilderness Reading Group? I'm completely new to Goodreads and have no idea on how to see if there are others who might be interested.