Clearwater author Glen Small make have taken six years to put together his debut Timber Country: History and Pictures of the Logging Camps in North Thompson Valley, but the first shipment of books sold out in about three weeks.
“I got (the first shipment) near the end of May and sold out in about three weeks; I’ve just dragged my feet for a while, but so many people asked me for the book that I have another batch coming,” Small said, adding the next bunch should be available in mid-September.
The book, much as the title suggests, is a history of local logging and the old camps back in the bush in the Clearwater area.
Small said the camps seem to be disappearing as people forget where they are, so he wrote the book, adding maps and a plethora of photos, to show where the camps are and what they looked like.
“This book talks about nearly all of (the camps) that are close to Clearwater,” he said.
“I was able to get a pile of pictures of a lot of the old camps and that is really what the book is about; I had so many pictures that I figured I had to share them with people.”
A lot of the pictures in the book came from Small’s father, who he said was an avid photo collector, and many of the people Small showed the photos to encourged him to share the images with a wider audience.
The best way to accomplish that was to put them in a book, Small said.
Once he started to put the pictures together the project snowballed, he added, and the next thing he knew he was writing an entire story.
“I really start back in time and I talk about some of the troubles up here with traveling and water crossings, we have so many rivers around here, so I have lots of pictures of bridges,” he said.
“Part of it is because my dad was a bridge nut and he took pictures of every bridge he ever saw, so I have pictures of all kinds of old bridges and it’s just neat to share this stuff with people.”
While Small worked on the project he said more people started giving him old photos and useful information, which is evident in the acknowledgement section, that has roughly 80 names of people who contributed to the book.
