Atlin Where Everyone Knows Your Dog's Name

Bradford Smith grew up an only child amongst a household of huskies and Malamutes, and at times he thought they were his siblings. He trapped by dog team with his dad, and hunted grouse and picked berries with his mom. He fished and snared rabbits and searched abandoned gold mines with his friends. He could run a small team of dogs at nine, and he fought his first forest fire at sixteen. He worked in construction in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada, on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, as a teenager. He long lined for halibut and cod in the Gulf of Alaska as a young man, and he worked seismograph exploration at temperatures below minus sixty degrees on the Arctic Ocean.Brad lived in Atlin, British Columbia, Canada, a historic gold mining town nestled deep in the wilderness. Isolated and forgotten, in 1967 the population was estimated at two hundred. It was a town without a sewer or water system, and most households burned wood for heat. People ate moose meat and lake trout and grew their own vegetables. He led life with an independent and creative spirit. Without T.V., radio or video games his imagination was fertile and his curiosity intense.He came to writing later in life, concentrating on career and raising two sons early on. When more free time became available, he turned to writing in earnest, completing books and a full feature movie script that he and his film partner hope to make in the future under the name of their company, MerrySmith Film Works.Brad splits his time between working in Arctic Alaska and his home in Northern British Columbia, Canada, where he lives with his wife and their dogs.

Diane Solie was born in Washington State, December 7, 1930. She led an independent childhood, and with her first dog, she explored the shores of Puget Sound, learning to fish, hunt, sail and ski. A consummate adventurer, she moved to Alaska in her mid-thirties where she married Ed Smith. In the summer of 1967, Diane and Ed and their two-year-old son, Brad, moved to Atlin, British Columbia, an isolated, gold rush era, semi-ghost town in the Northern Canadian wilderness.Diane fell immediately in love with the history, the people and the stark beauty of the land. With her husband, she started the Atlin Museum. She was a founding member of the Atlin Historical Society and intimately involved with the preservation of many of Atlin's historic buildings. She founded and owned the Discovery Shop, a craft store that sold many of her own creations as well as providing an outlet for Atlin's artists and crafters. She was an artist proficient in several mediums, selling hundreds of watercolor paintings and carvings.She was a dog owner and lover her entire life, and became a proficient musher and dog breeder. She owned over thirty dogs at one time. Diane became a part of the Northern history she adored and valued. She was indelible part of Atlin's fabric, a corner stone of Atlin's second boom, and an integral cog in the works that shaped today's Atlin. She was an esteemed historian and archivist, a published author, a journalist, teacher, mentor, single mother and champion of everything Atlin, B.C.