Bush Friends All Around - Mark Robinson, Algonquin Park Ranger, 1917-1924

From 1907 through to 1936, author, naturalist, and soldier Mark Robinson served as an Algonquin Park Ranger. His service included working twice as Chief Ranger, as well as twice as Acting Park Superintendent. Throughout these years, Robinson scrupulously maintained a daily diary, documenting early life in the Park. These diaries are an essential, evocative record of Canada’s environmental, social, and military history during a time of unprecedented change.

This second volume of three devoted to Robinson’s diaries opens in April 1917, as Robinson returns to Park duties after 20 months of military service in Canada, England, and France. The volume includes Robinson’s experiences searching for and supervising examination of painter Tom Thomson’s remains, the Park program to cull deer to meet wartime urban needs for meat, the introduction of wartime conscription, and the Spanish flu epidemic. In 1922, Robinson would be promoted to Chief Ranger, and subsequently, to Acting Park Superintendent. The volume closes during the summer of 1924, when Robinson is suddenly suspended from all Park duties, for what he guesses is insubordination.

The diaries offer unique insights into the people, wildlife, technologies, and society of Algonquin Park’s early decades and Canadian life of the 1910s through to the 1930s. Robinson’s encounters with artists, authors, socialites, provincial Cabinet ministers and criminals punctuate his notes regarding significant social, political, and technological changes, such as the introduction of radio, telephones, and airplanes; the granting of voting rights to women, and prohibition; when a Park Ranger’s duties included enforcing a Sabbath ban on playing billiards.

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Editor Gregory Klages, PhD, is author of The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction (National Post non-fiction bestseller, Writers’ Trust of Canada Best Books 2016). Klages was Research Director for Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy (2008), part of the international award-winning Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Project. His writing has been published in the American Review of Canadian Studies, Asian Review of Canadian Studies, Ontario History, Saskatchewan History, and the anthology Archives & Canadian Narratives.

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This 350-page volume includes:

· Over 200 annotations providing biographical information for key personalities, explaining terminology, providing historical context, and identifying contemporary geographic place names where these have changed from Robinson’s era.

· A biographical essay about Robinson

· Essay on Algonquin Park history and policies

· Editor’s notes

· 8 photos, 1 map

· Excerpts from Robinson’s published writing

· Excerpts from letters received by Robinson

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"A triumph of Canadian storytelling and an endlessly fascinating read, the Robinson diaries are at once historical record, wilderness guidebook, and an autobiography of adventure. This book is far more than a journal; it’s a companion. Whether you read a few lines or many pages at a time, Mark’s diaries immerse us in one of the most iconic environments in Canada. His words bring to life the waters and hills of Algonquin, their mesmerizing calm, the insignificance of man, the colossal power of the natural world. That feeling is restorative and therapeutic, and even a few lines can transport the mind."

Jeff Lehman, Chair, Muskoka District Council (2022-present); Mayor, City of Barrie, Ontario (2010-2022)