The book was at its best describing how, with pick and shovel, they rebuilt beaver dams to restore the water system which brought back all manner of wildlife to the region.
I was deeply moved by the story of B.C. Wildlife Services providing them with two pairs of beavers in 1941 who swiftly built houses at Meldrum Lake. As their numbers increased other watersheds were revived and a whole forest region returned to health.
Danger is ever present in the wilderness and the Colliers had their lives at risk.
Veasy, at 6 years of age, went to check his traps across the lake. He was a good cross country skier. On his way back from his own traps Eric saw Veasy returning. Suddenly, as he was halfway across the lake, a pack of five timber wolves started following Veasy. His father, armed only with a .22, could only watch and pray that Veasy would remember his Dad’s past words not to panic around wolves which would provoke an attack. Veasy saw the wolves but did not falter. He steadily skied and the wolves steadily followed, only stopping when Veasy was about 200 yards from his father. Before they left one of the wolves “hunkered back on the snow, and forelegs braced, lifted its nose to the sky and howled, dismal, sad, and spine-chilling”. I was as shaken as Eric.
The Colliers were literate people. They enjoyed reading. Eric had a journal.
Veasy was home schooled with a daily routine of learning under his mother’s guidance.
There was little discussion in the book that they had no neighbours which meant Veasy had no playmates. Occasionally someone would drop by their place. While they often made the 25 mile trek by wagon to get mail and supplies it was a solitary life. As I read, I wondered what Veasy thought as a teenager living out in the forest.
Transitioning from relying on live horse power to automotive horsepower was hard for Eric. How could he put his “whole faith in a vehicle which had no heart or lungs”? Veasy and Lillian convinced him to buy a used Jeep. Their trusty horse drawn wagon was never used again for trips to the store.
At 22 Veasy decided to leave his wilderness home. Eric and Lillian wished him well knowing the day was inevitable. They had the great loneliness each generation of parents experience when a child goes out into the world.
Eric’s writing is vivid and descriptive, even lyrical at times. His language and attitudes on some issues are not those of the 21st Century. At the same time he had great respect for the indigenous people of the Chilcotin and the forests where he lived with Veasy and Lillian.
My father had another connection to Eric’s decision to make his life in the forest as a trapper. Dad told me that when he was in his late 30’s his father’s health was failing and he needed to go into a home. Dad said that, had he not met my mother at that time and married, he was considering selling the farm and heading north in Saskatchewan to get a trapline and live in the forest.
The book is as fascinating and fresh to me today as it was over 40 years ago. I am glad I re-read it. I can understand why Dad listened to the saga of the Colliers hour after hour in his chair. Three Against the Wilderness took him back into the wild and his trapping memories.
****
Here is a link to stories about the book and the family with videos from an interview with Veasy. He speaks of some of the stories being accurate depictions of events while others were not. He says he never saw the wolf.
https://ericcollier.wordpress.com/conservation/dam-builders-human-animal/
****
Collier, Eric - (2025) - Three Against the Wilderness (Part I)
