Letters from the Peace

In the summer of 1940 two McGill students, Fay and Phoebe, went to the Peace River District of British Columbia to act as unpaid helpers to “the mishes,” Anglican missionaries working in the sparsely settled area. Their letters home document the people and trials of a life that could have been part of an earlier century. As Fay writes, “Phoebe and I are lucky, partly because of the country but mostly because of the people. There is no slither to this life; everything is hard and real and in the present, and nothing is impossible for the future. There are no bounds, no ruts, no morals, and except for the basic ones which survive uprooting, no traditions.”

An epilogue with updates on some of the characters is a nice touch, as are the historical notes about an intriguing part of Canada. mRb