I wanted to see Alberta again and the places we had once lived all these years ago and I wanted to travel further north

Several years later Trailfinders were still advertising cheap trips round the world. “What about it?” I said to Henry one evening. “What about New Zealand this time?” I said. “Around the world again but going the other way. “Remember that Texan who told us to get our lost day back we would just have to have it out with God. Well, don’t let’s chance it.

“Let’s do something about it. God helps those who help themselves.” We booked the trip.

But there was one place that perhaps I wanted to visit, go back to, more than anywhere else and that was Canada.

I wanted to see Alberta again and the places we had once lived all these years ago and I wanted to travel further north.

Above all I wanted to see Canada’s North West Territories and Lindberg’s Landing that I had heard so much about from Grant. But that would have to be another trip.

It was a busy time for me when Far from the Rowan Tree was published. There were launches, readings, talks and interviews with newspapers.

I was amazed at the interest. In Scotland it was selling well. In Perthshire, very well. In the local Perth paper, it stayed at the top of the book charts for five months running.

Sold out

By Spring the first edition was almost sold out. I had not dreamed it would be so popular.

The publisher also had distribution in Canada and I toyed with the idea of going over there, going round the bookstores, getting myself known, but thought it would be too expensive and a bore for Henry.

However, round about Christmas time Henry looked up from a newspaper he was reading.

“It’ll soon be 1998,” he said, “a hundred years since the Trail of the ’98, the year of the gold rush in the Yukon.

“I’d love to go to Alaska! When I was in Canada 20 years ago I nearly made it but not quite. I was working way up on the Alaska highway for a time. Helping on the roadworks.

“I never made it to Skagway where so many men from every walk of life began the long trek to the goldfields in the Yukon, all with gold fever.

“I saw a picture once of a long line of them going over the Chillcoot pass. One after another struggling over that mountain with heavy packs.

“I’ve never forgotten it. After that they still had a long way to go in a hostile, cold, uninhabited country, making their own canoes to cross vast lakes, living rough, very rough, then reaching Whitehorse to journey 600 miles up the Yukon River.

“I’ve always wanted to see that part of the world, to go there one day.”

There was a pause while he turned another page. The logs in the wood-burning stove cracked and flared up.

Outside the window, in the dark beyond the old velvet curtains, the wind whipped into a fury and then Henry said: “It’ll soon be the year of the ’98 again. What better year to go there?”

“You don’t really mean it,” I said. “How on earth would we get there? It would be terribly expensive.”

“Not really,” he explained. “It’s a good exchange rate just now. We could fly to Vancouver, spend a week or so visiting the friends and relations we’ve got on Salt Spring Island, Vancouver Island and Powell River.

“We could come back to Vancouver and pick up a camper van. Hire it for four weeks perhaps. That should be long enough.” The seed of an idea began to form in my mind.

Old haunts

“Would it be possible also to visit Grant’s old place, Lindberg’s Landing?” I asked.

“Don’t know why not,” said Henry. “There’s a road in there now – Grant helped to finish it.”

“Afterwards we can go back to Edmonton and visit all our old haunts. Fly home perhaps from Edmonton or Calgary.”

“And I could visit book shops in the bigger towns.” “Why not?” Quickly a route was beginning to take shape.

“It’s an awful long way to drive but we could share the driving,” I said.

“I’ve driven these roads before. They are bound to be a lot better now, nothing to it. We’ll stay at camp sites. Grant says there’s quite a lot of them nowadays.”

I could see Henry was as keen, if not more keen, than I was to do the trip.

We set about finding the cheapest way and got £570 off the bill by going to a direct company, found in the Yellow Pages, rather than a travel agent.

We booked for five weeks, flying to Vancouver and returning from Calgary, a thousand miles or so distant across the Rockies. The company sent us a colourful brochure.

From its pages we chose the smallest camper van. We would pick it up in Vancouver, deposit it at the firm’s depot in Calgary on the day we would leave Canada to fly home.

We chose May as the best month to travel. The ice should have broken up in the lakes and rivers by then and we hoped it would be before the hatching out of mosquitoes and flies.

“Are you sure we’re not too old to be going on this kind of adventure,” I said to Henry one evening after everything had been arranged.

“Not a bit of it. You’re just as old as you feel and I feel around 30.”

We had a productive and happy time on the islands. On Salt Spring we spent a couple of happy days with Sheila and her Hungarian husband.

Sheila and I had done our nurses’ training when young together and had always kept in touch.

Paradise

She now lived in what I called paradise, in a house built of logs, a hidden retreat of woodland. Spring had come, humming birds were back.

Her husband Andrew’s great love was rhododendrons. He had around 200 different species growing in the forest.

He treated them with the greatest of care. Quite a few of them were in bloom when we were there.

Beautiful heads in the softest yellow, richest red, most delicate mauve.

They were difficult to protect here, what with visiting deer and beavers and, most troublesome of all, the weather.

In Victoria we stayed with old friends who had helped us when we were poor immigrants in Edmonton all those years ago.

Gordon, the husband, after he retired, brought out a writing magazine which he kept going for 10 years.

He couldn’t have been more helpful towards me and my book. He took me round to all the bookstores he could think of and explained how to go about things.

I needn’t have been nervous about approaching these bookstores. They were all most helpful and interested.

More on Monday.