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BILL SINCLAIR STORY
of this feeling, the conviction emerges that the fruits of toil belong primarily to the toiler. In this conviction there exists no inherent conflict between the man who has and the man who does not have wealth. There is no argument against wealth so long as it is gained through toil.
A man is entitled to expand his enterprises so long as he remains in contact with their primary function, and does not attempt to promote their operations from such a distance that he loses touch with them. He must remain a vital force, aware of their vital forces.
There is general disgust for the mere entrepeneur; the man who manipulates but does not produce actual goods or services. Profit must not accrue for the sake of profit per se. There is tacit denial of the philanthropist's dreams, yet a fascination with the idea of a social, economic and industrial Utopia. The individual who gains from the labor of others owes a moral obligation to improve their lot. * * *
REGARDLESS OF GENER-osity of motive, monetary gain must not, in the Sinclair philosophy, be derived by means which destroy beauty or create waste. The factors, moreover, are related.
Beauty, as that of the Granite Pool on the Norquay holdings in The Inverted Pyramid, remains so long as its mantle of timber is preserved. Tradition, a further related ingredient in this philosophy, had impelled the Norquay family to build its economic empire without despoliation of this almost sacred spot. Now, to repair the disruptions of Grove Norquay's burst bubble, money must be sought without regard for beauty or resources. Sinclair lets Rod Norquay soliloquise the result:
"Where living green had clothed the hills there lifted stumps, torn earth, bald rock ledges.
Desolation. The Granite Pool lay in its cliffy hollow, bared to the hot eve of the sun. The deer and the birds had withdrawn to the farthest woods. Animal life banished, vegetation destroyed. Barren. Bleak."
The style of such stories as Big Timber and Poor Man's Rock sounds strange to the ear of today's reader. Their language was, however, completely logical for a writer who was telling the story of a new land, in which people were doing things done, not only there, but anywhere on the earth, for the first time.
* ★ *
His readers were primarily not to be found among the persons of whom he wrote, but in lands far away from and unaware of the forces inherent in this new environment.
Generalised description would not suffice; he must resort to detailed accounts, logging terms, exploration of methods, and a vernacular which even children today learn in their social studies classes, but which during the first 25 years of this century were known only to loggers and fishermen themselves.
He had the task of literally teaching his readers a new language before he could tell them a story in it. So for Wild West and the pattern he helped lay through it has been so rigidly adhered to by succeeding writers that now it is he who appears, to a younger reader, to be an imitator, rather than a prototype, unless the perspective can be visualised.
Sinclair has lived through varying levels of taste and style, but he has never compromised his own personal sense of worth in order to please his reading public or his editor. He is outspoken and frank without offending taste.
Evil contests with good, yet no sensational crime is intro-
duced extraneously into any plot in a bid for false reader interest. Brute passions may flare, but no villain commits acts that tarnish the basic decency or dignity of the human race. ★ ★ ★ IN 1932, BERTRAND SIN-clair commenced to refer to himself as fisherman rather than writer. But he did not cease to write. Down the Dark Alley appeared four years after retirement.
Twenty years later, he expanded Room for the Rolling M and Both Sides of the Law to book length, and in 1958 did the same for another of his many Western novelettes, The Man Who Rode by Himself.
Still puzzled by the fact that our culture has produced so little folklore, he continues to search for its elusive ethos, and to contribute to trade journals bits of lore that come his way.
The Hoo-Hoo, eight years old when purchased in 1919, goes her unsinkable way well beyond her fiftieth year. The name, registered by her original owner, an early member of the famed Concatinated Order of the Hoo-Hoo, suits her present master, who has been a logger as well as fisherman.
I was literally raised on Sinclair literature. Before I could read, my father, himself a fisherman, would relate to the family the latest Sinclair story, and later I read, and lived, every one of his tales that came my way.
It is passing strange indeed to realise that, as this is written, long years after the way of life he helped interpret to the world, is past; almost outliving, Ulysses-like, his own legend, Bert-rand Sinclair, the man, abides with us, his spirit as young and his curiosity as insatiable as when he embarked on his unique career. .
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To UFAWU 22nd Annual Convention
Canada Net and Twine Limited
376 Moncton Street
P.O. Box 458, Steveston, B.C.
Tel.: BR. 7-1716
10
THE FISHERMAN — March 18, 1966