Email Exchange with Fred Reid on Captured by Fire

After reading Captured by Fire by Chris Czajkowski and Fred Reid I wrote to Fred and his partner, Monika about his book and Three Against the Wilderness. Fred kindly replied. I appreciate his response. Our exchange is below.

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Fred and Monika

I just finished reading Captured by Fire and was captivated by the book. It is well written.

I read it just after reading another book, Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier, set in the Chilcotin not far from you.

I had been intending to re-read Three Against the Wilderness for some time. As set out in my posts on the book it was my Dad’s favourite book and I taped it for him in the early 1980’s.

While fire is not the focus of that book, fire features in the opening as Eric Collier, in 1922, watched a fire race along Meldrum Creek partly because the beavers had been trapped out and the creek barely ran.

Might you be aware of Three Against the Wilderness or possibly have read it?

If you have read it I would be glad to get your thoughts on the book.

As inevitable, for at least me, in reading a book about people in a difficult and dangerous situation I think about what I would have done at your farm in the summer of 2017. I expect I would have evacuated.

That reflection led me to wonder what the two of you would do eight years later if another dangerous fire were to come your way. While I pray you would never be confronted by the fire dragon again I would be interested in your answer.

I appreciated the chance to talk with the two of you and Maxine at Don and Celine’s place last year.

I mentioned to Maxine and possibly both of you that I feel fortunate to have grown up at Meskanaw.

Your family, Fred, was one of the reasons for that feeling.

Fred, I have added you to the remarkable list of authors connected to Meskanaw. 

You and your Dad join other Meskanaw families with intergenerational authors. The Traill family had Catherine joined by her sons Willie and Walter. In my family there was my grandfather, my father, myself and my sons.

I think Meskanaw deserves to be thought of as a book town.

Links to my review of Captured by Fire and my posts on Three Against the Wilderness are below.

If you are able to reply to this letter and are willing I would post your reply when I post this email on my blog.

I hope 2025 will be a quiet summer for the two of you. I think you have had enough drama for your lifetimes.

All the best.

Bill

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Hi Bill;  I am so glad that you enjoyed Captured by Fire.  I have read Three Against the Wilderness a couple of times and have done some drafts of a book I am working on titled A Walk with Henry David Thoreau.  His experience in the wilderness was roughly 100 years after Thoreau's Walden and I am in the wilderness another almost 100 years later.  I feel his concept of the wilderness and the complex relationship between flora and fauna is much more insightful than Thoreau's.  I feel so lucky that I can go for a walk or drive and see bears, deer, moose, fishers, martins, bobcats and lynx. The magical sounds of the wolves are enchanting and appreciated even though we have lost the odd calf to them.

We were actually put under evacuation order again two years ago with fires on both sides of our valley but we had become so aware of the movements of fires driven by the south westerly winds meant that they should blow past us.  We only had one tense day when one of the fires blew up dramatically in the late afternoon.  Another reason we feel relatively safe is because so much of the fuel in the forests around us has been burnt in the fire of 2017.  We also feel lucky that the forests on the slope just above our meadows are relatively green although they were partially damaged in the fire I wrote about.

I have an essay published in Fire Season III edited by Amory Abbott and Liz Toohey-Wiese (ISBN: 978-1-7381461-4-7).  It gives a follow up of the fate of the Three Sisters.

Meskanaw was such a special place for our family and is never far from my heart.  I have been glad to show Monika the place twice now and Don and Celine have always been such great hosts.  I know my dad held your dad in great regard from the exchanges I witnessed as a child.  My memories are more related to the honey and the showing of a lynx pelt at school.  Another project is a book about my brief (6 year) experience raising pigs organically in the Fraser Valley.  In the early chapters I reflect on my upbringing on the farm in Meskanaw and how strongly embedded in me that experience was.  That manuscript has been rejected once but I will revisit it and try again later.  I think it may be more suited for a prairie farming audience than lotus land types.  I am proud to be included as a Meskanaw author - thank you for that and thank you for the kind review of Captured by Fire.

Cheers;

Fred

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Captured by Fire 

Collier, Eric - (2025) - Three Against the Wilderness  - Part I and Part II

Captured by Fire by Chris Czajkowski and Fred Reid

(17. - 1260.) Captured by Fire by Chris Czajkowski and Fred Reid - Fred and I grew up at Meskanaw until his family moved to British Columbia in the mid-1960's. In 2017 Fred and his partner, Monika, were living on a small farm on the west edge of the Chilcotin near the village of Anahim Lake.

Chris lives a short distance from Fred and Monika. She initially chose to evacuate, returning several times to her home to water her garden. Later she stayed home despite the fires. Her story is well told but I have decided to focus my review on the story of Fred and Monika.

Fred, Monika and Chris all spoke of a forest fire as a fire dragon.

2017 was an extremely dry summer. Fred, Monika and four volunteers were working on the farm on July 7. There were lightning strikes through the Chilcotin starting approximately 100 fires. Monika noticed a fire, designated VA0778, to the west of their place. Fred was not concerned. On July 8 he “continued to try to ignore the fire”. However:

VA0778 suddenly made its presence felt. We turned to the west as one. A dark column of smoke rose dramatically in front of the declining sun, building rapidly and arching with the soft west wind.

They were directed to evacuate but refused. While not experienced in fighting fires Fred and Monika, concerned for their garden, livestock, and home and outbuildings decided to stay.

As the fire, now called the Precipice Fire, grew friends and community members brought in equipment to help Fred and Monika fight the fire if it reached their farm.

Despite receiving a mandatory evacuation order they stay. The volunteers working on their farm go to Anahim Lake.

The fire slowly approaches them. There is no means of stopping it. They live in a remote region. The focus of the fire services was on bigger fires especially those endangering towns.

Amidst uncertainty and dread they work hard to limit fire access to their buildings. They are aided by sprinkler systems, including some provided by the government. They are daily urged to evacuate. Together with some neighbours they stay.

I had never read about how sprinklers are set up to try to protect remote properties from forest fires. 

For 8 days the fire simmers along, slowed but not stopped by the ground crews and helicopters dropping water and sometimes retardant.

On July 16 the fire breaks free and closes in on the farm from two directions.

A back burn is set up for the branch of the fire to the northwest. It is a dangerous task. The “seasoned pilot” waits for the right conditions:

Back burning is a very exact science. For it to work properly, temperatures have to be high enough, humidity must be low enough and of course the winds have to be just right.

Fred and Monika are close enough to see from their home “the flames drop toward the forest” - the ignited fuel being dropped by the helicopter to start the back burn.

Four helicopters drop water on the two fronts of the fire.

However, the fire’s front to the southwest threatens:

… near dusk we saw flames for the first time. Trees candled as the fire moved in from the southwest.

Fred and Monika are urged yet again to leave but stay.

While they defend the efforts of the Wildfire Service many of the residents of the area are upset with how the fires in the Chilcotin are being fought.

By July 22 the Wildfire Service had been battling the Precipice fire for two weeks.

Amidst the chaos of helicopters and firefighters coming and going from the farm Fred and Monika keep “weeding the garden, picking and processing endless strawberries (because we could not get out to sell them, we were putting what we did not give to the firefighters in the freezer), tending the greenhouse, milking cows and training our new calf to a halter”.

They were in constant contact with the outside world. A tower, undamaged by the fires, provided phone and internet access in their area. In the midst of a tenacious fearful fire they exchanged emails, Facebook messages and phone calls with many people.

I had never appreciated how fighting a forest fire is a grind far longer than flames flashing through an area.

For what happened on August 3 when the fire reached but 2-3 kilometres from the home of Fred and Monika, exploded into a rank five fire (fires are ranked 1-6) and the last helicopter flew away you will need to read the book. The cover photo is of that fire coming at them that day. It is a gripping draining story. I felt as if I was in the midst of the “ordeal”. The fire dragon may rest awhile puffing smoke but can suddenly erupt in rage.

I enjoyed the book while regretting Fred, Monika and Chris were captured by fire. 

Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier (Part II)

In my previous post I started a review of Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier. This post finishes the review.

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.

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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/

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Collier, Eric - (2025) - Three Against the Wilderness (Part I) 

Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier (Part I)

(16. - 1259.) Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier (1959) - My Dad’s favourite book. He never tired of listening to my taped recording of the book while he was in the Nirvana Nursing Home in Melfort in the 1980’s. His eyesight had failed and he could no longer read.

Dad trapped for 60 years mainly around Meskanaw from the early 1920’s to the beginning of the 1980’s. He enjoyed the challenge of trapping beavers. 

Collier during his first observation of Meldrum Creek in 1922 saw it being swept by a forest fire. He recognized that the absence of beavers had left the Creek “sick” and the surrounding area vulnerable.

Dad identified deeply with the experiences of the Collier family seeking to return beavers to Meldrum Creek. Dad knew the importance of beavers in the health of watersheds. 

Collier was from an upper middle class English manufacturing family. After a year of articling his father and the solicitor to which he was articled, recognized it was a waste of time. Collier jumped at his father’s offer to go to British Columbia in the early 1920’s where a cousin had established a ranch.

While Collier loved the rugged interior of B.C. he had no interest in ranching. While working at a trading post he met Lillian and her grandmother, Lala. Lala had grown up on the nearby reserve before marrying a white man. Collier loved talking to 97 year old Lala about the history she had witnessed including the coming of the white man. She convinced Eric that the trapping out of the beavers for trade goods had devastated the region.

It took 9 years to save enough to establish a home on the headquarters of Meldum Creek. 

Eric, his wife Lillian and his son Veasy lived next to Meldrum Creek on the Chilcotin Plateau in the interior of Brtish Columbia from 1931 to the late 1950’s.

Self-reliant they built their own log cabin from trees they had cut down. They had to be independent living 25 miles from the nearest store.

It was not a romantic life in the wilderness. They battled mosquitoes and flies in the summer and endured bitter winters where the mercury dropped to the 50 below mark at the base of their thermometer. 

The Colliers savoured the beauty of the forest, the quiet, the wild animals about them. They were content.

The stories from their lives are powerful, often visceral. They made their lives as trappers and hunters. To live off the land in the B.C. interior meant killing. They shot deer, moose, geese, partridges and other animals for food. They trapped coyotes, muskrats, weasels, mink, lynx, fishers, otter and eventually beavers for their furs.

Eric, Lillian and Veasy were all trappers. Eric had the main trapline while Lillian and Veasy each took care of a few traps.

Dad had trapped almost all of those animals. I sometimes accompanied him on his trapline as a teenager. While I was never cut out to be a trapper I enjoyed being with him. Being a trapper is an intimate way to experience the great outdoors.

Dad had another connection with Eric. Dad, as with Eric, enjoyed writing about trapping. I have a carefully handwritten journal containing instructions, tips and advice for novice trappers. An early story is about how to trap skunks.

(My next post will complete my review of Thee Against the Wilderness.)

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Three Against the Wilderness (Part II)