Tales From A Dusty Trail Book II (Volume 2) Peter Waldin

The first few chapters of this book describe experiences as I worked my way across Canada and then across the Atlantic. The question would be valid, “Why endure all that effort and a good deal of uncertainty when you could pay the greatest railway system in the world – the Canadian Pacific Railway Company – to convey you across Canada in the greatest of comfort; then do likewise with their steamship company, to take you across the broad Atlantic?” There’s validity to a question like that. The fact of the matter was that I wasn’t constituted to consider such a question. Being objective about that now, as I write 75 years later, the same question could be applied to when I left England and home as a boy of 15. Simply, “Why do such a thing?” It was a different age. My generation had been infused by the ideals of remarkable people such as the Baden-Powells , by the exalted declaration “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” From my own school the indelible impression was inculcated, ‘Play up, play up and play the game!’ From the society in which I was raised, the host of books I had read had the effect on my young life that had left a zest for achievement, adventure, gallantry and exploration. There were Scott, Shackleton, Schweitzer, Livingstone, factors and servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and countless others whose lives indirectly or directly had influenced my young life. To work my way back across the continent and an ocean seemed nothing more than a natural challenge. As an erstwhile teacher, college professor, member of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, an Associate of the Royal Toronto Conservatory, I fear such spirit is almost gone from society and from young people. It cannot be otherwise in the light of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. So please turn the page and travel with me -- now a romanticist, idealist – that was the way we were….. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Tales From A Dusty Trail Book II (Volume 2) (Peter Waldin)