John Agnew
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 17/98) - Bern Will Brown is the kind of man that makes you embarrassed about how much time you spend in front of the television.

His new book, Arctic Journal, is the memoir of a priest, a pilot, an artist, a linguist, a carpenter, a trapper and a hunter. How Brown found time to write down the events in his adventure-ridden life remains a mystery to someone who finds it difficult to get to work on time.

Growing up in northern New York state, Brown demonstrated early-on an aptitude for the skills that would help him survive life as a remote parish priest in the North. He also showed an predilection for a life fully lived. His brief description of his boyhood adventures would bring an envious grin to the face of Tom Sawyer.

Having little interest in school, Brown chose to join the Oblates of Mary Immaculate as a missionary priest rather than endure the lengthy indoctrination process of the Jesuits. By 1948, he was heading for the Canadian North.

Brown gives the reader a clear, unadorned picture of the rigors of daily life in the isolated Northern missions in which he served. By describing simply his chores, his living conditions, the people who befriended him, the challenges that he faced and the skills he learned in order to cope, Brown gives the reader a vivid portrait of the emerging North.

His memoir is written in plain, straightforward English. Avoiding shop-worn romanticism and bloated lyrical writing, the images Brown conjures are clear and his descriptions tantalizingly vivid. For readers either new to the North or too young to have known the days of few amenities, the book is an engaging chronicle of determination, fortitude, imagination and the adventure of uncertainty.

Brown witnessed many of the events that shaped the modern North. His portrayal of a people and a way of life in transition is fascinating. Having learned his lessons well from both the natives of the North and those adventurers who preceded him, Brown passes on to a new generation of Northerners an evocative reminiscence of the lives their forefathers led.

Arctic Journal encompasses the first seven years of Brown's life in the North. Now well into his seventies, he still lives in Colville Lake, painting, writing, photographing and, presumably, still putting his skills as an outdoorsman to the test.

Readers can only hope that he maintains the discipline to commit the rest of his experiences to paper.