by Janet Smellie
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 22/97) - As I sat alongside Lillian Kristensen while she drove her car down the highway linking Fort Smith to the rural community of Bell Rock where Lillian and her husband Ib make their home, I couldn't help but feel that I, too, in a way, was going home.

Even though I'd only met Lillian a mere two hours ago when I happened upon their store, North of 60 Books, her immediate generosity of offering a warm meal was too good to pass up -- her mother-like charm a true relief for a visitor whose only home for the past four days had been the vacated girls' dormitory now packed with boisterous musicians in town for the annual friendship festival.

The book store is dedicated exclusively to Northern volumes. No other in the North can make that claim, but it's a dedication that makes all the more sense when you know the proprietors' own story.

As her dog Pax gazed at me with forgiveness -- he had been delicately shunted to the back seat so I could ride up front -- Lillian filled me with colorful tales of her 26 years living in the North as we made our way along the highway.

Ib and Lillian, it seems, left Copenhagen in 1957 as newlyweds desperate to find freedom ... and judging by the expansive wilderness that surrounds their log home nestled up a private drive from the highway, they had indeed found it.

"We woke up this morning to witness a bear clawing through my clothesline," laughed Lillian as she ambled the car into the yard. "We wanted nature, I guess we've found it."

Ib, who trained in Denmark as a typographer, brought his wife Lillian to Canada in 1957. After journeying as a printer in Vancouver, he accepted a job in Montreal in 1963 helping design the Richard Pennington Printing office at McGill University Press.

"I left McGill in 1971 to get away from it all, but it didn't work! After a four-year retirement, we incorporated Fort Smith Workshop and North of 60 Books came right behind."

The pair started the workshop after they found the need was there in the community for a craft store. Lillian, an accomplished weaver, didn't waste time before the store was filled with her colorful designs.

While a fire completely destroyed the couple's original store and home, the Kristensens toughed it out, determined to recreate what they had lost.

"We lost everything. We had no insurance. Being a government town, people were all wondering why we were still here sticking it out,"

remembers Lillian.

"Five days after the fire the government opened up a house for us ... they opened a bank account to help ... this town has been really good to us."

By 1975 the couple had found a piece of property on which they could rebuild their shop and as the years went by, notes Ib, "we had to build more and more shelves just for the books."

"I'm sure if statistics exist they will say that a community the size of Fort Smith (population: 2,500) cannot support a bookstore. But books we just had to have and we decided to specialize. What better line than Northern books?"

And Northern books they have. In fact, if it's the latest thriller from Tom Clancy, you're after, you'd better hit the Northern Store, because you won't find it at the North of 60 shop.

Instead, you'll be able to discover everything from the last few copies of the reprinted Franklin and Hearne journals to the latest work of fiction from Fort Smith's own award-winning wordsmith Richard van Camp.

"We haven't made a fortune. That's for sure," chuckles Ib, who's now 63. On the other hand, he says, "here we have the freedom so many strive for. Here we can walk to the end of the street and be in the bush where it always seems that we are the first ever to step on the ground."

The couple's children, David, who's now an engineer in Calgary, and Jack, a clearance diver with the Canadian Navy based out of Victoria, visit regularly.

"I think our success is that we always live day to day, notes Lillian," as she gazes out her living room window at the fading summer sky.

"It's been a very good life for us, both business-wise and personally. Like most people we've had good times and bad, but I wouldn't trade my life I've made here with Ib for all the money in the world."