FOR PURE enjoyment, one of the best books that's come my way in the past few months is Doug Urquhart's Skookum's North, a collection of the "Paws" cartoon strip that's syndicated from Lynn Lake, Manitoba to Dutch Harbour, Alaska. In B.C. the strip only appears in papers north of Terrace, which is odd, because characters like the dog Skookum and his master, Marten Fisher, can be found everywhere in this province.
Marten is the sort of guy who knows he must have two 4X4s in the yard if he's going to keep the third on the road. He goes after an ecologist when he discovers plastic six-pack rings don't strangle the gulls stealing the salmon from his drying racks.
Home for Marten is a place where government is laughed at; green plastic garbage bags are used as ponchos and lean-tos. -- B.C. Bookworld, Winter 1994
About the Author
Doug Urquhart started out as a "bush baby." Raised in a tent while the family home was being built, he hated the smoky taste of a milk bottle nipple warmed over a campfire. Later, his experiences canoeing, camping and building a log cabin with his parents inspired Doug to spend his life in the North.
For more than 35 years, Doug worked all over northern Canada--as a prospector in northern Quebec and Ontario, biologist on the arctic islands, conservation officer in Fort Smith and Cambridge Bay, Northwest Territories, weather observer on the Yukon-NWT border, jail guard in Atlin, British Columbia, editorial cartoonist in Whitehorse, Yukon an environmental consultant in Yellowknife and the Yukon. Doug lives with his wife, Judi, and children, Robin and Daitlyn, in Whitehorse, Yukon. He is presently a member of the yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board and Chair of the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Enhancement Trust.
