Some of Western Canada’s most enduring legends involve wilderness fugitives like the Mad Trapper of Rat River or Gunanoot of the Skeena. This book is about one of the most mysterious and most recent fugitives, the Bushman of the Shuswap, who made national headlines while on the lam in the wilderness around Shuswap Lake during the turn of the millennium. For several years he played cat and mouse with the RCMP, raiding summer cottages for supplies and giving media interviews at the edge of the bush only to vanish like smoke. Who was the mysterious Bushman? What drove him? What happened to him? Author Paul McKendrick became obsessed with these questions after a group of houseboaters discovered a doorway built into a rocky outcrop above a remote arm of Shuswap Lake. It opened into an elaborately excavated nine-hundred-square-foot home, complete with electricity and other amenities—the Bushman’s long-sought hideout. Intrigued by the ingenuity of the fugitive’s lair and sensing that there was more to the story than what had been reported by the media, McKendrick began reaching out to people who knew the man, whose real name was John Bjornstrom. What had driven Bjornstrom to go on the lam in the first place, and why specifically to the Shuswap? Why did he escape from prison shortly before completing his sentence? The Bushman’s Lair is the culmination of numerous interviews, court and RCMP transcripts and McKendrick’s own experience of following the Bushman’s trails. The stranger-than-fiction story that McKendrick has woven together is as full of twists and surprises as any reader could hope for: a child of Romani refugees raised by outdoor enthusiasts from Norway; a bizarre, top-secret US military program that recruited individuals with supposed psychic abilities; conspiracy theories and entanglements with shady characters; an alleged hit list tied to the infamous Bre-X mining scandal; and more. Reminiscent of John Vaillant's The Golden Spruce and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, this fascinating portrait of a far-from-ordinary fugitive makes for a page-turning read.
Оглавление
Paul McKendrick. The Bushman’s Lair
The. Bushman’s. Lair
Frontispiece
Contents
Maps
Chapter 1 Beneath the Surface
Chapter 2 Into the Dark
Chapter 3 The Call of the Bush
Chapter 4 Stargate
Chapter 5 Gilded Dreams
Chapter 6 Gilded Greed
Chapter 7 The Sorcerer
Chapter 8 After the Gold Rush
Chapter 9 The Hit List
Chapter 10 Skookum Tumtum
Chapter 11 Hunakwa
Chapter 12 Off the Beaten Track
Chapter 13 Hunting Season
Chapter 14 Who’s Listening?
Chapter 15 Deluded Delusions
Chapter 16 Into the Light
Endnotes
Chapter 3: The Call of the Bush
Chapter 4: Stargate
Chapter 5: Gilded Dreams
Chapter 6: Gilded Greed
Chapter 7: The Sorcerer
Chapter 8: After the Gold Rush
Chapter 9: The Hit List
Chapter 10: Skookum Tumtum
Chapter 11: Hunakwa
Chapter 12: Off the Beaten Track
Acknowledgements
Credits
Отрывок из книги
Paul McKendrick
On the Trail of the Fugitive of the Shuswap
.....
While travelling the large body of water nocturnally by canoe and helping himself to provisions from cabins in the area, the Bushman had built the nine-hundred-square-foot cave and furnished it with supplies from those same cabins. After the houseboat manager was shown the cave, he radioed the police. They appeared shortly thereafter, questioned the houseboaters, appropriated film from their cameras and began removing the stolen possessions from the cave to be floated down the lake on a barge. The houseboaters, meanwhile, finished their holiday and set off on the five-hour journey to return their floating homes to their moorage. Along the way they were intercepted and boarded by a TV news reporter and cameraman eager to learn more about the Bushman’s hideout.
The Bushman had already garnered a following as the result of earlier media coverage of his escapades. But many viewed the coverage as glamourizing. “I hate it when people call him the Bushman,” said one police staffer. “He’s just a two-bit crook.” The police sergeant tasked with bringing him in echoed that comment: “Let’s not romanticize this guy. He’s a thief. Sure, he’s a bizarre thief. But he’s a thief.” Some cabin owners recoiled at any suggestion that he was anything more than a “bush rat” or “garbage bear.” And a local newspaper questioned the idea that he was some kind of Robin Hood and instead referred to him as “just a loser who’s lost in the woods.”
