Song of the Reel

George Frederick Clarke (1883-1974) was a man of the St. John River valley and a true romantic. He wanted to be a writer, and a writer he became, against great odds, and created a body of work as full of adventure and romance as his own life. But he himself was as extraordinary as anything he wrote, full of contradictions: a romantic idealist who nearly left his wife and daughters for his lover and their son-a love affair that shocked and polarised his home town of Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada. He rose above the scandal by sheer force of character. By the 1960s he was one of the best-known men in New Brunswick, the "great-hearted old man" whom the poet Alden Nowlan knew and loved-and a bridge to a new era that is coming to value both the conservation of human communities and the beauty of the natural world

"It is not all of fishing to fish."


- Izaak Walton

The Compleat Angler


George Frederick Clarke had an unwavering and well-practiced philosophy of fishing. He never tired of repeating Izaak Walton's famous saying and he delighted in spelling out exactly what it means.


He begins the story in his previous book, Six Salmon Rivers, and brings it to full expression in Song of the Reel. The pinnacle of feeling to which Song of the Reel rises as it surrounds fishing with the beauty of New Brunswick's rivers and the deep forest landscape, as well as the pleasures of companionship and great story telling, leave no doubt that fishing is about much more than catching fish. You don't have to be a fisherman to enjoy these books.


With stories of river adventures, wilderness solace, the camaraderie of camping, as well as fishing, Dr. Clarke spins together the lines of description and feeling that puts the "much more" in the picture. He plays out his memoires of a long life in the Saint John River Valley in a way that is a salute to the land and people he loved so well. He offers firm evidence of what it means to have a grateful heart and satisfied mind. We can imagine he would say with Thoreau, "I dream of no heaven but that which lies about me."


With Six Salmon Rivers and Song of the Reel, Dr. Clarke has given us two of the finest renditions of what it means to say, "It is not all of fishing to fish."


George Frederick Clarke (1883-1974) was the author of thirteen books and dozens of short stories. He lived in Woodstock, NB. Mary Bernard is Clarke's granddaughter and biographer. She is the editor of the George Frederick Clarke Project, which is republishing his books.