When Gerry Bracewell was born in 1922, you had to scrabble for your family living in rural Canada. Her family lived on an Alberta stump farm that taught and provided, but that came to a tragic crash when her father died suddenly. She and her three siblings (there were three others who didn't survive) were all under the age of 12 and they were faced with the daunting task of mere survival, in those days, on the wits and industry of the widow of the household.
Bracewell's mother wrestled life like a mama bear so those four kids were provided for. That and the early lessons of the farm may have been the two biggest compass points Bracewell would set her course by for the rest of her 93 years (and counting). Her life has became an adventure story with a constant theme of doing whatever she liked, even if it was typically the domain of men and only men.
The story is now literal, between the covers of her newly printed autobiography Gerry, Get Your Gun. It tells the tale of being B.C.'s first female licensed hunting guide, and before that a rare position for a woman as lead hand for a Chilcotin cattle company - all in the days before feminism had a name.
Each page turns to another account of wild forests, sprawling ranches, horses and bears, brutal weather, harrowing endurance and family love. It takes the reader from the top of rugged mountains to the bottom of rugged hearts.
"I have led an adventurous life and I've loved every minute," she said from her home, still located deep in the Tatlayoko Lake Valley at Potato Mountain, near the Alf Bracewell Mountain Range, named for her husband of 52 years following his passing in 2006. It was this region of jagged peaks and dense bush, still the base of the family guiding business, that beckoned her off the flat prairies more than 75 years previous. At the age of 16 she departed Alberta with a clear vision of her future. She stopped first in Vancouver, but it was brief. The city was too busy and the mountains too genteel in their location. She went north and found that dream-home halfway between Williams Lake and Bella Coola.
"I couldn't stand to live in Alberta where it was just so flat," she said. "Mountains were in my blood, even though I'd never seen them. When I found this place I never left it."
She became everything the province's pioneering men did: farmer, cowboy, hunter, fisher, trapper, guide, builder of whatever needed constructing, fixer of whatever needed repairing, and she still kissed the kids' boo-boos and helped them with their homework and whatever else life had to throw at her.
When she could no longer ride the range and take wilderness guests out into the mountains, she couldn't quiet that constantly active mind. So, at the urging of everyone who knew her personal history, she picked up pen and paper and started writing the memoirs.
"I enjoyed very much reliving all my adventures. I'm still reading the book myself," she said.
All of it was handwritten on notepads for others to type into book publishing formats.
"Every life has ups and downs, and I threw away all the downs," she said of her philosophy on the autobiography process. It was all from memory, since the travails of daily life were too fast and unrelenting for keeping diaries at the time.
Whenever a good story from her past would strike her, she would halt all other activities to write it down then and there, she said, because she was never sure if she would properly remember it later if she gave in to distractions. In this way, the pages added up into the whole package.
"There is a whole lot that didn't go into the book. Now I'm thinking 'how could I have missed that, and that, and that' and since I'm not doing any heavy work this summer, except lifting a pen, it's possible there'll be a second book."
If she wrote about all the misadventures, she said, it would seem too much like she was a cat on a mission to use up its nine lives, she said laughing. There were a lot of mistakes and close calls in that rustic line of work, over that broad length of time.
The bear encounters were her personal favourite to write about. Some of those episodes were majestic while some ended in gunfire. The one most memorable for Bracewell herself was the saga of Cow Killer, a single bear that attacked the livestock off and on for 15 years, always eluding Bracewell's attempts to shoot him. "But eventually I finally got 'im and his hide is on my wall," she said.
Watching people's reactions to these stories is her new thrill in life. Being a part of the wild Chilcotin landscape is still the fuel that runs the engines of her life, but she gets a charge now, too, from the feedback of the readers. A big part of that is knowing they are really excited by the setting, which is more of a character in the book than she herself.
"Oh my, it's so fabulous," Bracewell said. "We had some guests here the other day from China, a couple of men, and they couldn't believe what they were seeing. For them, up on Potato Mountain, it was like another world to them. They were just enthralled with it all. I don't blame them. So am I."
The book is available now for online ordering or at participating bookstores in the region.
