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list price: $24.95
edition:Paperback
category: Biography & Autobiography
published: Sep 2011
ISBN:9781894759632
publisher: Caitlin Press

The Legendary Betty Frank

The Cariboo's Alpine Queen

by Sage Birchwater & Betty Frank

tagged: personal memoirs
Description

She grew up playing on log booms and living in float houses, and at nine years old she learned to shoot a rifle and hunt game. Strong-willed and independent, Betty Frank always had a difficult time following the rules laid down by others. Rather than sit in a classroom and learn the times tables, she preferred to be out roaming the hills with her .22 rifle and bagging grouse. At an early age she dreamed of being a game guide and having her own hunting territory.

 

In spite of her distaste for sitting still, Betty soon realized that becoming a teacher would take her to the wilderness where the guiding opportunities lay, so she finished school and got her teaching certificate. But the schoolroom was neither adequate nor exciting enough to contain her imagination. Three years into her new career Betty met game guide Alfred Bowe, and from that day forward she followed her dream, embarking on a long and colourful career that spanned five decades.

 

Betty became a guide outfitter, trapper, shake splitter, dog musher and entrepreneur. Whether it was her penchant for nude sunbathing, popping out of a cake clad in a leopard-skin bikini at a guide-outfitters conference, taking lovers half her age, or living a life uncommon for a woman in the rough and ready Cariboo, Betty Frank made her mark, and throughout her fascinating career she broke all the gender stereotypes.

About the Authors
Sage Birchwater is the author of Chiwid, Williams Lake: Gateway to the Cariboo Chilcotin, and the bestselling Chilcotin Chronicles. He was a staff writer for the Williams Lake Tribune until 2009, and is the editor of Gumption & Grit: Extraordinary Women of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin Press, 2009). His most recent book, Talking to the Story Keepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau, was published by Caitlin Press in 2022. Sage lives in Williams Lake, BC, and continues to write about the Chilcotin.

Sage Birchwater is the author of Chiwid, Williams Lake: Gateway to the Cariboo Chilcotin, and the bestselling Chilcotin Chronicles. He was a staff writer for the Williams Lake Tribune until 2009, and is the editor of Gumption & Grit: Extraordinary Women of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin Press, 2009). His most recent book, Talking to the Story Keepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau, was published by Caitlin Press in 2022. Sage lives in Williams Lake, BC, and continues to write about the Chilcotin.
Contributor Notes

Born in 1931 during the Great Depression, Betty Frank (nee Cox) grew up in Coastal British Columbia on a tiny island named after her father in the logging and fishing community of Owen Bay just off Sonora Island. Her Dutch immigrant parents raised five children. Betty was both the oldest and the wildest. After an exciting career in the Cariboo, Betty Frank relocated to Quadra Island, but she still takes care of the lodge and cabin on Quesnel Lake where she once guided, trapped and cut shakes years ago. She cowrote her memoir, The Legendary Betty Frank, with Sage Birchwater.

Editorial Reviews

"The book is a fascinating read about Frank’s life, growing up playing on log booms and living float houses."

100 Mile House Free Press


"This is Cariboo history at its grittiest, an unfiltered look into a lifestyle that is now all but lost even in Betty’s remote mountains. It is a chronicle of rural people living at the margins of mainstream British Columbia society with few resources except what they can glean from the land. To survive, they hunt, fish, cut shakes, and trap. They rely on horses, dogs, beat-up vehicles and each other. The book documents their lives with a level of detail found in few other sources, and this is perhaps its greatest value. The stories, often hilarious, sometimes scary, and occasionally sad, paint a picture of a life lived to the fullest, and of childhood dreams realized beyond expectations."

BC Studies

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