Don't Shoot from the Saddle

Can$16.95

In these earthy and hilarious tales, Dr. Holley writes about his life as a bush doctor in the Canadian north and as a surgeon in British Columbia’s Cariboo. From Yellowknife to New York, where he was an intern at Columbia University, he lived on the cutting edge of medicine, practical jokes, and trailside mishaps from the 1930s until the 1990s.

Al Holley not only set up the first intensive care unit in British Columbia, but he has also been a horse rancher, cowboy, Justice of the Peace, and actor on one of the great stages of the west: the restored main street of legendary Barkerville, scene of the 1858 Cariboo Gold Rush. Over the years Dr. Holley built a wide circle of friends among the west’s colourful old-timers as he explored the frontier landscape with medicine bag in hand.

These stories about living off the land and caring for your neighbours show just how good a tough life in backwoods B.C. can be. They also demonstrate the resilience and ingenuity that allowed both the strong and the meek to survive. Meet Al Holley’s friends: Snuffy Smith from Barkerville, whose stink bomb backfired after the teacher locked him in the school; Dwayne Witte, the cardiac patient who said, “I quit smoking and drinking—but I still lie a lot”; and Quesnel’s Jed Campbell, who brought home the bacon—alive—and let it loose in Al Holley’s living room because Holley had said he wanted a barbecue.


 

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