22 Facts About Roderick Haig-Brown

Roderick Langmere Haig-Brown was a Canadian writer and conservationist.

Roderick Haig-Brown's father, Alan Haig-Brown, was a teacher and a prolific writer, the author of hundreds of articles and poems on sports, the military, and educational issues in various periodicals.

Roderick Haig-Brown was a friend of Thomas Hardy and took young Roderick to tea there on at least one occasion.

Roderick Haig-Brown's many uncles loved sport and taught him to fish and shoot, but it was a family friend, Major Greenhill, who served as Roderick's sporting mentor and taught him both the skills and the ethics of sportsmanship.

In 1921 Roderick entered Charterhouse where his grandfather Haig-Brown had been headmaster.

Roderick Haig-Brown found his way to British Columbia, Canada through a series of unexpected events.

Roderick Haig-Brown went, in the meantime to Seattle, Washington at the invitation of an uncle who had married a Seattle woman, promising his mother he would come back when he was eligible for the civil service.

Roderick Haig-Brown worked at a logging camp in Washington, then crossed the border to Canada because his US visa had expired.

Roderick Haig-Brown remained in British Columbia for three years to work at Nimpkish Lake on Vancouver Island as a logger, a commercial fisherman and an occasional guide to visiting anglers.

Roderick Haig-Brown returned to England in 1931 and enjoyed the fast-paced life of London.

Roderick Haig-Brown returned to BC at the end of the year and planned his third book, Panther.

Roderick Haig-Brown married Ann Elmore of Seattle after publishing Panther, and the couple settled on the banks of the Campbell River where they lived for the rest of their lives, raising three daughters and a son.

Roderick Haig-Brown is most famous internationally for his writing on fly fishing and the natural world.

Roderick Haig-Brown joined the Canadian Army as a personnel officer in 1943 and was later seconded for several months to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which allowed him to travel across Canada and to the Arctic.

Roderick Haig-Brown was magistrate for the town of Campbell River from 1941 until 1974.

Roderick Haig-Brown became a trustee of the Nature Conservancy of Canada, an advisor to the BC Wildlife Federation, a senior advisor to Trout Unlimited and the Federation of Flyfishers, and a member of the Federal Fisheries Development Council and the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission.

Roderick Haig-Brown was Chancellor of University of Victoria from 1970 to 1973.

Roderick Haig-Brown served three times on the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for British Columbia.

Roderick Haig-Brown retired from the bench a year before his death and was planning to get back to writing as the pressure of his other commitments gradually eased off.

In 1947 Roderick Haig-Brown won the inaugural Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award, recognizing his 1943 novel Starbuck Valley Winter, which features trapping.

Roderick Haig-Brown won award again in 1963 for The Whale People, a novel that features Native Americans.

In 1953 Roderick Haig-Brown received an honorary LLD from the University of British Columbia.