Mountain Masculinity

In 1906, Nello Vernon-Wood (1882–1978) reinvented himself as Tex Wood, Banff hunting guide and writer of “yarns of the wilderness by a competent outdoorsman.” His homespun stories of a vanishing era, in such periodicals as The Sportsman, Hunting and Fishing, and the Canadian Alpine Journal, have much to tell us about the west as envisioned by those who wanted to leave the industrialized world behind. In the writings of his persona “ Tex,” Vernon-Wood created an image of the frontier that blended the West of his guiding experiences with the old West as imagined by those who flocked to the Canadian and American frontiers in search of adventure in an uncivilized wilderness. Editors Gow and Rak, guide the reader through this collection of Vernon-Wood's stories, providing a framework for both the writer and his alter ego, Tex.