His move to Canada
Eric Collier was born in Northampton, England in 1903, the son of the Managing Director of a firm supplying machinery to the shoe industry. Having failed as a trainee lawyer, he travelled to Canada in 1920 to work on his cousin Harry Marriott’s Big Bar ranch near Clinton, British Columbia. (Marriott wrote about his own life in a book called Cariboo Cowboy (Gray’s Publishing Ltd., Sydney, B.C, 1966).
A year later, he struck out on his own and went to work for Fred Becher at the trading post in Riske Creek, near Williams Lake. It was there that he met Lillian Ross. They married in 1928.
Veasy Collier on his father’s move from Britain to Canada:
Some of us cannot live without wilderness. Embellished or not, Collier’s stories as told in his book are an inspiration and a much-needed hope for some of us. I am absolutely horrified by what oil and uranium corporations are doing to the last large pristine wilderness areas in Canada. Collier’s book should never be forgotten.
A great site. Many thanks to James Stewart.
Kaz Dziamka