'Jimmy-Why & NoEl Polchies: Their Adventures in the Great Woods', is a one-volume compilation of George Frederick Clarke's Jimmy-Why stories for children. Originally published in two volumes as 'The Adventures of Jimmy-Why' and 'NoEl and Jimmy-Why', these books recount the experience of a young boy as he learns the ways of the great woods and woodland living in New Brunswick, Canada. While written as fiction, we know that one of the main characters, NoEl Polchies, was a real First Nation person who appears in the stories in his own name. We also know that in real life NoEl was a mentor to...

“It is not all of fishing to fish.”

– Izaak Walton

The Compleat Angler

George Frederick Clarke had an unwavering and well-practiced philosophy of fishing. He never tired of repeating Izaak Walton’s famous saying and he delighted in spelling out exactly what it means.

He begins the story in his previous book, Six Salmon Rivers, and brings it to full expression in Song of the Reel. The pinnacle of feeling to which Song of the Reel rises as it surrounds fishing with the beauty of New...

Someone Before Us was the first book-length publication devoted substantially to the Prehistoric (pre-European Contact) archaeology of New Brunswick. Dr. George Frederick Clarke (GFC) undertook his archaeological work at a time when there was little other such research being conducted in the province. His period of active field research, from the mid-1920s to the early 1960s, fits almost perfectly between the demise of 19th-century, natural-history-style archaeology around 1914 and the development of national and provincial heritage regulations (marking the advent of...