The Lost Wilderness: Rediscovering W.F. Ganong’s New Brunswick

Shortlisted, New Brunswick Book Award for Non-FictionEvery summer between 1882 and 1929, naturalist William Francis Ganong travelled through the wilderness of New Brunswick, systematically mapping previously uncharted territories, taking photographs, and documenting observations on the physical geography of the province that laid the foundations for the modern study of New Brunswick’s rich natural history. In The Lost Wilderness, acclaimed photographer and naturalist Nicholas Guitard retraces many of these journeys, comparing his notes with those recorded by Ganong in handwritten travel journals and published articles and monographs.Richly illustrated with archival maps and photographs made by Ganong alongside the author’s own stunning photography, The Lost Wilderness finds a New Brunswick both utterly changed and amazingly similar to the wild place Ganong found a century ago. Nicholas Guitard revisits Ganong’s explorations and, in a warm and conversational style, illuminates Ganong’s contributions to our present geographical knowledge of New Brunswick and traces the effects of millennia of glacial erosion and tectonic upheaval as well as the more recent effects of human settlement and resource exploitation.