The curious thing is that the thirty-one little "stories", in their concern with the minutiae of everyday life, actually capture the essence of northern Canada, the vast expanses of sparsely-populated country north of the 60^th parallel to which the title of the book refers. Furthermore, they do so in a way that is guaranteed to hold some appeal for almost every type of reader, whether man, woman or child. Here is self-publishing at its best and most original: an attractive large-format illustrated paperback, containing the lively if not always eloquent words of women who have never thought of themselves as writers. From nurse to teacher, from shop assistant to civil servant, each takes her own slant on the "call of the north".

  Even those women who stayed at home to care for husband and children are pioneers in the truest sense, having to be resourceful and imaginative just in order to hold the home together. Several of them describe the reckless courage with which they drove off marauding bears. My personal favourites, though, are the various stories about transport, ranging from the intrepid entertainers who made the drive north accompanied by two grand pianos on a trailer to the woman who set fire to an aircraft with her cigarette!

  "I can't think of one person in the North that I knew that I didn't admire," writes Mildred O'Callaghan of her time in Yellowknife. I would go a stage further and say that there is no woman featured in this book that I don't admire for her perseverance, good humour and sheer spirit of adventure. The only major criticism I could make is that the individual stories are simply too brief. It's not clear whether the women were given a word limit for their contributions, but at times they seem to be cut off short just as they are getting to the interesting bits. Perhaps that is all part of the fun - in order to discover the full story, I need to pay a visit of my own to the frozen North. The Canadian tourist agencies have good reason to be grateful to the authors.