TRIPPERS' TALES: STORIES AND LEGENDS FROM THE OTTAWA VALLEY Smith, Russell Burnstown (Ont.), General Store Publishing, 1991. 131pp, paper, $12.95, ISBN 0-919431-48-8. CIP Grades 7 and up/Ages 12 and up Reviewed by Jack Brown Volume 20 Number 4 1992 September Ancient waterways and abandoned roadways lace the Upper Ottawa Valley. For years, canoe trippers and hikers followed them into the wilderness for recreation and adventure. In this book the author, with his tripping companions, explores ten routes and discovers little-known legends. Each chapter contains a story within a story to broaden the trip log experiences. He tells of concentric ring petrographs near Achray, a weathered wooden cross among the ferns near the Barren River, wild dogs that guard Mer Bleue bog, an old sepia photograph that clings to the wall of an abandoned farmhouse, two murders in the Booth lumber country in Algonquin Park, a landslide haunted by departed spirits, the Hedley Boneyard in a Gatineau mine, and the Skuna who turned to ice. Russell Smith has published poetry, short stories, reviews and educational materials. In Trippers' Tales, he shows poetic charm in his use of language and the keen eye of an outdoor person in his description of natural surroundings. He points out the places to search so you can draw your own conclusions, but he cautions that "the events have been pieced together from a little concrete evidence, some reasonable conjecture, and a liberal cementing of pure imagination." This book should appeal to people of all ages who wonder where history leaves off and legend begins. Jack Brown is a teacher at Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute in Kingston, Ontario