Ralph Edwards (conservationist)
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Ralph Edwards OC |
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| Born | 1891 or 1892 North Carolina |
| Died | July 3, 1977 (aged 84–86) Prince Rupert, British Columbia |
| Residence | British Columbia, Canada |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Farmer, hunter/trapper, fisherman, amateur pilot |
| Known for | DIY ethic, conservation efforts |
Ralph Edwards, OC (ca. 1892 – July 3, 1977) was a pioneering British Columbian homesteader, amateur pilot and leading conservationist of the trumpeter swan. He received the Order of Canada in 1972 for his conservation efforts, and is the namesake of the Edwards Range mountains. Edwards and his family were celebrated in a number of books and films, including Leland Stowe's best-selling Crusoe of Lonesome Lake (1957), which led to Edwards being the surprise honoree on the 1957 Christmas Day edition of This Is Your Life.
Edwards was born around 1891–92 in the mountains of North Carolina. After a few years he moved with his medical-missionary parents to India where he spent three years in the foothills of the Himalayas, until the age of eight, coming to love the mountains. He then returned to North Carolina for two years of school, and then to Massachusetts where he lived with his great-uncle helping him on his farm, developing a love of farming. In his mid-teens he moved to Oregon, where his nomadic parents had settled. At age 16, he found work in British Columbia on a railroad construction crew. Edwards' deep interest in farming and mountains came together when he learned he could get free land in British Columbia as part of a state homesteading program. Between the ages of 17 and 21, he taught himself how to be a farmer using books and working as a farmhand. In 1913, at the age of 21, he was granted a 160-acre tract in the Atnarko valley on the eastern edge of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia.
Edwards chose a location for the farm forty-miles walk from the nearest human settlement, deep in the mountains over a treacherous trail on the far end of Lonesome Lake (which Edwards named), in what is today Tweedsmuir South Provincial Park. Winters were long, snowy and very cold. Dangerous wild animals such as grizzly bears and bobcats were everywhere. He spent the first decade alone, clearing towering virgin forests of cedar trees with hand tools, building a multistory log home, shooting and trapping game. He rarely left the farm, and could only bring in from the outside what he could carry on his back and packhorse over a difficult mountainous trail, which took at least two days to traverse. Edwards named the farm "The Birches".
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