Roderick Haig-Brown

Roderick Haig-Brown
Born	21 February 1908 Lancing, Sussex, England, UK
Died	9 October 1976 Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Canadian
Genre	non-fiction, fiction
Subject	nature, fly-fishing, youth
Notable works	The Western Angler, A River Never Sleeps, Fisherman's Fall, Measure of the Year, Saltwater Summer
Spouse	Ann
Children	Valerie, Mary, Alan, Celia

Roderick Langmere Haig-Brown (February 21, 1908 – October 9, 1976) was a Canadian writer and conservationist.

Haig-Brown was born in Lancing, Sussex, England. His father, Alan Haig-Brown, was a teacher and a prolific writer, the author of hundreds of articles and poems on sports, the military, and educational issues in various periodicals. Alan was also an officer in the British Army during World War I. In 1918 he was killed in action in France. Roderick had a high regard for his father and describes him in an essay entitled “Alan Roderick Haig Brown” as “an Edwardian: one of the young, the strong, the brave and the fair who had faith in their nation, their world and themselves” (27). Roderick's paternal grandfather, William, was headmaster of the Charterhouse School for thirty-three years.

Roderick's mother, Violet Mary Pope, was one of fifteen children of Alfred Pope, a wealthy Dorset brewer. After the war ended Roderick, his mother and his two sisters went to live with her family. His grandfather Pope was an industrious man with very strong Victorian values of “service, fair play, decency and acceptance of the obligations that follow with the privilege of class and education” (Robertson 6). He was a friend of Thomas Hardy and took young Roderick to tea there on at least one occasion. Roderick later noted in his essay “Hardy’s Dorset” that he regretted not having elicited more information from Hardy about being a writer, but he was sixteen then and was passionate about fishing and shooting. Life on his grandfather's country estate on the Frome River was more fascinating to him than “the past or its old men” (“Hardy’s Dorset” 43). His many uncles loved sport and taught him to fish and shoot, but it was a family friend, Major Greenhill, who served as Roderick’s sporting mentor and taught him both the skills and the ethics of sportsmanship. The estate's gamekeepers, particularly "Old Fox", introduced him to the importance of conservation and the complexity of the environment. In 1921 Roderick entered Charterhouse where his grandfather Haig-Brown had been headmaster.

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