Two lives. Two stories. One unlikely connection. 
 
Walter didn't set out to become a bush pilot. Tricia didn't plan to leave Liverpool for the Canadian wilderness. Neither of them could have predicted where their separate journeys would lead — or that those journeys would one day intersect in the remote community of Telegraph Creek, British Columbia.
 
By Happenstance is a tête-bêche memoir — two complete books bound together in one. Flip it one way to read Walter's Story. Flip it the other way to read Tricia's.
 
Walter's Story follows a boy who grew up in the orchards of BC's Okanagan Valley, before a family move to a rough plot of land on Vancouver Island, where childhood was quickly replaced by hard work and responsibility. As a young man, Walter trained to be a teacher, but something didn't quite fit. And then one day, a small newspaper ad changed everything. One introductory flying lesson was all it took. What followed was a career in Canada's remote North — flying for larger-than-life characters through terrain that was as unforgiving as it was beautiful, where skill, instinct, and more than a little faith were the only things between you and the wilderness below.
 
Tricia's Story begins in postwar Liverpool, where a girl born during WWII grew up navigating a father who was a stranger returned from war, with strict rules and little room for ambition. When he pulled her out of school at sixteen and sent her to work in his factory, she slipped away one morning and by dinnertime, she was accepted into nurses' training at Alder Hey Children's Hospital instead. That single act of quiet defiance set her on a course that would carry her across the Atlantic to nurse in increasingly remote communities in British Columbia.
 
This book is for you if you're drawn to:
True stories of ordinary people living extraordinary lives
Canadian frontier and wilderness history
Aviation memoir and bush pilot history
Nursing history and women's history
Postwar Britain and the lives of those who emigrated
Family legacy and the stories behind the people who shaped us
 
By Happenstance is a family history memoir spanning two continents — from postwar Liverpool, Hull, and London to British Columbia, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories — sharing slices of life from the mid-20th century.
 
Two stories. One book. Flip it over and begin.
 
Number of pages: 420
Book dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm
 
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