CANMORE – Author Paul McKendrick has written a book about the infamous and elusive Bushman of the Shuswap, John Bjornstrom, set to be released later this month.
The book chronicles Bjornstrom’s life and his escape from a Kamloops prison around the turn of the century to hide away in the Shuswap Lake area in an elaborately excavated 900-square-foot home.
The stranger-than-fiction true story told in The Bushman’s Lair: On the Trail of the Fugitive of the Shuswap is full of twists and surprises, making for a fascinating page-turner of the real man behind the myth.
McKendrick is a Canmore local and a part-owner of Strides Canmore. While the store was in its beginnings, McKendrick took advantage of extra time he had to begin research on the book.
He’s been intrigued by Bjornstrom’s story for years since visiting the makeshift lair roughly 20 years ago.
“These questions that I had about the bushman were percolating through my mind for a number of years,” said McKendrick.
“He had been just arrested the previous winter and then some house-boaters stumbled upon the cave, despite it being quite well hidden.”
Bjornstrom evaded capture for two years in the woods near Shuswap Lake, pillaging supplies from camps and nearby cottages, much to the anger of local residents and vacationers.
His cave included electricity from solar panels, which helped power a working computer, cellphone, and a functioning wood-fire stove. The structure was later destroyed by authorities because of safety concerns.
McKendrick also speculates about the methods Bjornstrom used to hide his canoe, perhaps even keeping it underwater.
“That left a real impression on me," he said. "Just the amount of work that went into that just got me wondering, what leads someone to do that?”
Bjornstrom was jailed in 1999 for a break-and-enter and escaped prison only weeks before fulfilling his sentence, reportedly because he feared for his life.
“It's a noisy explanation for why Bjornstrom would escape just before his sentence was up and returned to the bush just before winter," McKendrick said. "Something, it would seem, caused him to do that.”
Bjornstrom was hired to investigate the Calgary-based Bre-X gold mining scandal. He concluded the mysterious death of geologist Michael de Guzman was in fact a murder, and as a result, he was apparently threatened.
“It seems crazy enough to be true when you put it all together,” said McKendrick.
Bjornstrom further enticed police when he gave interviews to media outlets on at least two occasions. He was eventually captured by RCMP officers posing as a documentary crew trying to interview him.
McKendrick dogged research included digging into RCMP transcripts, reviewing court documents, and interviewing associates of Bjornstrom from across B.C. in order to “give a bit of a portrait of him as a person.”
“I was able to talk to enough people that knew him well," he said. "I was able to get a pretty good understanding and put his whole story together from beginning to end.”
McKendrick’s own experience of the Shuswap and Bjornstrom’s story is thanks in part to his family’s cabin across the lake from Sicamous. He searched the Hunkwa Lake area for other hideouts of Bjornstrom’s, but to no success.
Lots of questions came up during the book’s research and many remain unanswered.
Bjornstrom was allegedly connected to a CIA program utilizing psychic and clairvoyant individuals for proposed espionage. At his sentencing hearing, he claimed to have hidden in the woods to monitor possible activity in the area related to images of child sexual exploitation.
“In terms of pursuing his mission early on, because he never produced any concrete evidence of what he was looking into, the doubts will always be there,” McKendrick said.
McKendrick added he hopes readers will make up their own minds about who Bjornstrom was as a person, or what to make of his efforts while evading capture.
“It's something I left up for the reader to make their own view. Everyone's got their own view of what makes a hero.”
“I came to view him as an honest person who was trying to help other people,” said McKendrick. “He just went about it a very unorthodox way.”
Reminiscent of John Vaillant's The Golden Spruce and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, the book’s portrait of Bjornstrom as a far-from-ordinary fugitive will intrigue lovers of non-fiction and Canadian enigmas.
McKendrick hopes those who might know more about the bushman’s time in the Shuswap will read the book and get in touch with him.
The Bushman’s Lair: On the Trail of the Fugitive of the Shuswap will be released by Harbour Publishing on April 24; however, advance signed copies are already available at Café Books in Canmore.
