ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Paul McKendrick. People know you around town as one of the owners of Strides Canmore. What people might not know about you is that you’re an author and you have your very first book coming out on April 24th. What got you into the writing world?

PAUL MCKENDRICK: When we were starting up Strides a few years ago I did have a little extra time to work on a side project. The idea for this book had been percolating through my mind for a number of years. I had gone into Bjornstrom’s Cave on Shuswap Lake about 20 years ago. It was found by some houseboaters, and then shortly thereafter it was destroyed by the authorities. Going into that cave made a real impression on me because of the amount of effort that would have gone into building it. It went deep into the rock and there was a kitchen and a bedroom at the back. Over the years, all these questions about what led to Bjornstrom to that cave percolated through my mind, so when we were starting up Strides I started digging into it further and it got more and more interesting, and I was compelled to write the book.

RM: The Bushman’s Lair: On the Trail of the Fugitive of the Shuswap – it’s about the life of John Bjornstrom. I have to admit, I don’t really know anything about this piece of Canadian history. Who was John Bjornstrom?

PM: He’s a fellow that ended up on a very unique path. He was born to Hungarian refugees and ended up being adopted by a Norwegian family in BC. When he was teenager he left home on horseback. From there, there was a sequence of events that led him to investigating what was happening with Bre-X, and he concluded that the geologist that died when Bre-X was unraveling, Michael de Guzman, was murdered. As a result, when he was back in Calgary, he was threatened one Friday and that caused him enough fear, I guess, that he decided to flee to the Shuswap. All sounds hard to believe, and it’s really only until you read the whole story that some of these things that happened along the way in his life can actually be more believable.

RM: There’s parts about protecting local youth from an alleged child pornography ring. There’s the Bre-X mining scandal. There’s a prison escape. There’s something about a top secret US military program. When you dug into his story, were you surprised about all these crazy nuggets that you found?

PM: Part of the joy of digging into it was discovering these nuggets along the way. I had to convince myself I wasn’t crazt, but when you put it all together I guess it’s just crazy enough to maybe be true. It was a fun experience and, and along the way I met some pretty interesting people who had a lot of good things to say about him.

The official release date is April 24th, but signed copies of the book are now available at Café Books in Canmore.

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