Stubborn
Subtitle: Big Ed Caswell and the line from the Valley to the Northland
By: Dick Bourgeois-Doyle
Publisher: General Store Pub. House
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Renfrew, ON
Language: eng
Number of pages: 153
ISBN-13: 9781897508831
Description: "Stubborn celebrates the centennial of Cochrane, Ontario, and describes the determination, grit, and downright stubbornness of the scrappy pioneers who settled and populated Northern Ontario in the nineteenth century. One man in particular, Ed Caswell, personified this quality of stubbornness as he and his community battled one disaster after another.

Cochrane, Ontario - the town known as the Northland Post - was ravaged by fire four times in the first six and a half years of its official existence. Two of these infernos were arms of the deadliest and most horrific forest fires in Canadian history, and both of them wiped the substance of the town off the map. Yet none of these disasters would be considered the most tragic time of Cochrane's early days. That marker would be placed on the year of the town's typhoid epidemic.

Each event was trying in its own way, and each demanded its own reaction. But the common feature of every response was an unflinching and sometimes baffling determination to regroup and push on, often using scorched tools to rebuild, while the embers of desolation still smouldered. The act was a practical and caring kind of stubbornness that manifested in the common people who settled this region and came together to define the unique culture of this part of Canada.