Ralph Edwards, ( – July 3, 1977) was a pioneering British Columbian homesteader, amateur pilot and leading conservationist of the trumpeter swan. He received the Order of Canada in 1972 for his conservation efforts, and is the namesake of the Edwards Range mountains. Edwards and his family were celebrated in a number of books and films, including Leland Stowe's best-selling Crusoe of Lonesome Lake (1957), which led to Edwards being the surprise honoree on the 1957 Christmas Day edition of This Is Your Life.
Biography
Early life
Edwards was born around 1891–92 in the mountains of North Carolina. After a few years he moved with his medical-missionary parents to India where he spent three years in the foothills of the Himalayas, until the age of eight, coming to love the mountains. He then returned to North Carolina for two years of school, and then to Massachusetts where he lived with his great-uncle helping him on his farm, developing a love of farming. In his mid-teens he moved to Oregon, where his nomadic parents had settled. At age 16, he found work in British Columbia on a railroad construction crew. Edwards' deep interest in farming and mountains came together when he learned he could get free land in British Columbia as part of a state homesteading program. Between the ages of 17 and 21, he taught himself how to be a farmer using books and working as a farmhand. In 1913, at the age of 21, he was granted a 160-acre tract in the Atnarko valley on the eastern edge of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia.
Farm and family
Edwards chose a location for the farm forty-miles walk from the nearest human settlement, deep in the mountains over a treacherous trail on the far end of Lonesome Lake (which Edwards named), in what is today Tweedsmuir South Provincial Park. Winters were long, snowy and very cold. Dangerous wild animals such as grizzly bears and bobcats were everywhere. He spent the first decade alone, clearing towering virgin forests of cedar trees with hand tools, building a multistory log home, shooting and trapping game. He rarely left the farm, and could only bring in from the outside what he could carry on his back and packhorse over a difficult mountainous trail, which took at least two days to traverse. Edwards named the farm "The Birches".
In 1917, he enlisted with the United States Army as a radio operator, and fought in World War I with the Fourth Division's 8th Field Signal Battalion, serving at the Battle of Château-Thierry and later with occupation forces on the Rhine. He was discharged nine months after the armistice, and returned to The Birches. In 1923, he married a local girl, Ethel Hober, and they raised three children on the farm: Stanley, Johnny and the youngest, daughter Trudy. The children were schooled through a correspondence system, and had access to Ralph's extensive home library.
The Edwards family became locally renowned for their pioneering self-sufficiency and DIY ethic. Since it required so much effort to bring material in from the outside they tried to make as much as they could from scratch. Beyond such things as making their own shoes and spinning wool into clothing, accomplishments included a water-powered saw mill, and even an electric-generator powered by the river, enough to keep a single light-bulb going at night. He studied for a decade to build an airplane, teaching himself advanced mathematics and aeronautic engineering, although in the end he was forced to buy a used plane due to legal restrictions. His daughter Trudy learned to fly the plane first, then, the age of 62, Edwards obtained his pilot's license after only 28 hours of instruction; at the time, he was the oldest pilot in Canada to ever qualify. During his physical his doctor said he was healthier than men half his age.
Over the years, as Edwards' farm and family prospered, the legend of his accomplishments spread. In 1956, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Leland Stowe visited The Birches for 12 days on assignment with Reader's Digest. From his interviews with Edwards, Stowe wrote a biography called Crusoe of Lonesome Lake (1957). Stowe saw Edwards as a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, self-sufficiently carving a bountiful existence out of harsh but beautiful land. The book sold well, and Edwards became somewhat famous thereafter. Popular interest was such that Edwards was the honoree on the 1957 Christmas Day edition of This Is Your Life, hosted by Ralph Edwards (no relation). Guests for the show included his younger brother, whom he had not seen in 35 years; former Army comrades he had not seen in 38 years; and his 93-year-old mother.