When I first heard the title of the new biography of Bill Mason I was perplexed. Fire in the Bones seemed an odd and awkward choice. I personally favoured The Man in the Red Canoe. But after reading James Raffan's fine book, the title makes a lot of sense. And it's derivation was biblical - and that would have pleased the devout Bill Mason.

Bill Mason was certainly not your average guy. To canoeists, he has become the patron saint of paddling. His books, films, paintings and actions are the stuff of lore. Incredibly, Bill has been gone almost eight years but his stature has only grown and with the publication of this superbly researched and written biography, it will only continue to blossom.

This is no hagiography. These are not the teachings of St. William of Meech. This is the story of a remarkable human being whose drive and desire inspired all who knew him. And that's a great tribute to Raffan, an experienced paddler and acquaintance of Mason's. He is very much plugged into the same canoeing community though which Mason wandered which might have explained a fawning study. Raffan is a professor of outdoor education at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He edited the book Wild Waters of which the cover shot was a canoe in the canyon below Wilberforce Falls. That was Bill Mason and Ottawa friend Wally Schaber just before they dumped.

My own favourite memory of Bill Mason is spending time with him at the Maine Canoe Symposium - pictured here (above right) - and just shooting the breeze and soaking up his incredible energy. One of my greatest moments of glory was when Bill introduced me to his lifelong friend Wilbur Sutherland as, "Mr. Canoehead in Toronto."

Fire in the Bones begins poignantly in June 1988 at the wedding of Bill's son Paul. In the midst of the reception, sweeping across the dance floor is Bill Mason - a red Chestnut Prospector balanced gracefully on his shoulders celebrating the marriage of his only son. Here, Raffan takes us deeper. "Anyone who looked closely that night as Bill Mason danced with his beloved Prospector in the Carleton Place Canoe Club would have seen a hospital identification bracelet tucked under the starched cuff of his dress shirt." Bill was about to be diagnosed with inoperable intestinal cancer.

Raffan then takes us back in time to Winnipeg where Bill was born and raised. He was a scrawny child who couldn't seem to grow and would later receive experimental hormone therapy which made him bigger but could well have caused his lifelong maladies. It seems unthinkable to those who knew the image of the man, that Bill Mason would have any health problems. but they dogged him for many years.

It was in Winnipeg under the watchful eye of bible-toting Granny Mason that Bill developed an abiding respect for God and religion - and canoeing - at Grand Beach and at the Pioneer Camps. Raffan traces his career as a successful commercial artist who would quit his job every summer and paddle. Bill Mason was the anonymous subject of a film by Chris Chapman called Quetico. Paid for by the Toronto-based Quetico Foundation to promote the understanding of Quetico Provincial Park, the weeks spent with Chapman moved Bill towards film. He had already been very taken by doing slide talks with the pictures he made on his own trips.

Raffan superb research treats the reader to glimpses of Bill's journals of the time and letters written to friends. Bill met his future wife Joyce while in Winnipeg and they married in 1959 - and promptly went on a long filming honeymoon! Raffan is pretty blunt about Bill's absences during their married life. It raised a lot of eyebrows with family and friends but that was Bill's thing and Joyce understood.

Fire in the Bones is nicely illustrated with some great behind-the-scenes photos from many of Bill's famous films like The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes. We learn about people like Blake James, his subject in so many of those films and Bill's battles with the National Film Board for artistic control of his work. Bill's work was twice nominated for Academy Awards - ironically he was beaten once by his old friend and mentor Chris Chapman.

Bill's greatest legacy is WaterWalker. A difficult film to finance and a project that consumed him for many years. While one of his least honoured films in terms of jury prizes, Waterwalker sums up what Bill Mason was all about.

The book contains a complete listing of Bill Mason's work as well as footnotes throughout. Once WaterWalker was made, and in the final days of his life Bill pursued his painting which was a great love but ironically the one area where he never achieved the kind of success he was used to in other media.

I suppose it's not surprising that Jim Raffan has done such a great job telling us about the very full life of Bill Mason. Bill's legacy and his fans wouldn't tolerate anything but the best. And they got that with Fire in the Bones.

This review, written by Michael Peake Editor of Che-Mun, is reprinted here with permission from Che-Mun Magazine.