The Frank Yakabuski Mystery Series was inspired by a real Frank – Frank Kuiack, one of the last full-time fishing guides in Canada’s fabled Algonquin Park.
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Watch the compelling CBC documentary The Last Guide. Frank was truly a legendary guide of nature and life.
Ragged Lake, the debut novel in the series, is dedicated to Frank Kuiack. Ron Corbett has written two non-fiction books about Kuiack – The Last Guide, and The Last Guide’s Guide.
To find out more about the Frank Kuiack, and the back story to the The Frank Yakabuski Mystery Series was, click here.
Part fishing trip, part history, and lore, The Last Guide tells the story of Frank Kuiack, Algonquin Park's last full-time fishing guide. Through Frank's story, The Last Guide chronicles a way of life in a wilderness he grew to know intimately over a lifetime. It is a wilderness that has nearly vanished.
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In The Last Guide, author Ron Corbett interweaves Frank's story with those of other guides, local legends like Basil Sawyer, known as much for his guiding expertise as for his fateful business venture as an importer of Princess Pine; Sam Beaver, after whom E.B. White named the hero of his last children's book, The Trumpet of the Swan; and perhaps the most famous guide of all, the painter Tom Thomson, who spent his last summer guiding on Canoe Lake.
Richly anecdotal, entertaining and with marvelous photographs throughout, The Last Guide is a tribute to those who have called the wilderness home, and to a world that valued and sustained them.
"A homage to a vanishing way of life, and a story that will feed the soul forever."
The Last Guide’s Guide picks up where Canadian bestseller The Last Guide left off – more stories and advice from Frank Kuaick, the oldest fishing guide in Algonquin Park.
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The book is a rollicking return to the Algonquin Highlands with Leacock-like tales of politics, heat waves, bass fishing, Frank’s eightieth birthday party and meeting the Ambassador of Rock Lake.
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The Last Guide’s Guide is the guidebook the world has been waiting for. A how-to manual to fishing, making money, cooking a shore lunch, growing old, and “everything else that matters. Not the stupid stuff.”