The Porcupine’s Quill
68 Main St., PO Box 160
Erin, Ontario N0B 1T0
Tel: (519) 833 9158
Fax: (519) 833 9845
e-mail: pql@sentex.net
Website: porcupinesquill.ca
PRESS RELEASE February 2020
Casting into Mystery
by Robert Reid with wood engravings by Wesley W. Bates
SPORTS / RECREATION • $26.95 • 978-0-88984-428-5 • 284 pp
About the Book:
Casting into Mystery is a celebration of the meditative sport of fly fishing and of the camaraderie and quietude to be found not only in the gentle flow of river currents, but also in the community and culture of anglers, past and present.
Writer Robert Reid and wood engraver Wesley W. Bates—avid anglers, both—put ink to paper in homage to the venerable sport of fly fishing. Through text and image, they recall with fondness the ‘company of rivers’ that provides a glimpse inside a sporting culture rife with literature, art and music. Part memoir, part objet d’art, part field guide and part cultural companion, Casting into Mystery will delight passionate fly fishing practitioners and armchair anglers alike.
About the Author:
Robert Reid is a writer, journalist and enthusiastic angler whose career in journalism spanned forty years. Reid got his start writing for newspapers in Strathroy, St. Thomas, Timmins and Simcoe before he landed a position covering arts at the Brantford Expositor, and later, the Waterloo Region Record. Since his retirement, Reid has continued to write about his passions—art and culture, malt whisky, dining and travel, and especially fly fishing—on his website at reidbetweenthelines.ca
About the Artist:
Wesley W. Bates was born in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. One of Canada’s best-known wood engravers, Bates has ventured into book illustration, film, commercial art, letterpress publishing and acoustic country—played, naturally, on a bouzouki. A retrospective of his engravings, In Black and White was published by Bird & Bull in 2005, with a revised edition published by Gaspereau Press in 2008. He maintains his studio, which is open to the public, in a nineteenth-century storefront gallery on the main street of Clifford, Ontario.