I discovered Ernest E. Thompson’s
The Birds of Manitoba four or five years ago in a secondhand bookstore in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where I live. Though I had picked up this book on several previous visits to this store, I resisted purchasing it.
The Birds of Manitoba was first published in 1891 by the Smithsonian Institution and printed by Washington’s ‘government printing office.’ I don’t know how similar my copy, a second edition published in Winnipeg in 1975, is to the original; it has a cover with as much appeal as a manila file folder that’s been dropped in a puddle and dried out, unadorned, mottled with age and, by its smell, cigarette smoke. Someone’s felt-tipped handwriting in the corner now worn to an illegible smear. If this book were edible, it would have bad mouthfeel.