The Amazing Foot Race of 1921 by Shirley Jean Roll Tucker Review

Reviewed by Angela Davis

What started as a couple of men setting out to walk from Halifax, Nova Scotia on Canada’s east coast to Vancouver in the west, soon became a race with a father and son joining in then a married couple. They faced the hardship of a Canadian winter and found kindness with strangers in this race that took in over 3,600 miles of all kinds of terrain.

It’s a fascinating insight into the feelings of the early 1920’s when the world was recovering from the First World War, and many men especially were suffering from hard times returning from the fighting, when jobs could be hard to come by. The race caught the imagination of the people, especially as the Halifax newspapers kept track of the race and urged the contestants on. There’s a rather quaint old fashioned feel to the language of the day in the actual newspaper reports that are included in the book, and you can almost hear the contestants speaking the words that are published so you feel that you are right there beside them, feeling the huge distances and the ups and downs that they suffer along the way.

There’s interesting information on what happened to the contestants and their families after the race, the author has obviously spent a good deal of time researching those facts as well as the race itself, so you get a little more insight into the personalities and how they ended up after their very long walk.

Rating: 5/5

Available to buy from Amazon here.