Roy MacGregor on his failure as a Christmas tree pruner

Roy MacGregor's latest book is Canoe Country: The Making of Canada. MacGregor is an author and journalist, but if you rewind a few decades, you'll find his first job was a little more rustic.

When I was 13 years old, I was hired to prune Christmas trees up in central Ontario in the bush around Algonquin Park. They gave us these snippers and taught us how to do trees. We camped — it was pretty rustic living. 75 cents an hour. I loved it, except I was absolutely terrible at it. I didn't know how bad I was until finally the boss of the group, Bob, who had given me the job, came along and told me he was going to have to "rework" me in the pruning of Christmas trees because mine were looking square and they wanted the tapered jobs. So he worked with me and I was able to do the pruning for the rest of the summer. Years later, I ran into Bob, and he said "It's a damn good thing you learned to write, because you sure had no future with Christmas trees."

Roy MacGregor's comments have been edited and condensed.