IN THE MOUNTAINS AROUND Revelstoke winter reluctantly gave way to
spring and Woodsworth found a physical release for his pent-up
emotions of the preceding months. In the last week of April he went
to Rogers Pass and in the following two days walked the forty-six
miles back to Revelstoke. He found the tramp exhilarating and in a
long letter to his wife and parents pictured the excursion for them.
No one can read that letter without sensing its author's pantheistic
appreciation of natural beauty. The English poets, he thought, could
never have caught the inner turbulence of a Canadian mountain river.
He wished passionately that he could sketch; and the thrill of making
his way through the opaque darkness of a tortuous railway snow shed,
or of half falling, half climbing down steep mountain slopes was not
soon to be forgotten.

Returning to Revelstoke, he found a letter from his father. It was
the best possible conclusion to a correspondence whose main theme
had been the son's impending resignation. Dr. Woodsworth made no
attempt to conceal his feelings, yet considerately relieved his son of
any over-burdening sense of family disapproval. The point is important.
Although Woodsworth was then in his thirty-third year, and by other
standards might easily have followed his own course without much
misgiving as to his parents' convictions, his whole tradition and train-
ing prohibited this. The Woodsworth family possessed a strong sense
of solidarity. The tradition of open discussion within the family circle
was deep-rooted, and the family correspondence in this period was
significant for the nascent rebel. He could spend a winter buttressing
his own position by acute analysis; he could come to his own con-
clusions; he could even obtain a sense of divine approval through

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