TO BE A WARRIOR: THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF BILLY DAVIDSON. Brandon Pullan. Rocky Mountain Books (Canada), 2021. Paperback, 248 pages, $28 (CAN).

In the year 2000, the young author Brandon Pullan is on his first trip to the Canadian Rockies, and after long days of climbing, he reads Chic Scott’s book Pushing the Limits by headlamp in the back of his truck. The history of Canadian mountaineering mentions hundreds of climbers, but one stands alone: Billy Davidson gets four pages while most climbers get a paragraph or two. As quickly as Billy arrives on the Canadian climbing scene, he leaves.

By 2005 the author has finished college, moved to the Rockies, and on Christmas Day meets up with Scott and two others to drink Guinness and listen to stories. He asks how he can meet Billy Davidson. He learns of Billy’s mysterious death the previous year from either suicide or murder. Scott tells Pullan if he wants to know about Billy he’ll have to talk to Urs Kallen, one of Billy’s best friends.

A few weeks later, Pullan is at Kallen’s home for a dinner of Alberta beef and Okanogan wine. Obviously Kallen was impressed by Pullan’s fire and says, sure, I’ll tell you about Billy, but first you have to write another book for me. Kallen and Dave Cheesmond had been collecting material for a “best routes” book for the Canadian Rockies, modeled after a Swiss book. When Cheesmond was lost with Catherine Freer on Mt. Logan in 1987, Kallen lost his mojo for the project and turned it over to Pullan. That book would become The Bold and Cold: A History of 25 Classic Climbs in the Canadian Rockies (Rocky Mountain Books), published in 2016. Pullan then turned his pen toward Billy Davidson.

Kallen guides Pullan, gives him Billy’s journals, and points him to people and places where he can find his story. They climb together and the author repeats almost all of Billy’s ascents, including the classic and difficult CMC Wall on Yamnuska, which Davidson climbed with Kallen in 1972.

Billy Davidson’s mom left him at a Calgary orphanage when he was six. The orphanage was a good place next to a forest, and the Rockies were right there. He started writing and drawing in a climbing journal when he was 12.

After climbing, Billy ends up on the West Coast, living off the land in an ocean kayak. His drawings became paintings, which he sells, and he lives this nomadic adventurous life for 28 years until his mysterious death.

Pullan set out to write the story of Billy Davidson, and he did that and so much more. The book tells the history of the Calgary Mountain Club and its exploits on Mt. Yamnuska. It takes us to Yosemite, where Billy and a group of Canadian climbers do significant early ascents. Billy admits in his journal on his way to solo Tis-sa-ack on Half Dome that he’s doing it for fame.

The book wanders between excerpts from Billy’s journals and Pullan’s narrative. Drinking, tobacco, drugging, and worn wool sweaters permeate the pages. The author sugar-coats no words and the humor is all climbing-centered: “They wasted the day getting wasted. They started earlier than normal the following morning because they were out of smokes, beer and weed and wanted off the wall.” To Be a Warrior sings. After three readings it still sings. The images of Billy’s paintings sing the loudest. Hopefully the book becomes a Canadian classic like Joni Mitchell’s “River” or Neil Young’s version of Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds.” Davidson wrote many poems, and I leave this review with the end of one:

If only Yam could talk, what a tale it would tell—the countless epics; sweat, blood; the noisy passage of this boorish lot.

— James P. Sweeney