Robert William Reading

Robert William Reading is known primarily through his 1927 adventure story My Toughest Trip, originally published in the May 1927 issue of Blue Book magazine. The story presents Sergeant Reading as a member of the Royal North West Mounted Police, the predecessor of today’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Set in the Arctic, the narrative draws on the hazards of northern patrol work, including severe weather, isolation, shipwreck, and encounters with Inuit communities. Its central rescue mission becomes a dramatic struggle for survival when Reading is stranded with a newborn child and must find a way to return her safely to her community.

Little additional biographical information about Reading has been widely preserved, but his surviving work offers a striking glimpse into the adventure fiction of the early twentieth century and the harsh realities associated with policing Canada’s far north.