First American Citizen: September 1915 to March 1916

Abstract

While the war raged on in Europe, Roosevelt spent much of the month of September on holiday in Quebec, as a guest of his old hunting friend and physician Alexander Lambert, at the doctor’s camp in the wilderness preserves of the Tourilli Club. This refuge for animals from beaver to moose was a joint venture of a group of American and Canadian sportsmen who had leased 250 square miles of wilderness northwest of Quebec City from the Canadian government. Tramping the ground with his party, helping to portage the canoes between the local tributaries of the Saint Anne River, and feasting on freshly taken game and fish had a rejuvenating effect on the Colonel. While in the wilderness he witnessed for the first time a moose diving to the bottom of a lake to feed on the bottom grass, and from his canoe he shot another large bull moose standing on the bank.¹