“This is a captivating and powerfully well told story of the achievement of a remarkable man, and of a generation. Geoff Mynett has given us an up close and detailed account of the life of one of BC’s great medical pioneers and in doing so illuminates social, church and medical history in BC in the early 1900s. ”

— Dr.Peter Newbery, CM,OBC,MDiv,MD,CCFP,FCFP Clinical Professor Emeritus, Family Medicine, UBC. Past Director, United Church Health Services, Hazelton, BC.

“Geoff Mynett’s ‘Service on the Skeena: Horace Wrinch, Frontier Physician’ not only provides the fascinating life story of this remarkable man, it fills important gaps in the history of northwest British Columbia. ”

— Neil Sterritt, Author of "Mapping My Way Home, a Gitxsan History" and President, Gitxsan-Wet'suwet'en Tribal Council (1981-1987)

-Service on the Skeena was one of the three finalists for the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Award for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia. The UBC adjudicators’ citation reads:

“This crisply written, well-structured biography presents a balanced, sensitive, and thoroughly researched picture of the life and career of a major figure in the history of northern British Columbia and of the province generally. The varied elements in Horace Wrinch’s experience as a late nineteenth United Kingdom immigrant to Canada are scrupulously detailed; Wrinch’s important work in organizing and delivering a pioneering scheme of health insurance in his area is carefully explored; his use of his position as a member of the provincial legislature in the 1920s to argue for provision of such insurance on a province-wide basis is examined in depth; his alertness to the needs and requirements of all members of his community, including its First Nations, is accorded special attention and scrutiny. The book exemplifies the fashion in which investigation of an individual life can shed light not only on that life but also on the patterns of social development, public policy, and community growth which constituted its context and were themselves shaped by the way in which it was lived.”