Paul Bunyan | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Paul Bunyan

Article by James H. Marsh

Published Online February 6, 2006

Last Edited January 22, 2015

Bunyan, Paul, mythical giant lumberjack. Tales of how Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe, created the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains and the tides of the Bay of Fundy are related in E. Shepard, Paul Bunyan (1924) and J.D. Robins, Logging with Paul Bunyan (1957).

Bunyan, Paul

Bunyan, Paul, mythical giant lumberjack. Tales of how Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe, created the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains and the tides of the Bay of Fundy are related in E. Shepard, Paul Bunyan (1924) and J.D. Robins, Logging with Paul Bunyan (1957). The Bunyan mythology first appeared in print in columns of the Detroit News Tribune (1910), but a Canadian origin has often been claimed. It may have originated in the French Canadian folk tradition of Ti-Jean or Jean Bonhomme, or possibly from the woods of New Brunswick and Maine, where the legendary feats of the hero Glooscap were well known.

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