Sadly, the rich personal experiences of most of those who built and first worked on North America’s oldest active canal have been all but lost to history. These fictional accounts, consistent with scant historical records, speak to a forgotten time when Irish, Scottish, American, French and English cultures converged and sometimes clashed. The stories revisit the lives of navvies, surveyors, builders, voyageurs, lockmasters and others who shaped a region’s not-so-distant past. Faced with h...

““No one can walk the streets at night without risking their life… whole families are fleeing the town. I have not moved without arms since May 14th.”— Magistrate George W. Baker, June 1836Lowertown, Ottawa, 1835–1837. Violence rules the streets as Irish and French-Canadian lumbermen battle for work during a brief but fierce period known as the Shiner War. Amid the chaos, the Brislin brothers, Richard and Hugh, are drawn into opposing sides. And in a town teetering...