When the members of Canada’s First Arctic Expedition set out from Victoria aboard HMCS Karluk in the summer of 1913, it was a moment of great optimism. The three-year mission would chart unexplored landmasses of the Western Arctic and secure Canada’s place in the international geographic community. Little did the team of distinguished scholars and scientists realize, however, how their hopes would soon be brought to ruin. Just a few months into the journey, the vessel became lodge...

Slavery existed throughout the western Hemisphere, but after its abolition in the British empire it persisted for decades in much of the U.S. Even in states where slavery was illegal, slaves were subject to capture and return to their owners. The only sure escape was to cross the border into Canada.The Underground Railway was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses, an organized escape route run by blacks and whites who opposed slavery and who helped black Americans fi...

Building transportation routes through the Rockies is dangerous. It always has been. It is also expensive, labour-intensive, and highly political. But railway and highway construction through the western cordillera succeeded thanks to scientific innovation and sheer human grit. In the nineteenth century, steam locomotives, railways, tunnels, trestles, and telegraphy represented the hi-tech advances of the day. A vast country with a small population raised money (and more and more money) an...

In late 1942, Britain was desperate to win the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. German U-boats had sunk hundreds of Allied ships containing millions of tons of cargo that was needed to continue the war effort. Prime Minister Churchill had to find a solution to the carnage or the Nazis would be victorious. With the support of Churchill and Lord Louis Mountbatten, eccentric inventor and amateur spy Geoffrey Pyke proposed a dramatic project to build invincible ships of ice—massive, unsinkable ...

For centuries, Europeans sought the elusive Northwest Passage that would link Europe to the Far East and China. Early visitors to Canada's northern coasts included Viking sailors and Basque whalers. Then came the prominent explorers -- John Cabot, Vasco da Gama, Martin Frobisher and Sir John Franklin. Now that global warming threatens to melt much of the Arctic ice cap, conflict over the Northwest Passage and the resource riches of the Arctic is intensifying.

It is said that the sparkle from Canadian diamonds mimics the awesome and seductive radiance of the northern lights. Yet until 1991, no one thought diamonds could even be found in Canada—no one except Chuck Fipke and Stu Blusson, who uncovered diamond-rich kimberlite in the Barrens at Point Lake, near Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.Their spectacular find caused great excitement in international diamond circles and sparked the largest claim-staking rush in Canada since the 1896 ...

“The Northwest Passage Exploration Anthology”, features the first-hand personal accounts of explorers: Roald Amundsen, Robert McClure, John Rae, John Franklin, Thomas Simpson, Peter Warren Dease, William Edward Parry and Richard Hakluyt. This book charts the full history of the exploration of the legendary “Northwest Passage” – the sea-lane around the frozen Northern shore of the North American Continent.   Discovering this passage became an obsession for generations of explor...

The stories of the first explorers of the Arctic and the North Pole have always been somewhat overshadowed by the famous and tragic race for the South Pole a decade later. In truth the story is no less riveting to the reader, in terms of bravery, resilience and determination.What is more, in an extra dimension to the story there is the enduring controversy over who was in fact the first to make it to the North Pole. Was it Dr Frederick Cook in 1908, or Captain Peary in 1909? Histor...

CBC Radio's Information Morning history columnist Dianne Marshall is well known for the lively and surprising true stories she tells about Nova Scotia's past. Now the best of them have been gathered together in this enjoyable book.The stories cover 250 years of Nova Scotia history, often featuring people who don't make it into conventional history books. These incredible accounts include: the plot to assassinate US President Abraham Lincoln using germ warfare, hatched by s...

In North America's Last Frontier, there are still untrammeled wildernesses where a man can stand alone in a region the size of entire states, where deep cold quiets every whisper of life and vast emptiness reigns. Alaska remains a mysterious place that, thanks to reality television, has captured the imagination of millions. Yet a minuscule fraction have acquired an understanding of the land afforded by exploring in their most vulnerable state — on foot, towing all of their supplies, wholly...

This true story began in August 1929. A group of eight prospectors, led by C.D.H. MacAlpine of the Dominion Explorers, flew into the Arctic in search of mineral wealth. Grossly underequipped, the expedition ran out of fuel and was stranded above the Arctic Circle. Within days, Western Canada Airways sent a rescue team headed by Captain Andy Cruickshank, in what was to become the most extensive aviation search in Canadian history.The searchers encountered trouble: turbulent weather,...

In 1897, tens of thousands of would-be prospectors flooded into the Yukon in search of instant wealth during the Klondike Gold Rush. In this historical tale of mayhem and obsession, characters like prospectors George Carmack and Skookum Jim, Skagway gangster Soapy Smith and Mountie Sam Steele come to life. Enduring savage weather, unforgiving terrain, violence and starvation, a lucky few made their fortune, and some just as quickly lost it. The lure of the North is still irresistible in th...