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 ...

After five months of teaching in Alaska, Lydia Falkner is back in the Yukon Territory. She is anxious to return to her beloved wilderness cabin. The salmon are running, the bears are afoot, and the fireweed is in bloom. Lydia longs to embrace it all. But, at the request of Teddy an old and dear friend, she will first visit a salmon research project on the Yukon River. The researchers share a camp with a group of mushroom pickers, a diverse and interesting group. Lydia befriends a small boy...

With prospectors, trappers, and whalers pouring into northwestern Canada, the North West Mounted Police were dispatched to the newest frontier to maintain patrols, protect indigenous peoples, and enforce laws in the North. In carrying out their duties, these intrepid men endured rigorous and dangerous conditions.On December 21, 1910, a four-man patrol left Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, heading for Dawson City, Yukon, a distance of 670 kilometres. They never arrived. The ha...

"Absolutely first-rate."—The New YorkerThis thrilling story is at once first-rate history and first-rate entertainment. Incredible events occurred in North America after a decrepit steamboat docked at Seattle in 1897 containing two tons of pure gold. So frenzied was the clash for gold and so scant was information about conditions in the Klondike that the rush for riches became a kind of fabulous madness. The entire tale—of which Pierre Berton's account is the definitive telling—has ...

Dave Vander Meer was just eighteen years old when he set out on his own to explore the northern wilderness of Ontario. Winter would start in just a week, and there was a camp to build, traps to set, and food and furs to collect. To survive, he needed to call upon all his knowledge because the closest point of civilization was more than twenty miles away. Now, years later, he still looks back upon his time as a teenager in the woods with wonder. He had the chance to walk the trails and padd...

"...despite flying bullets and cannon shots, Ben had his crew hastily tossing evidence over the side of the boat. Bullet-riddled, the Maritimas finally came to a stop, but even then, the crew continued to throw the beer overboard." This book will be especially fascinating for all readers interested in: the history of crime or prohibition. It is safe to say that America would have been a much drier place during Prohibition if Canadians had not rushed to the aid of their neighbours. While th...

On November 20, 1820, Owen Chase was the First Mate of the Whale-Ship "Essex" when it was struck by an enraged Sperm Whale and sunk, stranding the crew in tiny whale-boats 2000 miles away from land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.Of the 21 men who entered the 3 flimsy whale-boats, only 8 ultimately survived to be rescued. A harrowing journey lasting 90 days awaited these crewmen, involving storms, shark-attacks, terrible privation, and in the last resort cannibalism.On h...