One hundred years ago, a young doctor from Cleveland by the name of Robert Newcomb, travelled north to a place called Temagami. It was as far north as one could travel by any modern means. Beautiful beyond any simple expletive, the Temagami wilderness was a land rich in timber, clear-water lakes, fast flowing rivers, mystery and adventure. Newcomb befriended the local Aboriginals -- the Deep Water People -- and quickly discovered the best way to explore was by canoe. Bewitched by the spiri...

In an age when "survival" shows permeate the media, noted northern traveller Hap Wilson shares accounts of his lifelong involvement with wilderness living within the Canadian Shield. Wilson knows better than most how to live in the woods. As park ranger, canoe guide, outfitter, trail builder, and environmental activist, he learned from firsthand experience that nature can neither be beaten or tamed.Trails and Tribulations takes the reader on a journey with the author throu...

Noted traveller and environmentalist Hap Wilson shares accounts of his lifelong involvement with wilderness living within the Canadian Shield. Wilson knows better than most how to live in the woods. As park ranger, canoe guide, outfitter, trail builder, and environmental activist, he learned from firsthand experience that nature can neither be beaten or tamed.This three-book bundle includes:The Cabin: A Search for Personal SanctuaryNoted environment...

Hap Wilson is back for another journey, this time on the lighter side of the adventure trail, where the bizarre melds with the sublime. Nurtured by the writings of Canadian environmentalist and wannabe-Native, Grey Owl, Wilson adopted a lifestyle similar to the 1930s conservationist but with his own twists and turns along a meandering path full of humorous misadventures. Wilson, too, learned many of his nature skills as a youth, paddling in Temagami, working as a wilderness canoe ranger an...

New York’s Men’s Journal Magazine hired a studio photographer from Brooklyn, a post-master/writer from Thermond West Virginia and two Canadian river guides to paddle one of the country’s most dangerous whitewater rivers – the Seal in northern Manitoba, for the purpose of publishing the quintessential Canadian adventure story. Add to this unlikely melange of characters, the possibility of capsizing in freezing water, the threat of polar bears, a midnight sail down Hudson Bay and Manitoba’s ...

Self-styled arctic outdoorsman, John Hornby had already compromised his abilities to survive in the tundra through several incidents of near starvation, and by injuries suffered as a soldier in World War I. He had openly admitted to peers that “he had had enough of the north and wished he had never come”. Yet, foolishly, he conscripted his young cousin, nineteen year-old Edgar Christian, and a willing third party, twenty-nine year-old Harold Adlard, both having no survival training or outd...

An insider reveals the ongoing battle to protect Ontario’s pristine old-growth forests in Temagami.Temagami became a household name when it was named by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Endangered Spaces. The chronic and insidious attack on its resources sounded an alarm that resonated worldwide on all environmental channels and global media outlets. Temagami has therefore become a geopolitical scrimmage between land protectors and environmental...

Agnes C. Laut’s The Cariboo Trail is a fascinating history of the Canadian gold rush that began in 1858. When, in early 1849, a group of ragged miners arrived in the sleepy town of Victoria from California, no one would have believed that a little over ten years later a gold rush would hit the Fraser River.Between 1859 and 1871, thousands of miners and prospectors travelled north and east from the headwaters of the Fraser River, with the hopes of striking it rich. And many...

"A memoir as wild, engaging, stubborn, and authentic as that distant valley where [Cobb's] family staked out the last plot in America." —John Balzar, author of Yukon AloneIn 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester and their five children—the oldest of whom was nine years old and the youngest, twins, barely one—pulled up stakes in the lower 48 and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available ...

In Wild Men, Wild Alaska professional hunting and fishing guide and outfitter Rocky McElveen tells the stories of his own adventures as well as those of some of his well-known clients. The book takes readers directly into the Alaskan bush, and shares the intense challenges of a majestic wilderness that pushes a man to his limits.

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...

"Fire! Wake up! The shelter is on fire!"His students affectionately call him "Doc Survival." He's Quebec's Indiana Jones in a forest setting. Searching for the treasures of the wilderness has been his life-long quest; with passion as his only guide, he has dared to penetrate the forest on its own terms, facing increasingly difficult challenges in the hope of becoming nature's confidant, of learning her secrets.Professor emeritus André-François Bourbeau holds a Guin...