Take a breath of fresh mountain air and feel the magic of an historical Canadian landmark in Tales from the Canadian Rockies. You'll meet a host of unforgettable characters like botanist David Douglas, after whom the Douglas fir is named, and geologist James Hector, whose unruly horse is forever commemorated in the names of Kicking Horse River and Pass. You'll also experience the hunger and hardships of artist Paul Kane and indomitable Mrs. Lane who waded across no fewer than 17 m...

The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents wit...

"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 ...

Wallace Stegner weaves together fiction and nonfiction, history and impressions, childhood remembrance and adult reflections in this unusual portrait of his boyhood. Set in Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where Stegner's family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920, Wolf Willowbrings to life both the pioneer community and the magnificent landscape that surrounds it.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-spea...

Written with R. M. Patterson’s characteristic sharp wit and observation, this classic tale chronicles the year he spent battling frigid temperatures and wild waters along the Nahanni River in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Patterson originally travelled to the North with hopes of finding gold, and clues to the mysterious disappearance of earlier prospectors. Instead, he fell in love with the landscape, and through his meticulously recorded journals and hauntingly beautiful photographs he ...

In the summer of 1903 when Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., went to Labrador to explore a section of the unknown interior it was my privilege to accompany him as his companion and friend. The world has heard of the disastrous ending of our little expedition, and how Hubbard, fighting bravely and heroically to the last, finally succumbed to starvation. Before his death I gave him my promise that should I survive I would write and publish the story of the journey. In “The Lure of The Labrador Wild” th...

The latest addition to TouchWood Editions’ Classics West Collection, Klondike Cattle Drive is the colourful tale of a formidable trek undertaken by legendary Cariboo rancher Norman Lee.In 1898, Lee set out to drive 200 head of cattle from his home in the Chilcotin area of B.C. to the Klondike goldfields—a distance of 1,500 miles. He was gambling both his cattle and his life. This is his story, derived from the journal he kept, his letters and the loyal men who accompanied ...

Babes in the woods. That’s how Ruth and Cliff Kopas were described by one of many colourful characters the pair encountered on their amazing journey across the Rockies through to British Columbia’s west coast in 1933.Married on the day they left on their dangerous trek, Ruth and Cliff were eager for adventure, and their courageous spirits and resourceful minds made up for any experience they lacked. Their motive was to fulfill Cliff’s childhood dream of following in Alexander Macke...

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau’.Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. ...

Ever wonder how everyone made it west? They used trails beaten by such men as Osborne Russell. In 1830, sixteen-year-old Russell left his farm in Maine and ran away to the sea. He didn’t like it. He ended up joining an expedition headed to Oregon by way of the Rocky Mountains. Along the way, he acquired the skills necessary for survival. He also hunted buffalo and trapped beaver, looked for new trails west, and kept a journal that forms the basis of this vigorously authentic book, only inc...

First published in 1903, Climbs & Exploration in the Canadian Rockies details the mountaineering adventures of Hugh Stutfield and J. Norman Collie while the two were together during various explorations in the area north of Lake Louise, Alberta. Between 1898 and 1902, Stutfield and Collie journeyed through the mountain towns, valleys and passes of the Rockies, where Collie completed numerous first ascents and discovered fresh views of Lake Louise and the Columbia Icefields.

Adventures on wild watersIn Finlay's River, R. M. Patterson, whose style was described by noted author Bruce Hutchison as a a mixture between Thoreau and Jack London, tells the story of his 1949 trip up this wild river in remote northern British Columbia. Patterson uses his own journey as a framework to recount the adventures of explorers who went there before. All had struggled up the Finlay for different reasons, and all left spirited accounts of that challenging, doomed...