When the Free Grants and Homestead Act was first introduced in 1868, fierce debates erupted in Ontario's Legislature over whether land in the Muskoka region should be opened to settlement or reserved for the Aboriginal population. From the beginning, many people vented serious doubts about the free grant scheme, citing the district's poor agricultural prospects. In the end, such caution was ignored by overeager boosters.The story in Hardscrabble also takes readers to Brita...

This book is a celebration of life. Its astonishing view is from the perspective of someone living a simple, isolated life in the Rocky Mountains as a mountain man. Sylvan Ambrose Hart was born in the Oklahoma Territory in 1906. In the 1930's, while still a young man, he walked into the Rocky Mountains and designed a unique life for himself in the wilds - hunting, fishing, trapping, panning gold, crafting his own tools, weapons, shelter, and clothes. For almost fifty years he lived the lif...

The stories of the men and women who dug for gold on Williams Creek are told in this revised and updated edition of a Canadian bestseller.The legendary town of Barkerville is flourishing today, just as it did more than 150 years ago, but this time under the care of professional and amateur historians. Richard Thomas Wright peels back the pages of history as he unearths the area’s history and chronicles the fortunes and the follies of gold-rush-era Barkerville. The result of years o...

"...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...

A lively book illustrated with archival photos, Secrets of Lake Simcoe is a valuable addition to local history collections and provides a refreshing way for anyone to view what some consider to be Canada's sixth Great Lake.At the heart of central Ontario, Lake Simcoe has played an important role in the province's history for hundreds of years. Today a popular destination for pleasure-seekers and cottagers, it helped open up the region to explorers and fur traders, settlers...

Mary Janeway is the story of a little girl's childhood while living on a farm as a domestic servant in the late 1800s. Based on extensive historical research, Mary's story begins in Scotland where family circumstances lead to her being sent to Canada as a home child. Separated from her siblings, Mary, at age eight, is sent to a farm near Innerkip, Ontario, where the Jacques family "needed a girl." Her story brings into focus the intimate details of hardship and deprivation experienced by t...

Sixteen-year-old Mary Janeway, a home child, is desperate to escape from her rural home child placement and flees to London, Ontario, to find a domestic position. When conditions become unbearable, she moves on, vowing never to relinquish her freedom again.After she arrives in Hamilton as a young bride, she quickly adapts to the urban conveniences and the marvels of new inventions that include electric sewing machines, sulphur matches, street stoplights, a one-horsepower Brunswick ...

Ontario is rich in ghost towns, communities that were once thriving but which have been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. Nine villages -- including silver camps, fishing ports, crossroads hamlets, and farming settlements -- come alive on the pages of this book. The term 'ghost town' invariably conjures up images of fog-shrouded cemeteries, buildings with sinister visages, and of course, restless spirits of the dead. While often this is merely our imagination at play, in some...

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...

**Winner of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario's 2016 Young Authors AwardWinner of the 2017 Louise de Kiriline Award for NonfictionThe age of exploration is not over.**When Adam Shoalts ventured into the largest unexplored wilderness on the planet, he hoped to set foot where no one had ever gone before. What he discovered surprised even him.Shoalts was no stranger to the wilderness. He had hacked his way through jungles and swamp, had stared down polar bears...

Despite being neighbouring provinces with long ranching histories, British Columbia and Alberta saw their ranching techniques develop quite differently. As most ranching styles were based on one of the two dominant styles in use south of the border, BC ranchers tended to adopt the California style whereas Alberta took its lead from Texas. But the different practices actually go back much further. Cattle cultures in southwestern Spain, sub-Saharan Africa and the British highlands all shaped...

Rare views of human lives in turmoil are revealed in several hundred trials conducted in 1890s Muskoka by Magistrate James Boyer of Bracebridge. The charges and evidence show how raw life really was in Canada's frontier towns, with cases ranging from nostalgic and humorous to pitiable and deeply disturbing.While dispensing speedy justice, Boyer, who was also town clerk and editor of the Northern Advocate, the first newspaper in Ontario's northern districts, kept a careful ...