Full of intrigue, adventure, greed, and tragedy, the enduring legend of Slumach's Gold is examined in riveting detail in this newly expanded edition of a bestselling classicNewly expanded and revised, Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend—and a Curse chronicles Canada’s most enduring lost-mine mystery. For more than 130 years, people have been captivated by the story of a secret cache of gold with nuggets “the size of walnuts,” supposedly buried near Pitt ...

Everybody has a train story. Whether it comes from a distant relative who worked on the railways or from a family train trip that formed a lasting impression of the Canadian landscape, trains inspire a sense of wonder and nostalgia. They are embedded in the history of Canada as a whole and western Canada in particular, and for generations they were how most people travelled and saw the country. Today, trains get the most attention in the context of tragedy, in the aftermath of rare but cat...

**PGWUncle John's taking the plunge . . . into the Great White North!RaincoastHey, Canada! Uncle John salutes you!**For 25 years, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader has been wildly popular in Canada, so we decided to dedicate an entire edition to our friends in the Great White North--even though much of the continental U.S. is north of Canada’s southernmost point. That misconception--and a whole lot more--is revealed in this loving ode to a friendly natio...

Today, many of the historic coal-mining communities of the Rocky Mountains are uninhabited ghost towns. Yet behind the crumbled ruins are tales of perseverance, danger and romance. A devastating mine explosion on Halloween shatters the lives of mining families in Nordegg. The miners of Mountain Park build a hockey rink still celebrated in local lore. A young immigrant couple in Mercoal establishes a successful business only to have their love story sadly cut short. These 11 dramatic and po...

Russia has the Trans-Siberian Highway, Australia has Highway 1, and Canada has the Trans-Canada Highway, an iconic road that stretches almost 8,000 kilometres across six time zones.In the summer of 2012, on the highway's 50th birthday, Mark Richardson drove its entire length to find out how the road came to be and what it's now become. In his daily account of the 10-week road trip, originally published as a blog on macleans.ca, he follows the original "pathfinders," Thomas...

Many of BC's old mining towns are now abandoned ruins, disappearing into the wilderness. These once-thriving towns and the pioneers who built them are remembered in 10 fascinating stories of hard work and heroism. A mine rescue worker sadly recounts a tale of death underground at Coal Creek. Three eccentric old bachelors become the final residents of Phoenix. Legends of Spanish treasure near a Vancouver Island gold-rush town persist to this day. Experience BC's colourful past in these ente...

Rails Across the Prairies traces the evolution of Canada's rail network, including the appearance of the first steam engine on the back of a barge. The book looks at the arrival of European settlers before the railway and examines how they coped by using ferry services on the Assiniboine and North Saskatchewan Rivers. The work then follows the building of the railways, the rivalries of their owners, and the unusual irrigation works of Canadian Pacific Railway. The towns were nearl...

On the morning of June 13, 1886, a rogue wind fanned the flames of a small clearing fire—and within five hours, the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, had been reduced to smoldering ash. Vancouver is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 is the first detailed exploration of what happened on that pivotal, yet seldom revisited day in the history of Canada’s third-largest city. Lisa Anne Smith tells the story with numerous archival photographs. She uses eye-witness accounts to de...

Few stories in the annals of railroading are as compelling as the construction, evolution, and astounding successes of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways. This sprawling volume combines two of Voyageur Press' most successful Railroad Color History titles into one volume taking in the grand scope of both railroads. Author Tom Murray presents fastidiously researched and concisely presented histories of each railroad, along with more than 300 photographs, including rare archi...

Canada in the twenty-first century is a place of growth and expansion. Cities like Vancouver and Toronto have become word-class destinations for business and tourism. Meanwhile, smaller, less prominent communities face changes of different sorts, as residents depart for the opportunities present in our country’s largest cities. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Canada’s prairie provinces.Despite changes in population and the loss of such essential services as schools, post offi...

Rails Across Ontario will take the reader back to a time when the railway ruled the economy and the landscape.Read about historic stations, railway museums, heritage train rides, and historic bridges. Follow old rail lines along Ontario's most popular rail trails. Find out where steam engines still puff across farm fields and where historic train coaches lead deep into the wilds of Ontario's scenic north country. Discover long forgotten but once vital railway structures, s...

An exploration of the unique and unusual places in Ontario that are steeped in history and folklore.Using updated and archival material from Discover Ontario, a popular radio show that ran from 1987 until 2004, author Terry Boyle invites you to explore the hidden, unusual, and unknown sites and stories from around Ontario.Revisit an era of mobsters and rum-runners during the years of prohibition. Traverse the deadly waves of the Hudson Bay and visi...