For author Peter James McLean, life was just one adventure after another. In Confessions of an Eccentric Dreamer, he shares a captivating recollection of his life, dreams, adventures, and foibles. This memoir narrates how his adventures began at age sixteen and continued until age ninety-two during which time he worked and retired from the New York Central Railroad; developed a money-saving, water softening device to clean steam engine boilers; and invented and patented toy guns, an electr...

This is a compilation of humorous, interesting and hard to believe tales from over thirty years of conducting insurance inspections on unsuspecting and unbelievable businesses. Whoever said, "You can't make this stuff up", had this adventure in mind.

The Iron Butt Rally, run every two years by the Iron Butt Association, is regarded as the ‘world’s toughest motorcycle Rally’, the Olympics of long-distance motorcycle-riding. Riders are given a long list of bonus locations; points are awarded for each bonus location ‘captured’, with higher points for more difficult / distant locations; and riders must make it back to St Louis within a strict time-frame, each covering in excess of 11,000 miles in 11 days. Selected from thousands of applica...

Ten for the Road gives you a mix of travel and adventure stories and observations drawn from my many years of motorcycle jaunts throughout the United States and Canada to popular destinations and rides down roads less traveled.Even if you don't ride a motorcycle, you'll finds plenty of travel information, adventure stories and lots more to enjoy in this book.Experience with me…Visit Woodstock decades after the summer of 1969…View Bannerman Ca...

In 1956 Ted Campbell traded his almost new Chevy Bel Air in on a F-8 Big Job Ford and went trucking. Over the next half-century Ted and his trucking companies hauled logs on the Pacific West Coast, gravel, egg cartons, beer, coin-grade silver to New Jerseyt, Diapers out of Ogden Utah, Beer out of Fort Collins Colorado, Sugar from Vancouver, Salt from Alberta, Pretzels from Pennsylvania. He made dozens of trips over the Coquihalla, aka "The Highway to Hell", plowed snow up to the bumper ove...

The acclaimed author of Emily, Alone and Henry, Himself brings all his narrative gifts to bear on this gripping account of tragedy and heroism—the great Hartford circus fire of 1944.It was a midsummer afternoon, halfway through a Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus performance, when the big top caught fire. The tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline; in seconds it was burning out of control. More than 8,000 peopl...

Winner ofThe CAA–Birks Family Foundation Award for BiographyThe 2000 Ottawa-Carlton Book AwardThe (U.S.) Rutstrum Award for Best Wilderness BookIn 1929, at the age of twenty-two, Duncan MacGregor, the son of a lumberman, great-grandson of a voyageur, and an avid reader and baseball fan, headed off into the largest tract of preserved bush in the world: Ontario’s Algonquin Park. When he got ther...

From rumble seats and running boards to power tops and tailfins, 60 Years Behind the Wheel captures the thrill of motoring in Canada from the dawn of the twentieth century to 1960. There are intriguing stories of cars with no steering wheels, and fascinating photographs of historic vehicles from across the country. From the Studebaker to the Lincoln-Zephyr, from the showroom to the scrapyard, here are over 150 vehicles owned and driven by Canadians.

Eavesdroppings recounts life in the small towns of Ontario before sin arrived on the Internet - a time when churches were never locked and parents, not wishing to be disturbed while they listened to the radio, shooed their children out to play in the dark, unguarded streets without fear. Here you’ll find comedy, outrage, and tragedy but no disguise. Included are actual events and the names of all persons involved.The author tracks the quaint immorality of smalltown sin in ...

The Coquihalla Pass and the Trans Canada Highway from Hope B.C. to the Alberta border are a fifty year insult to the taxpayers of B.C. and Canada. Even worse it recklessly endangers the lives of drivers who leave their homes and families to deliver the goods we produce. Ted Campbell worked as a construction dump truck driver on the Field Hill and Rogers Pass and the Blueberry Paulson Pass during the 1950's. He became a long-haul driver and ended up with 14 over-the-road rigs carrying every...

A hundred years ago, the most famous athlete in America was a horse. But Dan Patch was more than a sports star; he was a cultural icon in the days before the automobile. Born crippled and unable to stand, he was nearly euthanized. For a while, he pulled the grocer's wagon in his hometown of Oxford, Indiana. But when he was entered in a race at the county fair, he won -- and he kept on winning. Harness racing was the top sport in America at the time, and Dan, a pacer, set t...

“These are remarkable and poignant stories that need to be told.” —Ken BurnsMore than six million people watch Bob Dotson’s Emmy award-winning segment, American Story, on NBC’s Today Show. For the last four decades, Dotson has traveled the country searching out inspiring individuals who quietly perform everyday miracles. In the process, he has become the treasured cartographer of America’s heart and soul.Today’s news is overwhelmingly grim; it’s al...