Many writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emphasized the virtues of early rural pioneers and life on the land as a general criticism of what they perceived to be the negative, alienating influence of Ontario’s rapid urban and industrial expansion. Such work often highlighted the difficulties the recent emigrant faced: the clearing of forest and the breaking of new ground, the isolation and long Canadian winters; however they in turn celebrated the progress demonstra...

The impact of the British Empire on the history of the Upper Ottawa Valley is explored through the experiences of early emigration-assisted 19th-century Scottish immigrants.Between 1815 and 1832, Great Britain settled more than 3,500 individuals, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, in the Ottawa Valley. These government-assisted emigrations, which began immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, are explored to reveal their impact on Upper Canada.Seeking to transform their lives...

Deep in a Northern Ontario forest live Tom and Charlie, two octogenarians determined to live out the rest of their lives on their own terms: free of all ties and responsibilities, their only connection to civilization two pot farmers who bring them whatever they can't eke out for themselves. But their solitude is disrupted by the arrival of two women. The first is a photographer searching for survivors of a series of catastrophic fires nearly a century earlier; the second is an elderly esc...

The bestselling, Man Booker Prize-winning novel, a breathtaking feat of storytelling where everything is connected, but nothing is as it seems ...**"A true achievement. Catton has built a lively parody of a 19th-century novel, and in so doing created a novel for the 21st, something utterly new. The pages fly." —**New York Times Book ReviewIt is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. O...

This book provides the first exhaustive study of the great Scottish exodus to Canada written in modern times. Using wide-ranging sources, some previously untapped, Lucille Campey examines the driving forces behind the Scottish exodus and traces the remarkable progress of Scottish colonizers across Canada. Mythology and truth are considered side by side as their story unfolds. Scots had a profound impact on Canada and shaped the course of its history. This book is essential reading for thos...

The birth of the modern world as told through the remarkable story of one eighteenth-century familyThey were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing e...

'The Scots have always been a restless people', says leading Scottish historian Marjory Harper 'but in the nineteenth century their restlessness exploded into a sustained surge of emigration that carried Scotland almost to the top of a European league table of emigrant exporting countries.' This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of that 'Great Exodus'. In many ways it challenges the popular belief that the Scottish Diaspora were reluctant exiles. There were indeed those ...

This is the first fully documented account, produced in modern times, of the migration of Scots to Lower Canada. Scots were in the forefront of the early influx of British settlers, which began in the late eighteenth century. John Nairne and Malcolm Fraser were two of the first Highlanders to make their mark on the province, arriving at La Malbaie soon after the Treaty of Paris in 1763. By the early 1800s many Scottish settlements had been formed along the north side of the Ottawa River, i...

The Canada Company was responsible for the opening and settling of over two million acres of land in Upper Canada. Author Robert C. Lee focuses his attention on the extensive parcel of land on the shores of Lake Huron that became known as the Huron Tract. His comprehensive research explores the underlying forces leading to the formation of the Company, the intriguing mix of people charged with responsibilities for the Company and the overall impact of its operations, leading to its present...

2016 Ontario Historical Society Joseph Brant Award — Winner • 2017 Speaker's Book Award — ShortlistedA man of two cultures in an era where his only choices were to be a trailblazer or get left by the waysideDr. Oronhyatekha (“Burning Sky”), born in the Mohawk nation on the Six Nations of the Grand River territory in 1841, led an extraordinary life, rising to prominence in medicine, sports, politics, fraternalism, and business. He was one of the firs...

A transformative work that explodes assumptions about the importance of the Great Irish Potato Famine to Irish immigration.In this major study, Lucille Campey traces the relocation of around ninety thousand Irish people to their new homes in Atlantic Canada. She shatters the widespread misconception that the exodus was primarily driven by dire events in Ireland. The Irish immigration saga is not solely about what happened during the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s...

New Brunswick’s enormous timber trade attracted the first wave of Scots in the late 18th century. As economic conditions in Scotland worsened, the flow of emigrants increased, creating distinctive Scottish communities along the province’s major timber bays and river frontages. While Scots relied on the timber trade for economic sustenance, their religion offered another form of support. It sustained them in a spiritual and cultural sense. These two themes, the axe and the bible, underpin t...