Presenting ten titles in the Quest Biography series that profiles prominent figures in Canada’s history. The important Canadian lives detailed here are: painters Tom Thomson and James Wilson Morrice; explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson; frontiersman Simon Girty; railway baron William C. Van Horne; early politicians George Simpson and James Douglas; revolutionary Metis leader Louis Riel; writer Robertson Davies; and early movie star Mary Pickford.Includes

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...

In the four years between 1881 and 1885, Canada was forged into one nation by the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Last Spike reconstructs the incredible story of how some 2,000 miles of steel crossed the continent in just five years — exactly half the time stipulated in the contract. Pierre Berton recreates the adventures that were part of this vast undertaking: the railway on the brink of bankruptcy, with one hour between it and ruin; the extraordinary land boom of ...

Exploring Toronto’s history through the stories of its most fascinating and shadowy deaths.If these streets could talk…With morbid tales of war and plague, duels and executions, suicides and séances, Toronto’s past is filled with stories whose endings were anything but peaceful. The Toronto Book of the Dead delves into these: from ancient First Nations burial mounds to the grisly murder of Toronto’s first lighthouse keeper; from the rise and fall o...

Terry Boyle unveils the eccentric and bizarre in these mini-histories of Ontario's towns and cities: the imposter who ran the Rockwood Asylum in Kingston; Ian Fleming's inspiration for James Bond; the Prince of Wales's undignified crossing of Rice Lake; the tragic life of Joseph Brant; the man who advertised his wife's death before poisoning her; as well as Ontario's first bullfight and the answer to the question, "Why did so many lumberjacks sport beards?"The colourful characters,...

“Berton has made an invaluable contribution, rendering the grand Canadian adventure more readable than any detective story.” —The Vancouver SunThis is the final chapter in Pierre Berton’s epic retelling of the opening of the Canadian West in the years following Confederation. After the pioneers, surveyors and entrepreneurs came the settlers—a million people lured by government propaganda, ruthless boosterism and Utopian visions of a Promised Land. The West...

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...

In 100 Canadian Heroines you'll meet remarkable women in science, sport, preaching and teaching, politics, war and peace, arts and entertainment, etc. The book is full of amazing facts and fascinating trivia about intriguing figures. Discover some of the many heroines Canada can be proud of. Find out how we're remembering them. Or not!

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 ...

The province's premier journalist tells the story he was born to write.No journalist has travelled the back roads, hidden vales and fog-soaked coves of Nova Scotia as widely as John DeMont. No writer has spent as much time considering its peculiar warp and weft of humanity, geography and history.The Long Way Home is the summation of DeMont's years of travel, research and thought. It tells the story of what is, from the European view of things, the o...

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...

"Krist does wonders . . . [He] describes the frantic rescue efforts . . . and the malevolent, unending storm. In a thrilling, climactic chapter, he conjures forth the avalanche."—The New York TimesIn February 1910, a monstrous, record-breaking blizzard hit the Northwest. Nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved: two trainloads of cold, hungry p...