Like many other pioneering North West Mounted Police officers, Cecil Denny was a colourful, independent man with a career full of conquests and controversy. He and his comrades played key roles in the taming of Canada's wild and woolly west, and in this compilation of selected writings from his books The Law Marches West and The Riders of the Plains, we get that story straight from the horse's mouth. Denny relates the fascinating saga of the newly formed police force's 80...

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...

Born Under a Stump is a biography of Bill Hulet, a legendary bear hunter. Working for various timber concerns, he thinned the black bear who ruined thousands of young trees on the Olympic Peninsula tree farms in Washington State. He quite possibly killed more bear than anyone who ever lived. His life also embraced the era of old growth logging.

Del Burk farmed, ranched and guided big-game hunters in some of the richest wild-life areas of Canada.  The biography covers a recent patch of history, but a patch already gone.  The farm equipment he knew now belong in museums, and the ranching practices of the fifties and sixties have largely simply disappeared.  Where Del's big-game guiding experiences took him over trails meant only for horses, there are now paved roads or the rutted paths of ATVs.   Del's s...

Oh-h-h-h, Cam-er-on! Agony, reproach, entreaty, vibrated in the clear young voice that rang out over the Inverleith grounds. The Scottish line was sagging! - that line invincible in two years of International conflict, the line upon which Ireland and England had broken their pride. Sagging! And because Cameron was weakening! Cameron, the brilliant half-back, the fierce-fighting, erratic young Highlander, disciplined, steadied by the great Dunn into an instrument of Scotland's glory! Camero...

The early history of the Hudson's Bay Company comes alive in these true tales of fur-trade wars, incredible wilderness journeys, hardships and danger. Founded by the extraordinary adventurers and renegades Radisson and des Groseilliers, the HBC attracted many memorable characters. Explorer Henry Kelsey was the first European to see the buffalo herds. James Knight met a mysterious fate on a frozen northern island. Brave Isabel Gunn worked in the fur trade disguised as a man. Anyone who enjo...

With prospectors, trappers, and whalers pouring into northwestern Canada, the North West Mounted Police were dispatched to the newest frontier to maintain patrols, protect indigenous peoples, and enforce laws in the North. In carrying out their duties, these intrepid men endured rigorous and dangerous conditions.On December 21, 1910, a four-man patrol left Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, heading for Dawson City, Yukon, a distance of 670 kilometres. They never arrived. The ha...

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...

**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...

Creighton takes us through the first years of the famous police force in Northwest Canada. This short piece is richly illustrated with sketches by Frederic Remington.

The West was a lawless domain when Jerry Potts was born into the Upper Missouri fur trade in 1838. The son of a Scottish father and a Blood mother, he was given the name Bear Child by his Blood tribe for his bravery and tenacity while he was still a teen. In 1874, when the North West Mounted Police first marched west and sat lost and starving near the Canada-U.S. border, it was Potts who led them to shelter. Over the next 22 years he played a critical role in the peaceful settlement of the...

Bronc Busters and Hay Sloops tells the story of ranching in the West from the beginning of the Great War until 1960. Cowboy soldiers, bronc busters, First Nations, upper-crust Englishmen and the strong, capable women of ranching country . . . theirs are the stories told in this book. Some of these characters are larger than life, such as:Joe Coutlee, cow boss of the Douglas Lake Ranch, whose booming voice gave him the nickname “Roaring Bill”;Grover Hance, w...