★ Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic

In the bestselling The Ice Master, Jennifer Niven chronicled the doomed voyage of the Karluk in 1913-14. In an aside to that story, Niven mentioned that one of the survivors, Fred Maurer, returned seven years ... Read More »

October 30, 2003 | Filed under: History

Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

By Stephen Bown

The great scourge of long-distance ocean voyages in the age of sail was scurvy. The vitamin-C-deficiency disease killed two-thirds of Vasco da Gama’s crew in the 15th century. When Ferdinand Magellan made his historic circumnavigation ... Read More »

October 30, 2003 | Filed under: History

The Book of War Letters: 100 Years of Private Canadian Correspondence

By Audrey and Paul Grescoe

The Book of War Letters is the ambitious second entry in Paul and Audrey Grescoe’s planned trilogy of collected Canadian letters. Spanning this country’s entry into the Boer war in 1899 to the death of ... Read More »

October 30, 2003 | Filed under: History

First Crossing: Alexander Mackenzie, His Expedition Across North America, and the Opening of the Continent

By Derek Hayes

Derek Hayes is a geographer with a profound love of maps, as demonstrated in his last book, the gorgeously illustrated Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. In First Crossing, a history of ... Read More »

October 30, 2003 | Filed under: History

Canada: A People’s History Volume Two

By Don Gillmor,Achille Michaud, and Pierre Turgeon

Some historians have complained bitterly that the grand sweep, the great events, of Canadian history are being forgotten or deliberately ignored. What a surprise it was then that millions of 21st-century Canadians sat in front ... Read More »

October 30, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, History

Canada: A Portrait in Letters, 1800-2000

By Charlotte Gray

I can imagine Charlotte Gray’s fascinating Canada: A Portrait in Letters, 1800-2000 sitting on a small table next to the toilet in a second floor bathroom. A brass floor lamp is arranged so its circle ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: History

The Wreck of the William Brown: A True Tale of Overcrowded Lifeboats and Murder at Sea

By Tom Koch

Tom Koch must be a busy man. He’s a professor of both geography and gerontology, a bioethics consultant for the Hospital for Sick Children, a journalist and media critic, a martial arts expert, and a ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: History

The Gothic Line: Canada’s Month of Hell in World War Ii Italy

By Mark Zuelkhe

Writer Mark Zuelkhe’s The Gothic Line is the third in his series of magnificent histories of the major battles fought by Canadians in Italy during the Second World War. The books, including this latest, are ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: History

Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West

By D’Arcy Jenish

Popular biographers often work hard to find a new and exciting perspective on their subject, an activity that sometimes moves the focus of the book from the subject to the author. Fortunately, in Epic Wanderer, ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, History

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