The fur trade was the impetus for much of the exploration and discovery of North America. Like rolling storm clouds, the expanding enterprise of the fur trade moved relentlessly west to explore the furthest reaches of the continent. From Hudson Bay, Lake Superior, and the Mississippi River, European and American explorers and traders followed a web …

Three battles that shook the British Isles and changed the course of world history. Three renowned experts each take up one crucial day when the future of the throne, or Europe itself, hung in the balance.

Hastings 1066

In 1066, a foreign invader won the throne of England in a single battle and changed not only the history of the British Isl …

Exploring Hamilton through its heritage museums.

Inside Hamilton’s Museums helps to satisfy a growing curiosity about Canada’s steel capital as it evolves into a post-industrial city and cultural destination. With an emphasis on storytelling and unsung heroes, the book identifies where Sergeant Alexander Fraser bayonetted seven enemy soldiers in …

A geographer with extensive research experience in the Canadian North, Jack D. Ives has written a lively and informative account of several expeditions to Baffin Island during the “golden age” of federal research. In the 1960s, scientists from the Geographical Branch of Canada’s Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources travelled to Baffin t …

Many Canadians believe their nation fell on the right side of history in harbouring black slaves from the United States. In fact, in the wake of the American Revolution, Loyalist families brought slaves with them to settle in the Maritime colonies of British North America.

The transition from slavery in the American colonies to slavery in the Marit …

A View from the Porch is an illuminating collection of 22 essays about the points where design touches life and the big and small things that make us appreciate, or become disconnected from, our homes and neighbourhoods.

Drawing on his experiences as an architect, planner, world traveller, and educator, Friedman delves into issues such as the North …

The North-South Project is an original work of collective storytelling made up of prose pieces that consider what it means to be lost, the significance of memory, imagination, and history, and how all of these intersect and contribute to our sense of place and belonging. Edited by Noah Richler, author, journalist, cultural critic, and Literary & Id …

Gordon W. Smith, PhD, dedicated much of his life to researching Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic. A historian by training, his 1952 dissertation from Columbia University on “The Historical and Legal Background of Canada’s Arctic Claims” remains a foundational work on the topic, as does his 1966 chapter “Sovereignty in the North: The Can …

The voices of Indigenous women world-wide have long been silenced by colonial oppression and institutions of patriarchal dominance. Recent generations of powerful Indigenous women have begun speaking out so that their positions of respect within their families and communities might be reclaimed. The book explores issues surrounding and impacting In …

From the era of wooden sailing ships and Europe’s golden age of exploration, the story of famed British navigator Henry Hudson tells a classic tale of courage, ambition, and treachery on the high seas. As the leader of four Arctic voyages in 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610, Hudson searched in vain for a navigable route through the polar ice that would …

Wisp has a learning problem: he can't read stars.

For a juvenile nighthawk bursting with wanderlust this means trouble, with his peers, his parents, and the starving colony that tries to fence him in. So he ditches everyone, striking off on a forbidden migratory journey from the Amazon to the Arctic, alone — or so he thinks. Crossing two continent …

The story of the bold voyage of HMS Investigator and the modern-day discovery of its wreck by Parks Canada’s underwater archaeologists.

When Sir John Franklin disappeared in the Arctic in the 1840s, the British Admiralty launched the largest rescue mission in its history. Among the search vessels was HMS Investigator, which left England in 1850 u …

In this timely new book, international scholars and military professionals come together to explore the strategic consequences of the thawing of the Arctic. Their analyses of efforts by governments and defence, security, and coast guard organizations to address these challenges make timely and urgent reading.

Rather than a single national perspectiv …

This well-researched book is the first biography of one of Canada's most remarkable botanists. Alf Erling Porsild (1901-1977) grew up on the Arctic Station in West Greenland and later served as curator of botany at the National Museum of Canada. He collected thousands of specimens, greatly enlarging the National Herbarium and making it a superb res …

Mentioned in BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24281727

Benjamin Leigh Smith discovered and named dozens of islands in the Arctic but published no account of his pioneering explorations. He refused public accolades and sent stand-ins to deliver the results of his work to scientific societies. Yet, the Royal Geographic Society's Sir Clemen …

Scottish doctor and explorer John Rae is a controversial figure in the history of the Arctic. He began his career with the Hudson's Bay Company as a surgeon in Moose Factory, Ontario, where he learned to survey, live off the land, and travel great distances on snowshoes. These skills served him well when, in 1846, he was charged with completing the …

Flexibility has become a watchword in modern education, but its implementation is by no means a straightforward matter. Flexible Pedagogy, Flexible Practice sheds light on the often taken-for-granted assumptions that inform daily practice and examines the institutional dynamics that help and hinder efforts toward flexibility. The collection in inte …

Daniel MacMillan never saw the battlefields of Passchendaele or Vimy Ridge. A farmer in the tiny New Brunswick community of Williamsburg, he experienced the Great War entirely from the "home front." War on the Home Front: The Farm Diaries of Daniel MacMillan, 1914-1927 is a portrait of the other side of war from the perspective of a man who, like c …

Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage explores the missteps and the promise of a century and more of child protection efforts by Canadians and their governments. It is the first volume to offer a comprehensive history of what life has meant for North America’s most disadvantaged Aboriginal and newcomer girls and …

Technically it was a minor league, but for hockey fans west of the Mississippi, the Western Hockey League provided major-league entertainment for over 25 years.

The WHL was a determined and ambitious professional league, with some 22 teams based in major American and Canadian cities. Known as the Pacific Coast Hockey League prior to 1952, the WHL a …

In mid-July 1925, the SS Bayeskimo ran into heavy drift ice at the entrance to Hudson Strait. The ice carried her north, squeezing the steamer and testing the strength of her rivets. Helpless until the tide changed and the ice moved, the officers and crew could only watch and listen to the ship’s tormented groans. Slowly at first, trickles of fre …

Through the ages, coins have been more than a common standard or a means of exchange between peoples for goods and services. The development of coinage gave men freedom to move beyond their communities, served as a propaganda tool for advancing armies and visually showed people the source of politics which governed their lives. Today, these same bi …

In the early hours of April 22, 1914, American President Woodrow Wilson sent Marines to seize the port of Veracruz in an attempt to alter the course of the Mexican Revolution. As a result, the United States seemed on the brink of war with Mexico. An international uproar ensued. The governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile offered to mediate a pe …

At the turn of the twentieth century, Winnipeg was the fastest-growing city in North America. But its days as a diverse and culturally rich metropolis did not end when the boom collapsed. Prairie Metropolis brings together some of the best new graduate research on the history of Winnipeg and makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of the …

Invited to a quiet Swiss château by the enigmatic Tatiana Beaujeu Lehmann, Anne begins to slowly write a novel in a language that is not hers, a language that makes meaning foreign and keeps her alert to the world and its fiery horizon. Will the strange intoxication that takes hold of her and her characters – sculptor Charles; his sister Kim, …

This book will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the unique culture and spirituality of the fast-growing Pacific Northwest, which includes British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Envied by people around the world, Cascadia, as it is known, is remarkable for its famed mountains, evergreens, eagles, beaches and livable cities. Most people, ho …

"Far north, hidden behind grim barriers of pack ice, are lands that hold one spellbound. Gigantic imaginary gates, with hinges set in the horizon, seem to guard these lands. Slowly the gates swing open, and one enters another world where men are insignificant amid the awesome immensity of lonely mountains, fjords, and glaciers." - Louise Boyd, phot …

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 Great Lakes of North America are one of the world’s most important natural resources. The source of vast quantities of fish, shipping lanes, hydroelectric energy, and usable water, they are also increasingly the site of severe environmental degradation and resource contamination. This study analyzes how well governments and other stakeholders …

In one of the few studies of the early immigrant Orthodox rabbinate in North America, Ira Robinson has delved into the Jewish community in Montreal in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rabbis and their Community introduces several rabbis who, in various ways, impacted their immediate congregations as well as the wider Montreal Jewis …

How are Baptists distinctive as a Christian denomination? Canadian Baptists, confronted with the question of discovering a common identity from the welter of strands of influence that make up their heritage, may infer several answers from the essays in Memory and Hope.

Focussing on Baptist history in central and western Canada, Memory and Hope disc …

Obtaining weather data was vital for military operations in Northwestern Europe during World War II. In an effort to secure this data, the German Navy and Air Force secretly established manned weather stations in East Greenland, Svalbard, and Franz Josef Land. War North of 80 is the personal story of Wilhelm Dege, the leader of the last weather sta …

Writing Geographical Exploration summarizes the various factors that influence the writing and interpretation of exploration narratives, demonstrating the limitations of the assumption that there is a direct relationship between what the explorer saw and what the text describes. Davies offers a revisionist evaluation of Captain Thomas James, who sp …

Many Faces of Gender is an interdisciplinary volume that addresses the dearth in descriptions and analyses of gender roles and relationships in Native societies in North America's boreal reaches. This collection complements existing conceptual frameworks and develops new methodological and theoretical approaches that more fully articulate the compl …

"In the pages of this book, you will read of the efforts of many to fearlessly audit the state of education in Nunavik. To diligently seek improvement of an already good system. To fix what is not necessarily broken so that those who come after us will have it even better than we did. The various tensions and differences of opinion are, to me, not …

Context North America is a comparative study of Canadian and American literary relations that emphasizes the cultural and institutional contexts in which Canadian literature is taught and read. This volume exemplifies the question of how the literatures of Canada might aptly be studied and contextualized in the days of heightened discontinuity and …