Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Regional Canada, Western Provinces

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Ted Kerasote
Out There
by Voyageur Press (Hardcover)

WINNER, 2004 NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD! (Outdoor Literature) In today’s high-tech world, getting away from the stresses of everyday life can be tricky. Cell phones, palm pilots, and laptop computers allow you to be wired-in from pretty much anywhere. But Ted Kerasote wanted none of that. He wanted a chance to disconnect from the buzz and grind of the wired world. And what better way to do that than to head to the far reaches of Canada’s Northwest Territories for a canoe trip through 400 miles of wilderness. Or so he thought. Much to Ted’s chagrin, his friend and traveling companion, Len, brings a satellite phone along on the journey, ostensibly in case of emergency. Throughout the trip, however, Len uses the phone simply to touch base with family, friends, and the office—undermining their sense of being "Out There." "Out There: In the Wild in a Wired Age" is Kerasote’s entertaining account of this journey down the Horton River toward the Arctic Ocean, through ...

Dick North
The Mad Trapper of Rat River: A True Story of Canada's Biggest Manhunt
by The Lyons Press (Hardcover)

They called it The Arctic Circle War. It was a manhunt the likes of which we will never see again. The quarry, Albert Johnson, was a loner working a string of traps in the far reaches of Canada's Northwest Territories, where winter temperatures average forty degrees below zero. The chase began when a Mountie came to ask Johnson about allegations that he had interfered with a neighbor's trap. No questions were asked. Johnson shot Officer Millen dead through a hole in the wall of his log cabin. A vicious firefight ensued. When the Mounties returned with reinforcements, Johnson was gone, and The Arctic Circle War had begun. It was a forty-eight-day odyssey across the harshest terrain in the world. On Johnson's heels were a corps of Mounties and an irregular posse on dogsled, supplied by airplanes dropping food. Johnson, on snowshoes, seemed superhuman in his ability to evade capture. The chase stretched for hundreds of miles, and during a blizzard crossed the Richardson Mountains, ...

Edward Beauclerk Maurice
The Last Gentleman Adventurer: Coming of Age in the Arctic
by Houghton Mifflin (Hardcover)

"This is a great book about life at remote bases in Canada's far north as seen by a young English boy who went there by himself to see the world and got more than he could have bargained for. Beautifully written." --Sir Ranulph Fiennes"As spare, gleaming, and exhilarating as the Arctic wastes and the gentle, stoic Eskimos who had mastery of this realm . . . The book evokes the frozen seas, whale hunts, snow plains and storms that intimidated those rash enough to brave this world, and the traditions, myths, and hunting skills that contoured a bygone way of life . . . His translucent prose is a sparkling and moving record." -- Times (London)At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company -- the Company of Gentleman Adventurers -- and was sent to an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no telephone or radio and only one ship arrived each year. But the Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, ...

Dick North
The Lost Patrol: The Mounties' Yukon Tragedy
by Raincoast Books (Paperback)

On December 21, 1910, a routine four-man Royal North West Mounted Police patrol led by Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald, set off from Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, by dogsled. Its destination: Dawson City, Yukon Territory, 475 miles away. Something, however, went terribly wrong. Using techniques similar to those of a skilled detective, author Dick North pieces the evidence together in an attempt to solve the mystery of the doomed journey that has gone down in Mountie annals as the THE LOST PATROL. Like the puzzling fate of Sir John Franklin's disastrous Northwest Passage expedition, the grisly outcome of the Lost Patrol has become part of Canadian folklore. Now, in this new, revised edition of a Canadian classic, Dick North weaves a spellbinding true tale worthy of Jack London himself.

R. M. Patterson
Dangerous River: Adventure on the Nahanni
by Boston Mills Press (Paperback)

In the mid-1920s Raymond M. Patterson left a comfortable position with the Bank of England for a life in with wilds of Canada. Here, he hunted, trapped, fished and prospected his way along the rivers he would later write about. This spellbinding book, his most famous account, chronicles his two journeys down the treacherous Nahanni River between the Yukon and the Mackenzie River, spurred on by his irrepressible lust for adventure and his quest for gold. The New Yorker called this "a truly enchanting book."

Lael Morgan
Good Time Girls: Of the Alaska/ Yukon Gold Rush
by Epicenter Press (Paperback)

Morgan offers an authentic and deliciously humorous account of the prostitutes and other "disreputable" women who were the earliest female pioneers of the Far North.

Kevin Krajick
Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic
by W. H. Freeman (Hardcover)

In the tradition of Sebastian' Junger's The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, Barren Lands is the extraordinary tale of two small-time prospectors who risked their lives to discover $17 billion worth of diamonds in the desolate tundra of the far north.In the late 1970's, two men set out on a twenty-year search for a North American gem mine, along a fabled path that had defied 16th-century explorers, Wild West prospectors, and modern geologists. They are an unlikely pair: Chuck Fipke, a ragged, stuttering fellow with a singular talent for finding sand-size mineral grains, and Stew Blusson, an ultra-tough geologist and helicopter pilot. Inventive, eccentric and ruthless, they follow a trail of geologic clues left by predecessors all the way from backwoods Arkansas up the glaciated high Rockies into the vast and haunted "barren lands" of northern Canada. With a South African geochemist's "secret weapon," Fipke and Blusson outwit rivals, including the immense De ...

John Hildebrand
Reading The River: A Voyage Down The Yukon
by University of Wisconsin Press (Paperback)

John Hildebrand sets out in a canoe . . . to explore the great riverway of northwestern Canada and Alaska. . . . The geography is closely rendered and the characters especially sharply drawn. The country is filled with mad dropouts at river fish camps, good-hearted girls in the towns, sullen natives in tumbledown villages, cranky old-timers, terrible drunks and worse moralizers who live off the wild landscape and its abundant resources. . . . This is a fine work, and Hildebrand is a fine writer.Charles E. Little, Wilderness For many of us the North has been the one place where a certain elemental experienceof land, water, and peoplecan still be had. John Hildebrands personal account of this experience has a particular freshness and poignancy. It is the record of a journey, as much inward as it is outward, and all the better for that.John Haines, author of The Stars, The Snow, The Fire A finely written account of coming to terms with ones self, of ...

Dermot Cole
Frank Barr: Bush Pilot in Alaska and the Yukon (Caribou Classics)
by Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company (Paperback)

Meet Frank Barr, who flew every early plane from the Jenny to the Super Cub, carrying passengers and freight to remote villages in Alaska and the Yukon.

Shelley Falconer, Shawna White
Stones, Bones and Stitches: Storytelling through Inuit Art (A Lord Museum Book)
by Tundra Books (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2007-10-09)

Did you know?-Cape Dorset boasts the largest number of artists per capita in Canada (22.7 percent — almost one-quarter of the labor force and thirty times the national average!)-The word Eskimo is a derogatory term meaning “eaters of raw flesh” -Some Inuit artists quarry stone for their sculptures in the winter, but have to wait until the summer to bring it back to their workshops -An igloo uses the same design principles found in the great cathedrals of Europe -According to legends, the stone figures, called Inukshuks, protect travelers and point them to the safest pathway-The Inuit have been carving for over 4,000 years Stones, Bones and Stitches is a fascinating and beautiful introduction to the art of the North. Focusing on several important works from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, curators Shelley Falconer and Shawna White take you on an impressive journey through the artistic landscape. The evolving character of the North is explored through the lens of ...

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