We can learn about our present day from our history

Isabella Fraser's route evolved out of the Highland Clearances, resisted the American Revolution, embraced United Empire Loyalism, engaged coureurs de bois and First Nations allies, and culminated in a pioneer expedition to the Pacific Ocean.

Our national identity emerged out of resistance to the first American Revolution – and Canada has been diverging from the U.S. ever since

A ‘rare and extraordinary’ illness ravaged the crew of Jens Munk’s 1619 voyage in search of the Northwest Passage.

Ken McGoogan’s new book “Shadows of Tyranny” seeks to parallel current political trends in the United States to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s. As some sounded alarm bells about Germany’s new leader, some were charmed — Canada’s…

Bourrie paints the Jesuits not as settlers but cultural assault troops, who undermined the traditions and beliefs of the Huron people, dividing and weakening the nation.

Arctic historian Ken McGoogan takes an in-depth, contemporary perspective on the legacy of Sir John Franklin, offering a new explanation of the famous Northern mystery The following article by Ken McGoogan is excerpted from his forthcoming book…

In March 1741, in a ferocious storm at the foot of South America, a creaky wooden ship called the Wager sailed into the Drake Passage — the most notorious channel in the world. The gunner on board, John Bulkeley, felt the vessel “hurtling on an…

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Title: May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth: Letters of the Lost Franklin Arctic ExpeditionAuthor: Edited by Russell A. Potter, Regina Koellner, Peter Carney, and Mary WilliamsonGenre: Non-FictionPublisher: McGill-Queen’s University PressPages: 481 From…

Yo! Hey! Can anybody hear me? I’m shouting out from deep in this rabbit hole on website-building. I hate to say the C-word, but it’s happening. No more a swashbuckling writer, I have become a lowly CONTENT-PROVIDER. Tell the truth, I am having a…

Season’s greetings and hats off to the folks at the John Rae Society in Orkney. They’re the ones driving the restoration of the Hall of Clestrain, original home of Arctic explorer John Rae. Having purchased the Hall and the lands needed to build an…

When every day you receive an email from a different website developer offering to design a new site for you, complete with razzle-dazzle graphics and up-to-the-minute Search Engine Optmization (SEO), well, then you know it's time to act. Time to…

It's equally compelling. Impossible to put down. Yet harder to read than Volume One. That's because, through the 1970s and into the '80s, our hero's narcissism becomes more egregious, harder to overlook. Yes, the anxiously awaited Volume two is here:…

Hello, hello? Ottawa? I'm sorry but there's no nice way to say this. For a decade now, educational institutions have been ripping off writers who tell Canadian stories . . . writers like, well, me. They have been using our work and flat-out refusing…

Arctic history buffs around the world are today celebrating what would have been John Rae’s 208th birthday. Born at the Hall of Clestrain in Orkney on September 30, 2013, Rae became a doctor in Edinburgh and then entered the fur trade with the…

Canada’s non-fiction crisis is the focus of this week’s SHuSH by Kenneth Whyte. That crisis is the absence of support in this country for research-based non-fiction – biography, history, and science. Whyte, publisher of Sutherland House, is spurred…

Back in 2014, I published the following reminiscence in the National Post. Strangely, it is no longer accessible on that newspaper's site. So, in reponse to clamourous demand, I reprise the post here . . . . The recent death of Farley Mowat at 92…

It's time for a QUIET SHOUT-OUT to Keriann McGoogan for being named a Writers' Trust of Canada Rising Star for 2021. Yup, the announcement came last week. McGoogan was one of five emerging writers to get the nod . . . along with $5,000 cash, a…

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, dead at 101. I remember meeting him in 1987, at Le Grand Derangement, the international Quebec City Conference on Jack Kerouac. I drew on that phantasmagoria in my novel Kerouac's Ghost. I got to hang out with Ferlinghetti…