Kategoria BISAC: History >> Canada - Pre-Confederation (to 1867)

In the formative years of Ontario's history, the law loomed large, as a profession, a preoccupation of legislators, a subject of debate and controversy, and a force that many citizens found themselves up against. Robert Fraser has drawn from the pages of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography the stories of sixty people who played a key role in the legal history of Upper Canada.

Told in a readable style that has been much praised, these profiles contain information that bears the authoritative stamp of the DCB volumes from which they come. They add a valuable personal dimension to...

?Furs is what brings us, ? remarked an early trader in the Oregon Country, but ?the difficulty of getting the necessary supplies will continue to operate against it.? An elaborate transport system of North canoes, Indian pack horses, and Columbia batteaux was devised to get supplies to the back country and furs out. First used in 1811, it became the lifeline of the fur trade of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia Department until 1847, when the route was severed by the extension of the U.S.-Canadian border. The personalities, places, obstacles, and operations involved in the brigade system...

James FitzGibbon, Defender of Upper Canada, is the often poignant story of a poor man's rise to authority in the Upper Canada of the 1800s.

Born the son of a tenant farmer in Ireland, FitzGibbon's valour as a soldier brought him to the attention of those destined for power in the Canadas. Hero of the Battle of Beaver Dams in 1813, one o the decisive battles in the War of 1812, FitzGibbon's brilliance as tactician and negotiator was needed time and again whether to settle Irish unrest on the Cornwall Canal, or to organize Toronto's defence against William Lyon Mackenzie's rebel...

The story of African Canadians who fled slavery in the United States but returned to enlist in the Union forces during the American Civil War.

On New Year's Eve in 1862, blacks from across British North America joined in spirit with their American fellows in silent vigils to await the enactment of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The terms declared that slaves who were held in the districts that were in rebellion would be free and that blacks would now be allowed to enlist in the Union Army and participate in the civil war that had then raged for more than a year...

"Lord Strathcona: A Biography of Donald Alexander Smith" chronicles the life of the man who drove the last spike for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The first biography of Smith since 1915, Lord Strathcona was compiled with archives from England, Scotland, the U.S. and Canada and brings new information to light about Smith, who joined the Hudson's Bay Company when he was just 18.

In this dramatic retelling of one of history's great "what-ifs," Mark R. Anderson examines the American colonies' campaign to bring Quebec into the Continental confederation and free the Canadians from British "tyranny." This significant reassessment of a little-studied campaign examines developments on both sides of the border that rapidly proceeded from peaceful diplomatic overtures to a sizable armed intervention. The military narrative encompasses Richard Montgomery's plodding initial operations,...

Louisbourg, France's impressive fortress on Cape Breton Island's foggy Atlantic coast, dominated access to the St. Lawrence and colonial New France for forty years in the mid-eighteenth century. In 1755, Great Britain and France stumbled into the French and Indian War, part of what (to Europe) became the Seven Years' War--only for British forces to suffer successive defeats. In 1758, Britain and France, as well as Indian nations caught in the rivalry, fought for high stakes: the future of colonial America.

Hugh Boscawen describes how Britain's war minister William Pitt launched four...

The nine essays in this posthumous volume are linked by a recurring theme - an affirmation of the integrity and viability of the small society and culture in the economic blocs and political federations of the modern world.

Alexander maintained that there was an economic base for the provinces of Atlantic Canada in the resources of the region and the genius of its people. In these essays he launched an assault on the beliefs that hindered the develpment of that base while searching for policies necessary to sustain that society. He indicated Canadian trade policies. He stated that...