Canada A Peoples History Volume 1

How can we know where we’re going if we don’t know where we are coming from? This question applies as much to nations as it does to travellers, and it rings especially loudly in the ears of Canadians. Canada: A People’s History doesn’t tell us where we are going, but it shows us where we have come from

This richly illustrated book, the first of two volumes, tells the epic story of Canada from its earliest days to the arrival of the industrial age in the 1870s. Here is the story of the people who created this vast nation. The courageous explorers who tracked the vast wilderness; the adventurous settlers, many of them exiles from their homelands; the native peoples, crucial allies in the Europeans’ wars for possession of this land; the visionary politicians, and the shortsighted ones; but most of all the ordinary people who rose to the extraordinary challenge of building Canada. These people are all given voice here, their stories blending with accounts of the major events of the day.

This is the story of Canada for the new millennium, one that draws on solid scholarship and presents the human drama and excitement of days gone by, one that makes past times memorable.

M&S is proud to be publishing the first volume of an exciting two-volume work, Canada: A People's History. These lavishly illustrated volumes, written by two of Canada's finest writers, are companions to a 30-hour, 15-part CBC-TV series on the history of Canada as seen through the voices of those who experienced it.

The story told in Volume One covers the period from pre-Contact to the resignation in 1873 of the first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. It is a story of the rise and fall of empires, the clash of great armies, and of the epoch-making revolutions. It is also a story of courage, daring, and folly, of the men and women who explored and settled a continent.

The major events of Canada's history are chronicled, but the book is, above all, a story of people, bringing to life the famous figures of Canada's past, as well as the voices of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

An award-winning journalist and writer, Don Gillmor is the author of the highly acclaimed 1999 story of his family’s roots, The Desire of Every Living Thing.

Achille Michaud, co-author of Richard Hatfield: Power and Disobedience, is a producer with Radio-Canada in Montreal.

Pierre Turgeon is a well-known Québécois editor and writer, who won the Governor General’s Award for his 1991 book La Radissonie: le pays de la Baie James.