Fire Canoe - How The West Was Won

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Canadians often ask how did we manage to secure so much territory?

At  the middle of the 19th century, as fathers of a Canadian Confederation  attempted to cobble together a nation of four English- and  French-speaking settlements in the eastern half of North America, the  rest of what would eventually become the Canadian West sat apparently  untamed and available. What defence was there against Fenian incursions?  How could Hudson’s Bay Co. trading posts deflect American expansionism?  What force could hope to out-flank U.S. Civil War armies just across  the undefended border?

Steamboats, that’s what! Or, as aboriginal people called them “fire canoes.” In his book, Fire Canoe,  historian Ted Barris brings the first-hand accounts of captains,  stevedores, engineers, firemen, immigrants, soldiers and carpetbaggers  who travelled the inland waterways of the prairies between 1859 and the  turn of the century. The tales of their sudden arrival, the exploits of  the people they carried, the impact of their regularly scheduled trips  on waterways across the prairies, all come alive in this book.