Fire Canoe: Prairie Steamboat Days Revisited

Years before railroads arrived, the Canadian West was opened up by an unlikely breed of ship: steamboats plying Prairie waterways. Their aboriginal pilots, experts at reading the tricky waterways, called the ships ＂fire canoes.＂ By day they chased freight contracts, but at night they introduced the Edwardian Prairies to pleasure cruises.

Ted Barris is an award-winning author, journalist, and broadcaster. For more than forty years his writing has appeared in the national press, as well as in history, news, and arts magazines, and he has authored seventeen non-fiction books. In 2014, his Globe and Mail national bestseller, The Great Escape received the national Libris Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He lives in Uxbridge, Ontario.