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Jay Willar straightens stiffly, knuckles kneading his backbone, and surveys the hard-won efforts of a morning’s labor: a 10-foot-wide swath of ground-laid netting festooned with tangled ribbons of pink-brown dulse. The noonday sun is already working its magic, baking it to a deep reddish-purple. Jay’s...
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The Yukon Territory is widely known as the Home of the Klondike, the centre of one of the most frantic and exciting gold rushes in modern history. However, while the Klondike gold rush was an important event, its romantic record often overshadows a far more...
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Wrapped in woollies, nibbling Beavertail pastries or sipping steaming cups of cocoa, we make our merry way to winter carnivals from coast to coast. Whether it’s Nova Scotia’s Springhill Chilly Willy winter carnival, Ottawa’s Winterlude or Winnipeg’s Le Festival du Voyageur, carnivals offer communities a...
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There’s an old black and white photograph at the British Columbia Archives that shows a group of men standing next to a team of oxen. Most of the men are loggers and their hardened looks resemble the very stuff they are harvesting from Canada’s West...
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On a cold and wet November day in 1922, a young farmer arrived at the newly constructed Coliseum in downtown Toronto’s Exhibition Park. His name was Alfred Ahiers and he was going to try and win a trophy for his poultry at the first-ever Royal...
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The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines cowboy as a “boy in charge of cows; a man in charge of grazing cattle on a ranch; one who is boisterous or undisciplined, or recklessly unscrupulous in business.” You can take your pick, but if you want a different...
The RCMP turns 100
When Canada bought Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1870, it needed to police those millions of square kilometres, so in 1873, the North West Mounted Police was formed by an act of Parliament. Successful applicants had to be males between the ages of 18 and 40, of sound constitution and good...
