Transportation

Fifty years ago, Royal Mail Ship Nascopie ended a life full of adventure on an unmarked reef in Hudson's Strait. Launched by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1911, her main mission was to supply the Company's far-flung posts in Canada's North. Alone and without any of today's navigation and communications equipment, she battled ice and icebergs, fog, storms, and uncharted waters to delivery everything the posts needed to survive and trade.

Few ships played such a prolonged role in developing Canada's North and maintaining her presence there. Nascopie was a strong ship sailed by strong men. She played a historic role for Canada and this is her story.

One hundred and twenty-five years of steamboating in Muskoka come alive with the anniversary celebration of the RMS Segwun.

The Royal Mail Ship Segwun is the oldest operating steamship in North America, a Muskoka icon, and one of Ontario’s best-known tourist attractions. Built as a paddlewheeler in 1887, the RMS Segwun saw her initial career suspended in the 1950s when the ship ceased operations. Fortunately, she began a new chapter in 1974 when she was lovingly restored and magnificent sightseeing cruises were offered. Those who board the vessel step back in time to a romantic era in cottage country’s history when steamboats were vital to settlement, tourism, and economic development.

The history of this celebrated Canadian ship and her sister vessels that made up the Muskoka Navigation Company fleet is thoughtfully explored, as is the long and significant past of steamboating on the Muskoka lakes. Historical and contemporary photographs complement the story of this "Queen of Muskoka" in recognition of her 125th anniversary.

The Frances Smith was not only the first steamboat to be built in Owen Sound, but also the largest vessel on Georgian Bay at that time. By far the most luxurious vessel to sail the Upper Great Lakes from a Canadian port, she was known as a "palace steamer." In the mid-to-late-19th century, the Frances Smith set the standard for speed, spacious accommodation and quality service on Georgian Bay and Lake Superior.

The story of the Frances Smith, full of adventure and courageous actions, and even including disreputable behaviour, is a genuine story of life on the Great Lakes in the latter part of the 1800s. Meticulously researched and documented by Scott L. Cameron, this book is an exploration of a special part of our past that will be of great interest to history buffs in general, and maritime historians in particular.

Brown celebrates the survival of our railway heritage in stations that have been saved or remain in use.

Despite the "green" benefits of rail travel, Canada has lost much of its railway heritage. Across the country stations have been bulldozed and rails ripped up. Once the heart of communities large and small, stations and tracks have left little more than a gaping hole in Canada’s landscapes. This book revisits the times when railways were the country’s economic lifelines, and the station the social centre. Here was where we worked, played, listened to political speeches, or simply said goodbye to loved ones.



The landscapes that grew around the station are also explored and include such forgotten features as station hotels, restaurants, gardens, and the once-common railway YMCA. Railway companies often hired the world’s leading architects to design grand station buildings that ranged in style from chateauesque to art deco. Even small-town stations and wayside shelters displayed an artistic flare and elegance. Although most have vanished, the book celebrates the survival of that heritage in stations that have been saved or remain in use. The book will appeal to anyone who has links with our rail era, or who simply appreciates the value of Canada’s built heritage.

Explore Ontario’s rich railway heritage — from stations and hotels to train rides, bridges, water towers, and roundhouses.

Rails Across Ontario will take the reader back to a time when the railway ruled the economy and the landscape.

Read about historic stations, railway museums, heritage train rides, and historic bridges. Follow old rail lines along Ontario’s most popular rail trails. Find out where steam engines still puff across farm fields and where historic train coaches lead deep into the wilds of Ontario’s scenic north country. Discover long forgotten but once vital railway structures, such as roundhouses, coal docks, and water towers. Learn about regular VIA Rail routes that follow some of the province’s oldest rail lines and pass some of its most historic stations, including one that has operated continuously since 1857.

Follow the evolution of the rail legacy of the Canadian Prairies from the arrival of the first engine on a barge to today’s realities.

Rails Across the Prairies traces the evolution of Canada’s rail network, including the appearance of the first steam engine on the back of a barge. The book looks at the arrival of European settlers before the railway and examines how they coped by using ferry services on the Assiniboine and North Saskatchewan Rivers. The work then follows the building of the railways, the rivalries of their owners, and the unusual irrigation works of Canadian Pacific Railway. The towns were nearly all the creation of the railways from their layout to their often unusual names.

Eventually, the rail lines declined, though many are experiencing a limited revival. Learn what the heritage lover can still see of the Prairies’ railway legacy, including existing rail operations and the stories the railways brought with them. Many landmarks lie vacant, including ghost towns and elevators, while many others survive as museums or interpretative sites.

Under Canadian Pacific's red-and-white-checkered flag, the company's founders, George Stephen and William C. Van Horne, created a rail-sea service from Liverpool to Hong Kong. Boasting sternwheelers, Great Lakes bulk carriers, ferries, and luxurious ocean-going liner leviathans, the Canadian Pacific shipping line sailed around the globe. In both world wars the entire fleet served gallantly as Allied troop carriers. After the Second World War, the company staved off the realities of the jet age for as long as it could, replacing liners with container ships, until what was left of the legendary maritime operation was sold off in 2005.

With a witty and informative style, author Peter Pigott evokes not only the nostalgic heyday of ocean travel but reveals a slice of almost-forgotten Canadiana. From the stifling steerage quarters of immigrant ships to the elegant drawing rooms of nautical titans such as the ill-fated Empress of Ireland and the Empress of Asia, from U-boat-haunted convoys to container ships, shore dwellers and old salts alike will be delighted with Sailing Seven Seas.

Rescue From Grampa Woo is an exciting tale of fear and heroism on Lake Superior. It tells of the rescue of two American men from a propellerless cruise ship as it drifts out to sea in hurricane-force winds. Three ships, two Canadian, one American, fight to save it. How successful were they? What kind of people would take these risks for others? What is it about Lake Superior that inspires such awe?

Rescue From Grampa Woo is a mariner's story, a sea story, a gripping account of adventure, risk and dedication. It culminated in the awarding of three Governor General's Medals of Bravery.

"I know when not to push the lake."
- Captain Gerry Dawson

Explore Ontario’s forgotten rail lines and experience the legacy and lore of this the vital railway era of Ontario’s history. At its peak between 1880 and the 1920s, Ontario was criss-crossed by more than 20,000 kilometres of rail trackage. Today, only a fraction remains. Yet trains once hauled everything from strawberries to grain, cans of milk and even eels. Villagers depended on trains to visit friends, attend weddings, to shop, and to go to school. They gathered on station platforms to await their mail or greet a long-lost relative. Holidayers packed their trunks and headed north for an extended summer day at their favorite resorts. Today, these are but a distant memory as most of Ontario’s once essential transportation links lie abandoned and largely forgotten.

But perhaps not entirely – many rights of way have become rail trails, and now witness hikers, cyclists, equestrians, and snowmobilers. Others sadly, lie overgrown and barely visible. Yet regardless of how one follows these early routes, one will find preserved stations, historic bridges, and railway era buildings, all of which recall this bygone era.

Steamboats carrying passengers from Hamilton to Montreal via the rapids of the St. Lawrence were a popular sight in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1855, the Kingston, an iron steamboat built for John Hamilton, appeared in the Great Lakes. When the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) toured British North America in 1860, the Kingston became his floating palace for much of his time between Quebec and Toronto. While many steamboats claimed to be floating palaces, the Kingston truly was one.

In 1855, the Kingston, an iron steamboat built for John Hamilton (1802-82), appeared in the Great Lakes. When the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) came to British North America for the first royal tour in 1860, the Kingston became his floating palace for much of his time between Quebec and Toronto. Many steamboats claimed to be floating palaces. The Kingston was.

The Kingston was wrecked many times and survived spectacular fires in 1872 and 1873. Late in her career, she was converted into a salvage vessel and renamed the Cornwall. In 1930 she was finally taken out and sunk near one of Kingston’s ship graveyards. There she remained until diver Rick Neilson discovered her in 1989. Today, the once palatial Kingston is a popular dive site and tourist attraction.

The Empress of Ireland's last voyage ended on May 29, 1914, when she was rammed by a Norwegian coal-carrier in a fog patch on the St. Lawrence River near Rimouski. For David Creighton, her voyage still continues.

In Losing the Empress, Creighton delves into the lives of his grandparents - Salvation Army officers who were lost on the Empress - and the lives of their five orphaned children who would soon be plunged into World War I. His discoveries reveal amazing details about the Empress, which sank in fourteen minutes with a greater loss of life than the Titanic disaster.

Shipwreck nostalgia, last voyage dinners, Salvationists, the British Empire and the world wars fought to preserve it; everything comes into focus when the author joins Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard on a film shoot at the sunken liner's site. Losing the Empress lyrically traces a personal journey into the past and into the future.

The Alligator was an amphibious machine designed and patented in Canada in the late 1880s. This warping tug was capable of towing al og boomk across a lake and then portaging itself to the next body of water. Steam-powered and rugged, it was one of the pioneers in the mechanization of the forest industry and for more than thirty years was ubiquitous in northern Ontario until eclipsed by its worthy successor the Russel tug.

"This long-overdue book on the Alligator Warping Tug, designed and built by West & Peachey of Simcoe, Ontario, is a welcome addition to the libraries of those intrigued by Canada's story and particularly lumbering history." -- R. John Corby, curator emeritus, Canada Science and Technology Museum

By enabling access to the upper reaches of the Ottawa River and its many tributaries, the Alligator tug extended the social and economic stability provided by the timber industry and supported the populating of this vast region. Alligators of the North is a wonderful touchstone for all who share this heritage." — Mary Campbell, mayor of McNab-Braeside Township, Renfrew County

The year was 1910 and signs of progress were in the air. That June, a new steam ferry for the Toronto Island Company was launched and christened the Trillium. Only briefly mentioned in the local dailies at the time, the double-end, side-padded island ferry cruised the waters of Toronto Bay for nearly fifty years. After forty-six years of service, the Trillium retired in 1956, only to be saved from the scrap yard in 1973. The Trillium made its second debut in 1976 as a fully operational steam ferry and is still in service today.

As the Trillium reaches the century mark, Mike Filey revisits the history of this fascinating Canadian ship. With a new preface and updated photographs, including some in colour. Filey traces Trillium's remarkable rise, fall, and rebirth in a book that honours one of Toronto's most interesting treasures.

The steamer Wexford, with her flared bow, tall masts, and her open, canvas-sided hurricane deck, charmed spectators as she carried cargo across the Great Lakes. The romance and adventure of her British and French history in the South American trade followed her. Under newly appointed 24-year-old captain Bruce Cameron, her fateful final voyage was punctuated with opportunities to be saved from destruction , but his persistence in trying to make port at Goderich led to tragedy - a victim of the storm of 1913. Over a period of 87 years, she eluded many efforts to locate her remains, but was finally discovered in 2000 by a sailor using a fish-finding device. Since then, she has been visited by thousands, but sadly plundered. Our story traces her history from her British origins in 1883, through the transition to become a "Laker," the eventful storm, the search, and her ultimate discovery in southern Lake Huron, and the controversy over how she should be protected.

• Timely topic: As wildfires become a seasonal threat, this book celebrates the technology and the people involved in aerial firefighting and gives insight into the dangers and heroism involved
• Showcases people and the airplanes that have revolutionized wildfire fighting, giving an accessible history of the evolution of our ability to fight wildfires
• Author is Canada's foremost aviation history author, and has a deep knowledge of the world of airplanes

Polar Winds traces a century of northern flight from balloonatics to bush pilots and beyond.

"They were all gamblers and fortune seekers. They did things on their own — were independent people who wanted to be free to roam. They were good people, but, of course, some were loners or escapists. They all depended strictly on their wits."

Joe McBryan, pilot and owner of Yellowknife-based Buffalo Airways, was talking about gold prospectors in the 1940s when he said this, but he could just as easily have been describing the aviators who have flown northern skies for over a hundred years. They were adventurers and pioneers, but also just men and women doing what was required to make a living north of the sixtieth parallel.

Polar Winds uses the stories of these pilots and others to explore the greater history of air travel in the North, from the Klondike Gold Rush through to the end of the twentieth century. It encompasses everything from exploration flights to the North Pole in airships to passenger travel in jet liners; flying school buses for residential schools to indigenous pilots performing mercy flights; and from the harrowing crashes to the routine supply runs that make up daily life in the North. Above all, it is a unique history told through the experiences of northerners on the ground and in the sky.

The women pilots profiled in this book have flown from British Columbia to Newfoundland and in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Right from the beginning of her interviews and research, the author found herself constantly amazed by the achievements of the women involved. Within the book are the stories of early Canadian women bush pilots from the late 1940s onwards. Their stories are exciting, occasionally funny, and always absorbing. Ranging from aerial surveys, water bombing of fires, flying fish, canoes and northern dogs, to the operation of a float-plane flying school, these women have left little undone. One pilot, Judy Cameron, was the first Canadian woman to be hired by an airline. Flying north of Superior, Elizabeth Wieben recalls the time that she flew naked. In pilot Suzanne Pettigrew's own words, "We sure have come a long way and the ride was an awful lot of fun."

It is a cruel irony of history that as we celebrate the centenary of flight on December 17, 2003, aviation is in a tailspin and airlines are disappearing in Canada. Yet flight itself remains one of humanity's most spectacular triumphs, and Canada especially has much to be proud of. Contained within these covers is a complex portrait of Canadian aviation, from the Silver Dart to the Cormorant. Packed with photographs as colourful as the details that accompany them, it bursts with unforgettable aircraft trivia.

No Canadian company has fuelled as much speculation about its demise as A.V. Roe Canada Limited. When its name was erased off the corporate map in 1962, A.V. Roe's most ambitious undertakings - the Jetliner, the Iroquois Engine, and the Arrow - were reduced to scrap.

In Requiem for a Giant: A.V. Roe Canada and the Avro Arrow, Palmiro Campagna supplies us with new information to help dispel the myths surrounding the company. With an array of recently declassified documents, Campagna investigates the star projects of A.V. Roe Canada.

Was the C-102 Jetliner technically flawed?

Was the Avrocar a failure?

Was the cost of the Arrow program spiralling out of control as historians have maintained?

These questions and many others are put to rest in Requiem for a Giant.

On February 20, 1959, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker announced to the House of Commons the cancellation of the CF-105 Arrow. Its development costs to that time were $340 million. The Arrow was to be the world's unsurpassed interceptor aircraft. Yet within two months of the Prime Minister's announcement, six completed aircraft were dismantled and all papers and documents associated with the project were destroyed.

Here is the history and development of the Arrow - the plane that would make Canada the leader in supersonic flight technology. The Arrow was designed to fly at twice the speed of sound and carry the most advanced missile weapons system.

Here are the stories of the men and women who were in the vanguard of the new technology - who had come from England, Poland, and the United States to make aviation history.

The development of the Avro Arrow was a remarkable Canadian achievement. Its mysterious cancellation in February 1959 prompted questions that have long gone unanswered. What role did the Central Intelligence Agency play in the scrapping of the project? Who in Canada's government was involved in that decision? What, if anything, did Canada get in return? Who ordered the blowtorching of all the prototypes? And did Arrow technology find its way into the American Stealth fighter/bomber program?

When Storms of Controversy was first published in 1992, its answers to these questions sent a shock wave across the country. Using never-before-released documents, the book exploded the myth that design flaws, cost overruns, or obsolescence had triggered the demise of the Arrow.

Now, in this fully revised fourth edition, complete with two new appendices, the bestselling book brings readers up-to-date on the CF-105 Arrow, the most innovative, sophisticated aircraft the world had seen by the end of the 1950s.

From the 1890s through the 1920s, as horse gave way to machine, the look of Toronto and the lifestyles of its inhabitants were irrevocably altered. From Horse Power to Horsepower is a pictorial history of the vehicles of the era.

Winner of the 2004 International Gallery of Superb Printing Bronze Award for Superb Craftsmanship in Production, and the Ontario Printing and Imaging Association Excellence in Print Awards, commended for the 2004 Honourable Mention for Superb Craftsmanship in Production

From rumble seats and running broads to power tops and tailfins, 60 Years Behind the Wheel captures the thrill of motoring in Canada from the dawn of the twentieth century to 1960. There are intriguing stories of cars with no steering wheels, and fascinating photographs of historic vehicles from across the country. From the Studebaker to the Lincoln-Zephyr, from the showroom to the scrapyard, here are over 150 vehicles owned and driven by Canadians.

Canada’s automotive "Dr. Phil" says there’s never been a better time to buy a new car or truck.

For deals on wheels, 2013 will be a "perfect storm." There’s never been a better time to buy a new car or truck, thanks to a stronger Canadian dollar, a worldwide recession driving prices downward, and a more competitive Japanese auto industry that’s still reeling from a series of natural disasters.

In addition to lower prices and more choices, 2013 car buyers will see more generous cash rebates, low financing rates, bargain leases, and free auto maintenance programs.

• Buy, sell, or hold?
• Which cars and trucks are "wallet-friendly" and can easily last 15 years?
• Which vehicles offer the most features to best accommodate senior drivers?
• Do ethanol and hybrid fuel-saving claims have more in common with Harry Potter than the Society of Automotive Engineers?
• Is GM’s 2013 Volt electric car destined to become an electric Edsel?

These questions and more are answered in this informative guide.

As Toyota skids into an ocean of problems and uncertainty continues in the U.S. automotive industry, Lemon-Aid Used Cars and Trucks 20112012 shows buyers how to pick the cheapest and most reliable vehicles from the past 30 years. Lemon-Aid guides are unlike any other car and truck books on the market. Phil Edmonston, Canada’s automotive Dr. Phil for 40 years, pulls no punches.

Like five books in one, Lemon-Aid Used Cars and Trucks is an expos of car scams and gas consumption lies; a do-it-yourself service manual; an independent guide that covers beaters, lemons, and collectibles; an archive of secret service bulletins granting free repairs; and a legal primer that even lawyers cant beat! Phil delivers the goods on free fixes for Chrysler, Ford, and GM engine, transmission, brake, and paint defects; lets you know about Corvette and Mustang tops that fly off; gives the lowdown on Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota engines and transmissions; and provides the latest information on computer module glitches.

In this hilarious collection of old car stories, Canada’s very own "Old Car Detective" Bill Sherk presents 80 of his favourite stories from all 10 provinces, spanning the years from 1925 to 1965. In this book you will meet the man in New Brunswick who chopped the top off his 1927 Whippet sedan in honour of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; the young fellow from Kingston, Ontario, who thought his 1937 Ford coach looked better with all four fenders taken off; the owner of a 1947 Hudson that burned so much oil he had to wear a snorkel mask while driving it; the father who borrowed his son’s hot-rodded ’53 Monarch (built only in Canada!) and got pulled over by the police for street racing; and the grandmother who moved from England to Canada and drove her Morris Minor on the wrong side of the road.

Behind every old car there’s a story waiting to be told, all the way from your grandparents’ Model T Ford to the Mustang you drove in high school. All the stories and photographs in this book are in chronological order from 1925 to 1965, giving you a 40-year journey through Canada’s rich automotive heritage and brought to life by the people who owned and drove the cars of yesteryear – and some still do!

PART ONE (1925 to 1942) takes you from the middle of the Roaring Twenties to February 1942, when the Second World War brought automobile production to a halt for three long years.

PART TWO (1946 to 1965) takes you through the Baby Boom years when cars driven by Canadians went through many exciting changes in styling and engineering.

If you have ever owned (or still own) a car that was built between 1925 and 1965, turn to the last page in this book to see how you can send in your story for Bill Sherk’s next book.