Bill Mason Wilderness Artist

Memorial Book for Elaine Williams Dec 2005.

When Bill Mason set off alone into the wilderness in his red canoe, many people went with him, if only in their imaginations. Now, James Raffan leads us into the heart of the vast landscape that was Bill Mason's own brilliant imagination, on a biographical journey that is entertaining, enriching and inspiring.Bill Mason was a filmmaker who gave us classics such as Cry of the Wild and Paddle to the Sea; he was author of the canoeist's bible, Path of the Paddle; he was the consummate outdoorsman. But few Canadians know that his gentleness and rugged self-sufficiency masked a life of great physical struggles. James Raffan reveals the private, sometimes anguished, man behind the legend.

Known primarily for his work as a filmmaker, author and canoeist, Bill Mason spent a lifetime sketching and painting the rivers, lakes, waterfalls, marshlands, cliffs, and campsites they loved. They appear here in all weather, in all seasons. This retrospective collection is a fitting tribute to one of Canada's most beloved artists and naturalists.

A sequel to the phenomenally successful Path of the Paddle, Bill Mason, one of Canada's most respected canoeists, conservationists and artists, offers his insight, experiences and expertise in this new edition of a classic. Included in this edition is an extensive, updated resource list on all aspects of canoeing in North America. (February 2004)

One of our favourite chroniclers of all things Canadian presents a rollicking, personal, photo-filled history of the relationship between a country and its canoes. From the earliest explorers on the Columbia River in BC or the Mattawa in Ontario to a doomed expedition of voyageurs up the Nile to rescue Khartoum; from the author's family roots deep in the Algonquin wilderness to modern families who have canoed across the country (kids and dogs included): Canoe Country is Roy MacGregor's celebration of the essential and enduring love affair Canadians have with our first and still favourite means of getting around. Famous paddlers have been so enchanted with the canoe that one swore God made Canada as the perfect country in which to paddle it. Drawing on MacGregor's own decades spent whenever possible with a paddle in his hand, this is a story of high adventure on white water and the sweetest peace in nature's quietest corners, from the author best able (and most eager) to tell it.

Everything is going as normal in the post-coronavirus world, until it suddenly isn't. Skye Rider leaves Yellowknife carrying data that will form the biggest expose of her journalistic career; she doesn't realize just how important that data is, or what it means to humanity. On the same plane is HAARP technician, Willis Roxton, who's part of the very conspiracy Skye's trying to uncover. When a solar anomaly sends their plane plummeting into the northern Canadian boreal forest, Skye, Willis and Suki, a young Cree boy, face certain death. OUT OF ABADDON follows the three, plus myriad other characters through the days and months following global-wide infrastructure collapse, and into the dystopia their world quickly becomes. Will they survive, and what will remain of society as we know it?

God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail. The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas. With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey. An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.