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A sweeping history of this natural wonder. ...
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On Easter Monday 1917 with a blizzard blowing in their faces, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in France seized and held the best defended German bastion on the Western Front - the muddy scarp of Vimy Ridge. The British had failed to take the ridge, and so had the French who had lost 150,000 men in the attempt. Yet these magnificent colonial troops did so in a morning at the cost of 10,000 casualties The author recounts this remarkable feat of arm with bold pace and style. He has gathered many personal accounts from Soldiers who fought at Vimy. He describes the commanders and the men, the organization and the training, and above all notes the thorough preparation for the attack from which the British General Staff could have learned much. The action is placed within the context both of the Battle of Arras, of which this attack was part, and as a milestone in the development of Canada as a nation...
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The Klondike gold rush, which occurred between 1896 and 1899, was one of the strangest outbreaks of “gold fever” ever to take place. With news of California’s rush still fresh in their minds, thousands of men with get-rich-quick dreams hurried to stake out claims in the Yukon. But they did not count on the murderous weather…or the severe mountain passes that protected the gold. Among those who came with high hopes were author Pierre Berton’s parents; here, he presents vividly written, firsthand accounts of the gunfights, con men, avalanches, frostbite, and starvation people endured. It is an amazing and unforgettable true story of superhuman challenges, death-defying adventure, and lifelong friendships. ...
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In 1897 a grimy steamer docked in Seattle and set into epic motion the incredible succession of events that Pierre Berton's exhilarating The Klondike Fever chronicles in all its splendid and astonishing folly. For the steamer Portland bore two tons of pure Klondike gold. And immediately, the stampede north to Alaska began. Easily as many as 100,000 adventurers, dreamers, and would-be miners from all over the world struck out for the remote, isolated gold fields in the Klondike Valley, most of them in total ignorance of the long, harsh Alaskan winters and the territory's indomitable terrain. Less than a third of that number would complete the enormously arduous mountain journey to their destination. Some would strike gold. Berton's story belongs less to the few who would make their fortunes than to the many swept up in the gold mania, to often unfortunate effects and tragic ends. It is a story of cold skies and avalanches, of con men and gamblers and dance hall girls, of sunken ships, of suicides, of dead horses and desperate men, of grizzly old miners and millionaires, of the land - its exploitation and revenge. It is a story of the human capacity to dream, and to endure....
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