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From 1928 to 1952, interrupted only by World War II, Canadian National Steamships operated a fleet of five luxury liners, sailing from eastern Canadian ports to Bermuda, the West Indies, British Honduras and British Guyana, carrying thousands of […]

The 19th century saw vast numbers of immigrants come to Canada in search of a better life. The majority found it. But for some, the journey to a new beginning ended abruptly. Thousands died shortly after leaving their native land, either on overcrowded […]

Canada is a border nation. Over 75 per cent of us live within 160 kilometres of the United States. By comparison, only 12 per cent of Americans live within 160 kilometres of the boundary. For almost every Canadian, the border is a reality of daily […]

The last great continental glacier several thousand years ago carved out a deep and fast-flowing strait, a forbidding natural barrier separating Cape Breton Island from mainland Nova Scotia. For many “Capers” that was just fine. Two centuries ago, a Cape Breton clergyman intoned a prayer of thanks for “the Gut of Canso, which separates us from the mainland and wickedness thereof.” While the 30-kilometre-long Strait of Canso—connecting the Gulf of […]

Everybody knows Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and many are aware he was responsible for the first manned aircraft flight in Canada when the Silver Dart lifted into the bone-chilling February air over the ice-covered Bras d’Or Lakes in 1909. But few realize he was also the force behind the world’s fastest boat, a futuristic-looking “winged watercraft” that set a speed record in 1919 that stood for more than […]

Those who got in at the right time made fortunes, literally overnight. And it all came from farming—farming with a furry twist. The name of the game was fox farming or ranching, and for several years it remained the hottest industry on Princ e Edward Island.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries brought hard economic times to many Islanders. Some 30,000 residents left the province between 1870 and 1900. By 1924, the population had shrunk […]

When the icebreaker Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship Labrador steamed out of Halifax on July 23, 1954, nobody was predicting it was the start of one of the most momentous voyages in Canadian maritime history. Yet that is exactly what would come to pass four months later when Labrador became the first ship to complete a continuous circumnavigation of North America.

The search for a sea route around the north of the Canadian mainland was an elusive goal not realized for more than 400 years, consuming and frustrating generations of explorers and […]

Clockwise from top: The Empress of Ireland plies the waters of the St. Lawrence in the early 1900s; the government steamer Lady Grey (foreground) sits in a dry dock […]

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The Nile Voyageurs negotiate the river’s second cataract in November 1884.

For nearly 400 Canadians it was a winter like no other. Instead […]