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A Union Jack snaps in the breeze on a sunny, but chilly November morning. It’s hoisted high on the Quebec City cliff where the St. Lawrence River narrows. Dignitaries have gathered in the Jardin des Gouverneurs near the Chateau St. Louis, the fortress quarters for governors of New France and British North America dating back more than two centuries to Champlain. It is 1827 and the officials are there to lay the cornerstone for the monument to General James Wolfe and Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. At the ceremony, dressed in full regalia befitting such an important occasion, are top officers [...]

There is no end to the What Ifs? that determined the shape and texture of this country. What if Champlain had no appetite for privation and retreated to France? What if Wolfe had not found his path up the slope? What if so many Americans had not been loyal? What if there had been no champagne at Charlottetown? Here’s another one: What if 54 years ago a stubborn little man from Gambo, Nfld., had not had an epiphany during breakfast in a Montreal hotel and decided that Newfoundland and Labrador would be better off as a province of Canada than as [...]

He just couldn’t turn down such a brazen dare. All his life Louis Cyr had been called upon to prove the immense strength bestowed upon him by nature. He was not about to allow some upstart to arbitrarily strip him of the title of World’s Strongest Man, earned and bolstered at countless public demonstrations and weight-lifting show-downs throughout North America and England. So, on Feb. 26, 1906–when he was 44–Cyr took on Hector Décarie, a young buck at the peak of his rigorous and scientific physical [...]