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Canada is packed with intriguing places for travel where heritage and landscape interact to create stories that fire our imagination. Scattered across the land are incredible tales of human life over the centuries. From the Majorville rock formation (dated as being older than Stonehenge), through the systems of walking trails developed by pre-contact Native Peoples, and the fur trade routes, to the more recent grand stories of the Chilkoot Gold Rush of 1897, Bob Henderson, the traveller, captures our living history in its relationship to the land – best expressed through the Norwegian quote "nature is the true home of culture."
The diversity of fascinating content includes the ancient James Bay landmark (the "Wonderful" Stone); the mountain treks of naturalist Mary Schaffer Warren; the west coast observations of George Vancouver; practices such as dog sledding, warm winter camping and canoeing that allow for heritage insights; the trails of Dundas, Ontario; the exploits of missionary Gabriel Sagard; the recluse Louis Gamache of Anticosti Island; the abandoned gravesites along the coast of Newfoundland – to name but a few.
As historian Michael Bliss once said, "We have to find a way to make history smell again." Author Bob Henderson brings the "fragrance of the past" into the present and invites us to imagine and participate.
"Like an enthused hummingbird too eager to land, Bob Henderson leads a wide-ranging tour of the vast garden of Canadian history and landscape. Once entrusted with the scent of intrigue we are invited to follow these stories and trails deeper, make them speak and inform our own travels and impressions. Here are stepping stones and touchstones, paths toward richer engagements via a storied and fabulous past."
— Alexandra & Garrett Conover, co-authors of The Snow Walker’s Companion
"I pulled off the river; a log cabin set back in the woods had caught my eye. Though very old it was in good shape — there was no lock on the door. A framed note beside it read, ’Leave as you found it.’ The interior was neat and tidy, a complete set of blackened pots hung on the walls, a small stack of kindling by the open door of a Findlay stove. ’A perfect place,’ I thought to myself. As I turned to take in the rest of the cabin I saw before me Canada/Yukon rivers, Labrador fiords, Prairie medicine wheels, Superior’s north shore, portage and trail - it was all there before me, across space and time. As I stood there ghosts emerged from the walls, trappers, cowboys, ill-fated explorers, lucky canoeists — all in the same room, all eager to tell their stories. Such is the nature of Bob Henderson’s wonderful book."
- Ian Tamblyn, songwriter
Watch for More Trails, More Tales coming November 2014.

BOB HENDERSON has been guiding trips and teaching in the outdoors since 1973, primarily Outdoor and Environmental Education at McMaster University. Early years canoeing in Algonquin, Temagami, and Quetico eventually led to Arctic travel in Canada, Iceland, and Norway. These regions have been a focus of Bob’s writings concerning heritage travel and conceptualizing outdoor education and life. He now splits his time between Uxbridge and Algonquin Park in Ontario. His books include Every Trail Has a Story: Heritage Travel in Canada and Nature First: Outdoor Life the Friluftsliv Way. He serves as resource editor for Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education and Nastwagan: Journal of the Wilderness Canoe Association.Sean Blenkinsop grew up in the boreal forests of Canada’s north and is now a professor in the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia. With more than 30 years in outdoor, environmental, and experiential education his interest in wild pedagogies comes quite naturally. He has been involved in starting three nature-based, place-based eco-schools (all in the public system) and has written extensively about these experiences and the philosophical underpinnings of eco-education.

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James Raffan is a prolific writer, speaker, and geographer, and the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Circling The Midnight Sun; Emperor Of The North; Bark, Skin And Cedar; and Fire In The Bones. He has written for a variety of media outlets, including National Geographic, Canadian Geographic, Up Here, Explore and The Globe and Mail, and produced radio and television documentaries for CBC Radio and the Discovery Channel. His work has taken him all over the world. He is an international fellow of the Explorers Club, a past chair of the Arctic Institute of North America, and a fellow and past governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, service for which he was awarded many medals, including the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. From 2010 to 2013, he traveled through the Arctic Circle, spending time in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, as he researched and wrote on culture and climate change in the North. He lives in Seeley’s Bay, Ontario. Visit him at JamesRaffan.ca or follow him on Twitter @raffjam.

James Raffan's profile page