A GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER

Had there been no Sam Steele, it has been observed, Hollywood would have had to invent him. Born into the comparative stability of the Victorian era's Pax Britannica, Steele lived to witness the postwar turmoil of the Lost Generation. From humble beginnings in what is now Bracebridge, Ontario, to his knighthood in England two years before his death in 1919, Steele's life epitomized the themes of personal adventure, service to crown and country, and the zeal for modernization and social order that characterized nineteenth-century Canada within the British Empire.

Steele's long and storied career threaded through many pivotal moments in Canada’s settlement and development history: the Fenian raids, the expansion of law and order (on horseback and sporting red serge) across the North-West Territories, the exile of Sitting Bull into Canada, the construction of the national railway that welded together the nation, Riel's Rebellion, the Klondike Gold Rush and opening of the North, the Boer War, and the Canada's coming of age during the First World War.

Norman Leach is the author of the bestselling Passchendaele: Triumph and Tragedy on the Fields of Flanders. He served as historical advisor on the Paul Gross feature-film production of Passchendaele. His other publications include: Great Military Leaders: Charismatic Canadian Commanders; Canadian Battles: Canada's Role in Major World Conflicts; Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon; and Canadian Peacekeepers: Ten Stories of Valour in War-Torn Countries. He is the recipient of no less than 5 Crystal Book Awards from the University of Lethbridge. Saskatchewan-born, Norman Leach graduated with a degree in Strategic Studies from the University of Manitoba, and he gives speeches around the world on Canadian military history. He has been awarded both the Canadian 125 and Alberta Centennial Medals, and has also been named an honourary peacekeeper by the Canadian Armed Forces

Norman Leach's profile page