Voyageur Classics is a series of special versions of Canadian classics, with added material and new introductions. In this bundle we find five classic works of twentieth century fiction, drama and poetry, a period when Canada’s literary identity was shaped. Originally published in 1962, The Silence on the Shore is considered by many critics to be renowned Hugh Garner’s best, most ambitious novel. Originally published in 1967, Combat Journal for Place d’Armes was initially met with shock and anger by most reviewers but has become a literary touchstone. The Donnellys tells the tale of a secret society and a massacre that shocked the Canadian public, a story overlooked by the artistic community until Reaney’s 1975 play elevated the events to the level of legend. In This Poem I Am presents the best of poet Robin Skelton’s adventurous poetry. And Exploration Literature is a groundbreaking collection of early writing inspired by the opening of a continent, an entry point into the beginnings of a literate response to the awe and wonder inspired by an unfolding geography.

Includes

• Canadian Exploration Literature
• Combat Journal for Place d’Armes
• The Donnellys
• In This Poem I Am
• The Silence on the Shore

Hugh Garner (1913-1979) was a Toronto novelist, short story writer and journalist. He published sixteen books during his lifetime, including Hugh Garner's Best Stories , winner of the Governor General's Award for English-language Fiction.
Amy Lavender Harris teaches at York University. She is the author of Imagining Toronto (2010) which was shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize in Canadian literary criticism.
The Consulting Editor for Ricochet Books is Brian Busby.

Hugh Garner's profile page

Paul Stuewe is the author of The Storms Below: The Turbulent Life and Times of Hugh Garner, which was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award in 1988, and Hugh Garner and His Works (1986). Currently, he is an associate professor of English at Green Mountain College in Vermont.

Paul Stuewe's profile page

James Reaney was born on a farm in South Easthope near Stratford, Ontario in 1926. He has won the Governor General's Award three times for his poetry, though he is perhaps better-known as a playwright, especially for his landmark Donnelly trilogy (1974-75). Reaney's theatrical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass returned to the stage at Stratford in the summer of 1996.

His work includes: The Red Heart, poems, 1949; A Suit of Nettles, poems, 1958; Twelve Letters to a Small Town, poems, 1962; The Killdeer & Other Plays, drama, 1962; Colours in the Dark, drama, 1969; Collected Poems, 1972; Listen to the Wind, drama, 1972; The Donnellys, a trilogy of plays, 1974-75; Baldoon (with C.H. Gervais), 1976; The Boy With an R in His Hand, young adult, 1980; Take the Big Picture, young adult, 1986; Alice Through the Looking-Glass, stage adaptation, 1994. James Reaney died in 2008.

James Reaney's profile page

Alan Filewod is professor of Theatre Studies and director of the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph, Ontario. His research fields include Canadian theatre history, radical political theatre and masculinist performance in war play and re-enactment. His books include Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention (2011), Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre (2002), Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Canada (1987), and, with David Watt, Workers' Playtime: Theatre and the Labour Movement since 1970 (2001). He is a past president of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research and of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures/Association des littératures canadienne et québécoise, and is a former editor of Canadian Theatre Review. As a theatre activist he was a member of the Mummers Troupe in Newfoundland in the 1970s, and in the 1980s was a founder of the Canadian Popular Theatre Alliance. Honours include the Ann Saddlemyer Book Prize (twice), the Richard Plant Essay Prize (both from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research), the President’s Distinguished Scholar Award at the University of Guelph, the University of Guelph Distinguished Professor Teaching Award, and the Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations Teaching Award.

Alan Filewod's profile page

Poet, anthologist, editor, teacher, biographer, art and literary critic, historical writer, initiated witch and occultist, Robin Skelton came to Canada in 1963, the author of five collections of poetry and nine other books. He taught at the University of Victoria for almost thirty years, teaching in the Department of English and then in the Department of Creative Writing, of which he was the founding Chairman in 1973. In 1967, together with John Peter, he founded The Malahat Review. He published approximately 1 books. His publications with Beach Holme include Wrestling the Angel (1994) and his newest title One Leaf Shaking (1996). He passed away August 22, 1997 and will be greatly missed.

Robin Skelton's profile page

Harold Rhenisch is an award-winning poet, critic, and cultural commentator. His awards include the Confederation Poetry Prize in 1991 and the BC #38: Yukon Community Newspapers Association Award for Best Arts and Culture Writing in 1996. He is a seven-time runner-up for the CBC/Tilden/Saturday Night Literary Contest. In 2005, he won the ARC Magazine Critics Desk Award for best long poetry review and the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize for "Abandon." He won this prize again in 2007 for "The Bone Yard." His non-fiction book Tom Thomson's Shack was short-listed for two BC Book Prizes in 2000. For its sequel, The Wolves at Evelyn, he won the 2007 George Ryga Award for Social Responsibility in Literature. He is the author of 32 books of poetry, fiction, biography and essays and choreographed Richard Rathwell’s Human Nation for the paper stage. Along with the Norwegian Olav Hauge, he is one of the two poets in the world who learned to write and edit poems by pruning fruit trees, an experience documented in his The Tree Whisperer (Gaspereau, 2021). A direct heir of Bertolt Brecht’s theater, through the dissident playwright and novelist Stefan Schütz, whose radio play Peyote he translated and published, he has invented a theatrical set of cross-genre literary interventions. He has secretly edited and mentored over a hundred writers in the hinterlands of Canada unserved by its university and publishing system and is currently writing a transcultural natural history curriculum and a history of British Columbia centred in the Indian Wars of the American West.

Harold Rhenisch's profile page

Germaine Warkentin is a professor emerita of the Department of English at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

Germaine Warkentin's profile page

Scott Symons' previous books include the novels Place d'Armes: A Combat Journal (1967) and Helmet of Flesh (1986). In 1970 he published Heritage: A Romantic Look at Early Canadian Furniture. He was a professor at the University of Toronto, a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, and a visiting curator at Winterthur and the Smithsonian. In the early 1970s, he was writerinresidence at Simon Fraser University. He has lived most of his recent life in Morocco, and currently lives in Toronto.

Scott Symons' profile page

Christopher Elson is the vice-president of the University of King's College in Halifax and also serves as an associate professor of French and Canadian studies in the King's-Dalhousie Joint Faculty. He is the editor of the book Dear Reader: Selected Scott Symons.

Christopher Elson's profile page