The Wild Ride is a book like no other—an epic record of the opening of the Canadian west. It is the story of a force of untested young men, mounted policemen in crimson coats, sent west to do what they could to bring law and order to the land.

The Wild Ride is history related in a bold way: as storytelling, as theatre, as art and exhibition, brought to life by an inspired collection of photos, artifacts, and ephemera.

Charles Wilkins wrestled Don Starkell's mountainous diary into the classic work of adventure travel Paddle to the Amazon, praised by The New York Times Book Review as "a model expeditionary journal." The winner of three National Magazine Awards, two American Magazine Association awards and The Gregory Clark Outdoor Writing Award, he has also been a finalist for the Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Trillium Book Prize and the Toronto Book Award. His acclaimed non-fiction includes In the Land of Long Fingernails, The Circus at the Edge of the Earth and Walk To New York, and he is the co-author with Gordie Howe of the bestseller After the Applause. He divides his time between Thunder Bay and Muskoka, Ontario.

Charles Wilkins' profile page