Canadians on the Nile
Title | Canadians on the Nile PDF eBook |
Author | Roy MacLaren |
Publisher | UBC Press |
Pages | 222 |
Release | 2011-11-01 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0774844299 |
Canadians on the Nile, 1882-1898 is a lively description of Canada's romantic and little known involvement in the greatest imperial drama of Queen Victoria's later years. Chosen for their unique skills, 400 English- and French-speaking Canadian voyageurs transported imperial forces up the Nile in a daring attempt to rescue "Chinese" Gordon, besieged in Khartoum. A generation later, their imperial work was completed by another Canadian, Sir Percy Girouard, who built the desert railway which enabled Kitchener to capture Khartoum in 1898. Offering fresh insights to the general reader as well as to historians and students, this authoritative work is also a perceptive, exciting, and humorous account of a curious way station along the meandering road to Canadian nationhood.
Mohawks on the Nile
Title | Mohawks on the Nile PDF eBook |
Author | Carl Benn |
Publisher | Dundurn |
Pages | 282 |
Release | 2009-08-14 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1770705937 |
Mohawks on the Nile explores the absorbing history of sixty Aboriginal men who left their occupations in the Ottawa River timber industry to participate in a military expedition on the Nile River in 1884-1885. Chosen becuase of their outstanding skills as boatmen and river pilots, they formed part of the Canadian Voyageur Contingent, which transported British troops on a fleet of whaleboats through the Nile's treacherous cataracts in the hard campaigning of the Sudan War. Their objective was to reach Khartoum, capital of the Egyptian province of Sudan. Their mission was to save its governor general, Major-General Charles Gordon, besieged by Muslim forces inspired by the call to liberate Sudan from foreign control by Muhammad Ahmad, better known to his followers as the "the Mahdi." In addition to Carl Benn's historical exploration of this remarkable subject, this book includes the memoirs of two Mohawk veterans of the campaign, Louis Jackson and James Deer, who recorded the details of their adventures upon returning to Canada in 1885. It also presents readers with additional period documents, maps, historical images, and other materials to enhance appreciation of this unusual story, including an annotated roll of the Mohawks who won praise for the exceptional quality of their work in this legendary campaign in the chronicle of Britain's expansion into Africa.
Canadians on the Nile, 1882-1898
Title | Canadians on the Nile, 1882-1898 PDF eBook |
Author | Roy MacLaren |
Publisher | University of Washington Press |
Pages | 232 |
Release | 1978 |
Genre | Canadians |
ISBN |
FROST (copy 3): From the John Holmes Library collection.
Adrift on the Nile
Title | Adrift on the Nile PDF eBook |
Author | Naguib Mahfouz |
Publisher | Anchor |
Pages | 177 |
Release | 1994-01-01 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0385423330 |
First published in 1966, Naguib Mahfouz’s Adrift on the Nile is an atmospheric novel that dramatizes the rootlessness of Egypt’s cosmopolitan middle class. Anis Zani is a bored and drug-addicted civil servant who is barely holding on to his job. Every evening he hosts a gathering on a houseboat on the Nile, where he and a motley group of cynical and aimless friends share a water pipe full of kif, a mixture of tobacco and marijuana. When a young female journalist—an “alarmingly serious person”—joins them and begins secretly documenting their activities, the group’s harmony starts disintegrating, culminating in a midnight joyride that ends in tragedy.
The Nile
Title | The Nile PDF eBook |
Author | Toby Wilkinson |
Publisher | A&C Black |
Pages | 406 |
Release | 2014-02-13 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1408839938 |
From Herodotus's day to the present political upheavals, the steady flow of the Nile has been Egypt's heartbeat. It has shaped its geography, controlled its economy and moulded its civilisation. The same stretch of water which conveyed Pharaonic battleships, Ptolemaic grain ships, Roman troop-carriers and Victorian steamers today carries modern-day tourists past bankside settlements in which rural life – fishing, farming, flooding – continues much as it has for millennia. At this most critical juncture in the country's history, foremost Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey up the Nile, north from Lake Victoria, from Cataract to Cataract, past the Aswan Dam, to the delta. The country is a palimpsest, every age has left its trace: as we pass the Nilometer on the island of Elephantine which since the days of the Pharaohs has measured the height of Nile floodwaters to predict the following season's agricultural yield and set the parameters for the entire Egyptian economy, the wonders of Giza which bear the scars of assault by nineteenth-century archaeologists and the modern-day unbridled urban expansion of Cairo – and in Egypt's earliest art (prehistoric images of fish-traps carved into cliffs) and the Arab Spring (fought on the bridges of Cairo) – the Nile is our guide to understanding the past and present of this unique, chaotic, vital, conservative yet rapidly changing land.
Canoe Country
Title | Canoe Country PDF eBook |
Author | Roy MacGregor |
Publisher | Vintage Canada |
Pages | 322 |
Release | 2016-05-10 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 030736142X |
One of our favourite chroniclers of all things Canadian presents a rollicking, personal, photo-filled history of the relationship between a country and its canoes. From the earliest explorers on the Columbia River in BC or the Mattawa in Ontario to a doomed expedition of voyageurs up the Nile to rescue Khartoum; from the author's family roots deep in the Algonquin wilderness to modern families who have canoed across the country (kids and dogs included): Canoe Country is Roy MacGregor's celebration of the essential and enduring love affair Canadians have with our first and still favourite means of getting around. Famous paddlers have been so enchanted with the canoe that one swore God made Canada as the perfect country in which to paddle it. Drawing on MacGregor's own decades spent whenever possible with a paddle in his hand, this is a story of high adventure on white water and the sweetest peace in nature's quietest corners, from the author best able (and most eager) to tell it.
Walking the Nile
Title | Walking the Nile PDF eBook |
Author | Levison Wood |
Publisher | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
Pages | 455 |
Release | 2016-01-12 |
Genre | Travel |
ISBN | 0802190685 |
The explorer and author of Walking the Americas and Walking the Himalayas delivers “a bold travelogue, illuminating great swathes of modern Africa” (Kirkus Reviews). Starting in November 2013 in a forest in Rwanda—where a modest spring spouts a trickle of clear, cold water—writer, photographer, and explorer Levison Wood set forth on foot, aiming to become the first person to walk the entire length of the fabled river. He followed the Nile for nine months, over 4,000 miles, through six nations—Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, the Republic of Sudan, and Egypt—to the Mediterranean coast. Like his predecessors, Wood camped in the wild, foraged for food, and trudged through rainforest, swamp, savannah, and desert, enduring life-threatening conditions at every turn. He traversed sandstorms, flash floods, minefields, and more, becoming a local celebrity in Uganda, where a popular rap song was written about him, and a potential enemy of the state in South Sudan, where he found himself caught in a civil war and detained by the secret police. As well as recounting his triumphs, like escaping a charging hippo and staving off wild crocodiles, Wood’s gripping account recalls the loss of Matthew Power, a journalist who died suddenly from heat exhaustion during their trek. As Wood walks on, often joined by local guides who help him to navigate foreign languages and customs, Walking the Nile maps out African history and contemporary life. “Woods emerges as a dutiful and brave guide.”—Los Angeles Times “Many have attempted this holy grail of an expedition—so I admire Lev’s determination and courage to pull this off.”—Bear Grylls “A brilliant book.”—Financial Times