Presents the history of Montreal, the city, which hosted the Confederacy's largest foreign secret service base during the American Civil War.

Blood and Daring will change our views not just of Canada's relationship with the United States, but of the Civil War, Confederation and Canada itself. In Blood and Daring, lauded historian John Boyko makes a compelling argument that Confederation occurred when and as it did largely because of the pressures of the Civil War. Many readers will be shocked by Canada's deep connection to the war—Canadians fought in every major battle, supplied arms to the South, and many key Confederate meetings took place on Canadian soil. Filled with engaging stories and astonishing facts from previously unaccessed primary sources, Boyko's fascinating new interpretation of the war will appeal to all readers of history.

Unable to achieve sustained military success in the Civil War, the Confederacy tried a daring strategy in 1864--commando-style raids into northern states from Canada. Taking advantage of the undefended border, rebels hit targets along the Great Lakes, where growing antiwar sentiment was an election-year problem for the Lincoln administration. Revisiting one of the forgotten chapters of the war, this is a deeply-researched history of the South's operations in Canada. One of the most significant raids is covered in detail for the first time: Virginia planter turned Confederate agent John Yates Beall's attempt to liberate 2,700 Confederate officers from a prison camp on Lake Erie.

The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.

This book tells the fascinating story of Montreal, Canada, from prehistoric time through the 21st century. From the Iroquoian community of Hochelaga to the bustling economic metropolis that Montreal has become, this account describes the social, economic, political, and cultural forces and trends that have driven the city's development, shedding light on the city's French, British, and American influences. Outlining Montreal's diverse ethnic and cultural origins and its strategic geographical position, this lively account shows how a small missionary colony founded in 1642 developed into a leading economic city and cultural center, the thriving cosmopolitan hub of French-speaking North America.

‘Hurry’ is an intrinsic component of modernity. It exists not only in tandem with modern constructions of mobility, speed, rhythm, and time–space compression, but also with infrastructures, technologies, practices, and emotions associated with the experience of the ‘mobilizing modern’. ‘Hurry’ is not simply speed. It may result in congestion, slowing-down, or inaction in the face of over-stimulus. Speeding-up is often competitive: faster traffic on better roads made it harder for pedestrians to cross, or for horse-drawn vehicles and cyclists to share the carriageway with motorized vehicles. Focusing on the cultural and material manifestations of ‘hurry’, the book’s contributors analyse the complexities, tensions, and contradictions inherent in the impulse to higher rates of circulation in modernizing cities. The collection includes, but also goes beyond, accounts of new forms of mobility (bicycles, buses, underground trains) and infrastructure (street layouts and surfaces, business exchanges, and hotels) to show how modernity’s ‘architectures of hurry’ have been experienced, represented, and practised since the mid nineteenth century. Ten case studies explore different expressions of ‘hurry’ across cities and urban regions in Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and substantial introductory and concluding chapters situate ‘hurry’ in the wider context of modernity and mobility studies and reflect on the future of ‘hurry’ in an ever-accelerating world. This diverse collection will be relevant to researchers, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of planning, cultural and historical geography, urban history, and urban sociology.