Imagining how prominent national historic sites might confront critical issues in environmental history.

"Parks Canada official guidebook"--Cover.

An illustrated, region-by-region guide to the national parks of Canada, offering sample itineraries and site-by-site tours, and providing historical information, location and activity descriptions, tips for travelers, maps, and lodging information with addresses, phone numbers, and price ranges.

"Authorized Heritage" analyses the history of commemoration at heritage sites across western Canada. Using extensive research from predominantly government records, it argues that heritage narratives are almost always based on national messages that commonly reflect colonial perceptions of the past. Yet many of the places that commemorate Indigenous, fur trade, and settler histories are contested spaces, places such as Batoche, Seven Oaks, and Upper Fort Garry being the most obvious. At these heritage sites, Indigenous views of history confront the conventions of settler colonial pasts and represent the fluid cultural perspectives that should define the shifting ground of heritage space. Robert Coutts brings his many years of experience as a public historian to this detailed examination of heritage sites across the prairies. He shows how the process of commemoration often reflects social and cultural perspectives that privilege a conventional and conservative national narrative. He also examines how class, gender, and sexuality often remain apart from the heritage discourse. Most notably, Authorized Heritage examines how governments became the mediators of what is heritage and, just as significantly, what is not.

There have been guidebooks to military sites before, but no other book has covered the War of 1812 in its entirety. This well-illustrated updated edition covers more than 400 historic sites of the War of 1812, both well-known and obscure, in both Canada and the United States. The author has used old pen and ink drawings from the last century to give a "then and now" feel to the book. Curious to know what is at the site of the Battle of Queenston Heights? Besides giving readers a detailed history of the events that occurred at the sites, the author describes what they have to offer visitors today, be it a historical plaque, historic house, or major interpretive centre. This book is a handy tool for both travellers and historians. It remains the only book on the market offering a comprehensive guide to nearly all of the sites in our last war with the United States.