The Lake Nipissing area is best known as a voyageur route between the Ottawa River and Georgian Bay visited by explorers, missionaries, and fur traders. All of these travellers, however, were on a journey elsewhere. This book focuses on the less well-known story of the area's transformation into a tourist destination between 1875 and 1955.

Finalist for the 2023 Trillium Book Award The world is desperate for cobalt. It drives the proliferation of digital and clean technologies. But this “demon metal” has a horrific present and a troubled history. The modern search for cobalt has brought investors back to a small town in Northern Canada, a place called Cobalt. Like the demon metal, this town has a dark and turbulent history. The tale of the early-twentieth-century mining rush at Cobalt has been told as a settler’s adventure, but Indigenous people had already been trading in metals from the region for two thousand years. And the events that happened here — the theft of Indigenous lands, the exploitation of a multicultural workforce, and the destruction of the natural environment — established a template for resource extraction that has been exported around the world. Charlie Angus reframes the complex and intersectional history of Cobalt within a broader international frame — from the conquistadores to the Western gold rush to the struggles in the Democratic Republic of Congo today. He demonstrates how Cobalt set Canada on its path to become the world’s dominant mining superpower.

In the four years between 1881 and 1885, Canada was forged into one nation by the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Last Spike reconstructs the incredible story of how some 2,000 miles of steel crossed the continent in just five years — exactly half the time stipulated in the contract. Pierre Berton recreates the adventures that were part of this vast undertaking: the railway on the brink of bankruptcy, with one hour between it and ruin; the extraordinary land boom of Winnipeg in 1881–1882; and the epic tale of how William Van Horne rushed 3,000 soldiers over a half-finished railway to quell the Riel Rebellion. Dominating the whole saga are the men who made it all possible — a host of astonishing characters: Van Horne, the powerhouse behind the vision of a transcontinental railroad; Rogers, the eccentric surveyor; Onderdonk, the cool New Yorker; Stephen, the most emotional of businessmen; Father Lacombe, the black-robed voyageur; Sam Steele, of the North West Mounted Police; Gabriel Dumont, the Prince of the Prairies; more than 7,000 Chinese workers, toiling and dying in the canyons of the Fraser Valley; and many more — land sharks, construction geniuses, politicians, and entrepreneurs — all of whom played a role in the founding of the new Canada west of Ontario.

The Carleton Library Series returns this classic in political economy and Canadian historical writing to print, with a new introduction by Robert Young. The Politics of Development reveals the full extent of state involvement in the exploitation of natural resources in the province of Ontario and the reciprocal impact resource development has had in shaping politics in the province. H.V. Nelles offers a revised staples interpretation, exposing the resource politics at the heart of central Canadian economic development. He explains the business history of the forestry and mining industries from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, stressing the importance of public policy in their development. He offers a definitive interpretation of the emergence, development, and political dynamics of public ownership within the hydro-electric sector. Considered one of the seminal works on Canadian political economy The Politics of Development still has important things to say about public policy and will be of interest to historians, political scientists, economists, and those interested in environmental history.