Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson (Untold Lives Series)

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In this, Bourrie recognized the opportunity to paint a richer and more instructive picture of the dawn of modern Canada and has done it in a way that is informed, engaging, and enlightening. This in turn led to countless skirmishes, if not outright wars, between the French and the British, as each tried to establish a more or less permanent presence in Hudson’s Bay. Bourrie’s empathy and intercultural competence manifest in his depiction of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee). He has written hundreds of freelance pieces for most of the country’s major magazines and newspapers, which have resulted in several awards and nominations.

It weaves the compelling story of one man’s life into the big-picture events of his times and into a profound account of the forces that shaped our country. Founded in 1985, Whistlestop sells new and secondhand books in all categories and a wide variety of sidelines, from magazines to puzzles, literary t-shirts to cds and dvds, from totes to local honey. He leads us into an Otherworld as distant from contemporary Canada as any universe in science fiction. It makes me wonder if we’re reading the content differently too, and whether books published as the pandemic got underway—and were finished a year before it—will feel stale when we read them. In Bush Runner, a biography of Radisson (1636-1710), author Mark Bourrie continues the depiction, showing people making soup from the vines that grew on trees and, having long since eaten their dogs, boiling the bones that the crows had picked clean.

I have always been drawn to the first world war, the one that began in a remote glen in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1754 and by its end changed the look of the world in 1763. This book is a must read for every Canadian; it provides insight into the formation of European society in Canada which was, essentially, established on the back of the fur trade.

Radisson spent his life trying to be an important part of the rather bizarre European beaver hat trade, but was stymied all his life. Millstone News is a not-for-profit corporation and volunteer-run newspaper for the Mississippi Mills area. Then I got sick and laid it aside, and when I picked it up again, the pandemic was well underway, and I found my concentration shot. His most lasting venture as an Artic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operates today, 350 years later, as North America’s oldest corporation.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. More strenuous bouts of torture would come later, after Radisson betrayed and helped murder three young travelling companions. Just as Radisson arrived in Trois-Rivières in 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his Leviathan, famously writing that life was nasty, brutish and short. He holds a master's in Journalism from Carleton University and a PhD in History from the University of Ottawa.

A fascinating, funny, at times very gruesome and violent, but nevertheless wildly entertaining story. Radisson’s human experience on the frontlines and in the forests breathes life into this period, but it also intersects with the confrontations and cultures of the era like few others.Pierre-Esprit Radisson, starving himself during this “Hunger Winter” of 1659, described people digging for roots, “which could not be done without great difficulty, the earth being frozen two or three feet, and the snow five or six above it. He lived through fantastic advenures: capture and adoption by the Mohawks in 1652, escape to early New York City, trading partner with the indigenous people of the Great Lakes, defecting from the French and witnessing the Great Plague and Great Fire of London, defecting back to the French, co-founding the Hudson's Bay Company, running with pirates. Bush runners congregate in family groups of two parents and from 6 to 12 juveniles in various stages of development. The author offers an unbiased perspective on Indigenous peoples when compared to popular histories written by terrified soldiers and Jesuits or from colonial settler perspectives.