National Network for Equitable Library Service

Napoléon a joué un rôle déterminant dans l’Histoire. Mais il n’a pas gagné tous ses combats. Celui qu’il a dû mener contre de sympathiques petites lésions rougeâtres au matin de sa toute dernière bataille l’aurait amené à… frapper son Waterloo ! Plusieurs autres évènements bizarres, drôles ou en apparence anodins ont eu une spectaculaire incidence sur le cours de l’Histoire. Certains ont transformé des vies, d’autres ont littéralement changé le monde que nous connaissons. Amusez-vous à imaginer ce qui serait arrivé : Si Hitler avait réussi sa première tentative de suicide.

La construction du mur de Berlin. L’impensable guerre des Malouines. Le massacre de la Saint-Barthélémy. Les conquêtes chinoises avortées. Si la grande Histoire fait souvent une place de choix aux triomphes et aux coups d’éclat,elle est aussi parfois le fruit du hasard,d’erreurs stupides, de fiascos diplomatiques et de décisions complètement absurdes.

Found on the history shelves of the Greater Victoria Public Library, these twenty true stories are brought to life by Stephen Ruttan. They draw a picture of the life of a city with a recent past that's both unconventional and colourful.

It was the summer of ’43 on a Cariboo ranch. He was 12 and had to become a man. If you were a man, you could become a cowboy. Join the author on this nostalgic look back on the joys, frustrations and observations of growing up and discovering where he belongs. Excerpt from Eldon Lee's foreword: “This book by Alan Fry is probably the best book ever written on ranch life in the Cariboo. His account of everyday events is so perceptive and so true to the mark that all we country types yearn to re-experience its joys, and its miseries.

A biography of the extraordinary Nellie Cashman, a well-loved miner, entrepreneur and philanthropist who lived and worked in the roughest boomtowns of the West in the late-nineteenth century. At a time when well-bred women wore tight corsets and entertained each other at tea, Nellie Cashman (1845–1925) was trekking for hundreds of miles through blizzard conditions to deliver food and supplies to trapped miners in northern BC. An Irish immigrant, Cashman travelled from Boston to San Francisco in search of opportunity.

In the early days, Plains Indians travelled on foot across the vast Canadian prairies, with only fierce, wolf-like dogs as companions. Later, with the arrival of Europeans, horses and canoes appeared on the scene. In Rediscovering the Prairies, Norman Henderson, a leading scholar of the world’s great temperate grasslands, revives the earlier modes of prairie travel. He journeys along 325 kilometres of Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley by dog and travois (the wooden rack pulled by dogs and horses used by First Nations to transport belongings), then by canoe, and finally by horse and travois.

Although Arctic explorer and Hudson Bay Company surveyor John Rae (1813–1893) travelled and recorded the final uncharted sections of the Northwest Passage, he is best known for his controversial discovery of the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition of 1845. Based on evidence given to him by local Inuit, Rae determined that Franklin’s crew had resorted to cannibalism in their final, desperate days. Seen as maligning a national hero, Rae was shunned by British society.

The escapades of this great Canadian are brought to life in a story that combines the lure of gold, the thrill of wilderness exploration and comic tales about life on a southern Alberta ranch. With access to Patterson’s diaries, letters and photographs, as well as numerous interviews with Patterson and members of his family, Finch recounts the adventurous life of this well-loved outdoorsman, writer and rancher and sheds light on some of what Patterson left unsaid. PRAISE FOR R.M.

Scottish doctor and explorer John Rae is a controversial figure in the history of the Arctic. He began his career with the Hudson's Bay Company as a surgeon in Moose Factory, Ontario, where he learned to survey, live off the land, and travel great distances on snowshoes. These skills served him well when, in 1846, he was charged with completing the geography of the northern shore of North America and set out on his first expedition.

Frances Barkley was just eighteen when she became the first European woman to set foot on the west coast of North America. After a sheltered upbringing in England, Frances found herself boarding the Imperial Eagle in 1786 to set sail on an adventurous, round-the-world voyage with her husband, Captain Charles William Barkley.