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High on the Big Stone Heart is a collection of vibrant and entertaining essays on the people and places of Canada's Boreal North as seen through the eyes of one of the country's most celebrated writers of non-fiction. Accompany Charles Wilkins as he ranges across the wilds of northern Quebec; ventures deep into the subarctic Yukon in search of caribou; and tracks the north coast of Lake Superior, the world's most elegant and mysterious body of fresh water. Meet Murray Monk, trapper extraordinaire, and Barney Giesler, the king of the wooden boat builders.

From Istanbul to New Delhi to Boulder, Colorado, through Venice, Paris, Rome, and points between. As travellers, we are always walking backwards, forever on the verge of stepping into the unknown, never knowing what waits around the next corner. You could be lost, forget your passport, fall ill. You could be served a bowl of food and not know whether it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral. Even flushing the toilet can be an adventure. You are a child again, innocent and hoping for the best, forced to trust strangers. Quite often this works out. Not always.

Follow George Fetherling as he travels through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia looking for any remaining traces of the Indochina that was. In Indochina Now and Then, George Fetherling recounts multiple journeys through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, keeping an eye peeled and an ear cocked for whatever faint traces of French rule might remain. While doing so he searches diligently in village markets, curio shops, and rubbish bins, not to mention bookstalls along the Seine in Paris, for early picture postcards of Southeast Asia, the sort that native Frenchmen and Frenchwomen sent home to Europe.

In an age when "survival" shows permeate the media, noted northern traveller Hap Wilson shares accounts of his lifelong involvement with wilderness living within the Canadian Shield. Wilson knows better than most how to live in the woods. As park ranger, canoe guide, outfitter, trail builder, and environmental activist, he learned from firsthand experience that nature can neither be beaten or tamed. Trails and Tribulations takes the reader on a journey with the author through natural settings ranging from austere to mysterious and breathtaking.

Unpacked is the inspiring story of a mother in search of herself, a husband and wife fighting for a marriage, a young daughter who rises from confusion, and the scenes and revelations that bring Mo out of her paralyzing grief and into the perspective of a new world."I hadn’t always been lost, but Prince Edward Island had suddenly become too small for my grief. My grief needed the whole world. It needed isolation. It needed inspiration. It needed something to change, something to be released.

Seven Grains of Paradise tells the fascinating and much neglected story about many kinds of food in Africa, a continent with a rich farming tradition, intricate cuisines and a multitude of food cultures.Centuries of disparaging judgements and a half century of media reports churning out images of famine, disease and conflict on the continent, have eclipsed the facts that Africans have marvellous local foods and culinary delicacies, and that small family farms still feed most of the continent.

Written with vivid detail and passion, Spirit Bear is the story of acclaimed naturalist Charles Russell’s journey to study and learn from the extraordinary spirit bears on the remote Princess Royal Island.From early experiences observing black bears in the Rocky Mountains with his father, the well-known writer and broadcaster Andy Russell, to nerve-racking encounters with grizzlies in British Columbia’s Khutzeymateen Valley, Charles Russell has spent a lifetime studying bears in their natural habitat.

David Thompson's Travels is one of the finest early expressions of the Canadian experience. The work is not only the account of a remarkable life in the fur trade but an extended meditation on the land and Native peoples of western North America. The tale spans the years 1784 to 1807 and extends from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, from Athabasca to Missouri. A distinguished literary work, the Travels alternates between the expository prose of the scientist and the vivid language of the storyteller, animated throughout by a restless spirit of inquiry and sense of wonder.

At first you will think this book is a travel memoir about Australia, and so it may surprise you when it reveals itself as a tale of self-discovery and personal awakening. These twists are revealed when the subject turns to dropping out of law school, flirting with anorexia and getting dumped by a string of wildly inappropriate men. Hold steady when that time comes, dear Reader, because that's where the truth happens. And without truth, there can be no story.

Just three months after his wife’s death to breast cancer, Jon packs up his infant son, Myles, and they set off on a six-week “Healing Tour” through Canada and the United States. Their journey, set to the soundtrack of the music Jon loves, sees them negotiating rolling mid-western hills, exploring a cave, losing confidence in the prairies, and finding it again in the desert states. As Jon starts to learn to balance his sorrow with the joy of new fatherhood, a sobering episode in the Rockies compels him to question what his life might have looked like had his wife survived.