What does it mean to be a Canadian? What great ideas have changed our country? An award-winning writer casts her eye over 150 years of Canadian history."Our country owes its success not to some imagined tribal singularity but to the fact that, although its thirty-five million citizens do not look, speak or pray alike, we have learned to share this land and for the most part live in neighbourly sympathy." —Charlotte Gray, from the Preface of The Promise of Canada On the eve of Canada's sesquicentennial celebrations comes a richly rewarding new book from acclaimed historian Charlotte Gray about what it means to be Canadian. Readers already know Gray as an award-winning biographer, a writer who has brilliantly captured significant individuals and dramatic moments in our history. Now, in The Promise of Canada, she weaves together masterful portraits of nine influential Canadians, creating a unique history of the country over the past 150...

Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of over thirty thousand people. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history. Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of life—not only prospectors but also newspapermen, bankers, prostitutes, priests, and lawmen. Gold Diggers follows six stampeders—Bill Haskell, a farm boy who hungered for striking gold; Father Judge, a Jesuit priest who aimed to save souls and lives; Belinda Mulrooney, a twenty-four-year-old who became the richest businesswoman in town; Flora Shaw, a journalist who transformed the town’s governance; Sam Steele, the officer who finally established order in the lawless town; and most famously Jack London, who left without gold, but with the stories that would make him a legend. Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and stories, Charlotte Gray delivers an enthralling tale of the gold madness that swept through a continent and changed a landscape and its people forever.

Charlotte Gray's biography takes the popular image of Alexander Graham Bell and delves into the man behind the genius; it's a rare look into the figure that helped revolutionize the modern world. From an early age Bell possessed exceptional hearing and developed an interest in sound. Upon moving to the United States, he joined the race for inventing the "speaking telegraph." With his innate talent and understanding of how sound waves might relate to electrical waves, he pulled ahead among his rival inventors. His background, training, and personality lent themselves well to being an effective teacher for the hearing impaired. He ended his career while in the race to develop the airplane. Bell's life was in constant tension between the pulls of scientific breakthroughs and the urge to improve the lives' of the deaf.

A graceful biography that was a #1 national bestseller, Flint & Feather confirms Charlotte Gray's position as a master biographer, a writer with a rare gift for transforming a historical character into a living, breathing woman who immediately captures our imagination. In Flint & Feather, Charlotte Gray explores the life of this nineteenth-century daughter of a Mohawk chief and English gentlewoman, creating a fascinating portrait of a young woman equally at home on the stage in her " Indian" costume and in the salons of the rich and powerful. Uncovering Pauline Johnson's complex and dramatic personality, Flint & Feather is studded with triumph and tragedy, mystery and romance— a first-rate biography blending turn-of-the-century Canadian history and the vibrant story of a woman whose unforgettable voice still echoes through the years.

In February 1915, a member of one of Canada's wealthiest families was shot and killed on the front porch of his home in Toronto as he was returning from work. Carrie Davies, an 18-year-old domestic servant, quickly confessed. But who was the victim here? Charles "Bert" Massey, a scion of a famous family, or the frightened, perhaps mentally unstable Carrie, a penniless British immigrant? When the brilliant lawyer Hartley Dewart, QC, took on her case, his grudge against the powerful Masseys would fuel a dramatic trial that pitted the old order against the new, wealth and privilege against virtue and honest hard work. Set against a backdrop of the Great War in Europe and the changing face of a nation, this sensational crime is brought to vivid life for the first time. As in her previous bestselling book, Gold Diggers--now in production as a Discovery Television miniseries--multi-award-winning historian and biographer Charlotte Gray has created a captivating...

Susanna Moodie and Catharine Traill, English-born sisters, came to Canada with high expectations. These hopes were not fulfilled, but Moodie and Traill adapted to their new home and, in time, produced work that would help shape the nation's literary culture. The sisters arrived in what were then the wilds of Ontario in 1834, their husbands having assured them that, by virtue of their education and background, they would immediately be welcomed as members of the ruling elite. They instead found themselves "stuck in the backwoods," where free land was to be had. But though at first both complained vigorously and often and developed what Northrop Frye called a "garrison mentality," they eventually adjusted to frontier life and its many hardships and sorrows, from subfreezing temperatures to the death of children. Their difficulties were not eased by their husbands' evident inability to earn or keep money, and, though well received, their early writings about life on the edge of the wilderness--Susanna's poems and sketches, Catharine's book The Backwoods of Canada--did not earn much money either. But, as Charlotte Gray deftly documents, the sisters kept at it, producing now-classic works such as Roughing It in the Bush and Life in the Clearings and earning considerable fame throughout the English-speaking world. "Until I decided to write this double biography," writes Gray, "I had not noticed how often Susanna and Catharine appear in the fiction and non-fiction of contemporary Canadian writers. More than just Canadian literary archetypes, they haunt our collective imagination." Gray's graceful biography crowns the huge library devoted to the sisters, and it makes a fine companion for readers now discovering their work and contributions. --Gregory McNamee