George Mercer Dawson is a towering figure in Canadian history — and science — as the man who led the Geological Survey during its exploration of the Canadian West, mostly from horseback or from a canoe. A tough job for anyone, it was an extraordinary achievement for Dawson. Born in 1849, Dawson was crippled by a childhood illness that left him hunchbacked and in constant pain. He never grew taller than a young boy, and he never let his disabilities stop him. An avid photographer, amateur painter, professional geologist and botanist, and by necessity an ethnographer, Dawson wrote constantly: poetry, journals, reports, notes, and more than five thousand letters, his first at the age of six and his last just two days before he died in 1901. But Dawson never wrote his memoirs. So, a century after his death, Phil Jenkins has lent him a hand. Using Dawson’s own words, and filling in the gaps in Dawson’s voice, Jenkins presents the man who left his heart in western Canada. Their countless stories — from witnessing the last great buffalo stampede to encountering the timeless customs of the Haida — evoke the real excitement of the age of exploration. Dawson knew the pain of unrequited love, suffered the bite of a million mosquitoes, and yet he travelled on, over mountainous physical odds, to become one of the most respected and enjoyed of Victorian Canadians, in the thought-provoking times of Dickens and Darwin.

Beneath My Feet: The Memoirs of George Mercer Dawson

Biographies & Memoirs

Jenkins, Phil

Historical

Emblem Editions

MCCLELLAND STEWART

Fields of Vision

Ginn, Ken

History

Fields of Vision: A Journey to Canada's Family Farms

Americas

Winner of the Ottawa Citizen Award for Non-Fiction Winner of the Canadian Authors Association Lela Common Award for Non-Fiction Shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction Where is here? That question, Northrop Frye believed, was the key to Canadian identity, the secret of our collective psyche. For Phil Jenkins, "here" is a single acre of land on LeBreton Flats in the nation’s capital, Ottawa. In this strikingly inventive book, he stakes that acre and recounts the story of its life. He rides a glass elevator up from the earth’s core, describing the geological strata he passes through before reaching the surface. He watches the land submerge beneath salt water that rises as high as the tallest Ottawa skyscraper, a place where 10,000 years ago beluga whales cavorted. He climbs a pine tree and sees Samuel de Champlain paddle up the Ottawa River, intent on converting the native Algonquins and claiming the acre for France. He walks down Duke Street in the early nineteen hundreds and reports on the desolate acre of today, studying its endangered flora, fauna and future. The acre was part of the land expropriated by the National Capital Commission in the 1960s. Buildings were bulldozed, lives transplanted, and a huge government complex was envisioned. The Pope held a mass on the site in 1984, but to this day nothing has been built. The acre may eventually be included in a native land settlement; for the moment it serves as home to a group of street kids and as an overnight parking lot for tour buses. An Acre of Time is about the way land becomes territory, territory becomes property, and property becomes real estate. It’s about the process by which man alters the place he inhabits. By taking a single acre of Canada and examining it in unexpected ways, Jenkins has produced a highly original celebration of place, a book at once eclectic, invaluable, and unique.

An Acre of Time: The Enduring Value of Place

MacFarlane, Walter & Ross

Winner of the Ottawa Citizen Award for Non-Fiction Winner of the Canadian Authors Association Lela Common Award for Non-Fiction Shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction Where is here? That question, Northrop Frye believed, was the key to Canadian identity, the secret of our collective psyche. For Phil Jenkins, "here" is a single acre of land on LeBreton Flats in the nation’s capital, Ottawa. In this strikingly inventive book, he stakes that acre and recounts the story of its life. He rides a glass elevator up from the earth’s core, describing the geological strata he passes through before reaching the surface. He watches the land submerge beneath salt water that rises as high as the tallest Ottawa skyscraper, a place where 10,000 years ago beluga whales cavorted. He climbs a pine tree and sees Samuel de Champlain paddle up the Ottawa River, intent on converting the native Algonquins and claiming the acre for France. He walks down Duke Street in the early nineteen hundreds and reports on the desolate acre of today, studying its endangered flora, fauna and future. The acre was part of the land expropriated by the National Capital Commission in the 1960s. Buildings were bulldozed, lives transplanted, and a huge government complex was envisioned. The Pope held a mass on the site in 1984, but to this day nothing has been built. The acre may eventually be included in a native land settlement; for the moment it serves as home to a group of street kids and as an overnight parking lot for tour buses. An Acre of Time is about the way land becomes territory, territory becomes property, and property becomes real estate. It’s about the process by which man alters the place he inhabits. By taking a single acre of Canada and examining it in unexpected ways, Jenkins has produced a highly original celebration of place, a book at once eclectic, invaluable, and unique. From the Hardcover edition.

As I Walked About: A Collection of Walking Columns from the Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa Press and Publishing

An Acre of Time

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Books by Jenkins, Phil