Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada's History Illustrated With Original Maps

Canada's history comes alive in this innovative book, which utilizes historical maps to illustrate and illuminate the past. Here are the often colorful, sometimes bizarre maps of European explorers who discovered the Americas while seeking a route to the riches of the Orient. Many of these early maps depict imagined straits and passages; one shows the St. Lawrence River flowing from an opening on the coast of California.

Maps show what was known -- and often how little was known -- in a unique geographical way. Explorers created their own maps, but the maps they took with them also succinctly depict what they knew or expected to encounter, an expectation that often shaped their decisions. Native maps show how the land was known to aboriginal peoples before significant contact with Europeans.

This atlas covers a period of a thousand years and contains essentially all the historically significant maps of the area that became Canada and the northern United States, gathered from major archives and libraries all over the world. There are English, French, Spanish, Russian, American, Italian, and Dutch maps; as well as maps drawn by Native people such as the Beothuk, Blackfoot, and Cree. Many of the maps are artistic, some utilitarian, but all are included for their historical significance and the story they have to tell.

Derek Hayes is the author of an award-winning historical atlas of British Columbia and another that details exploration in the North Pacific Ocean.