Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada's History Illustrated with Original Maps [Hardcover]

Geographer and ardent map collector Derek Hayes tells the story of his adopted homeland in his Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada's History Illustrated with Original Maps, a 272-page book in which virtually all the text comes in the form of extensive annotations to 422 historical maps of Canada, dating from the earliest known through the mid 20th-century. With each map reproduced in glorious colour, and the accompanying prose clearly demonstrating the author's love of his subject matter, this Historical Atlas holds tremendous appeal for anyone interested in the art of cartography--not to mention those interested in Canada's history and land. "The selection of maps is purely personal," Hayes writes, "although I have done my best to ensure that all maps significant to the history of Canada are included.... But maps have also been included for their artistic merit, interest, or even because they are so far out in geographical understanding as to hold a fascination to us today."

Not to be confused with the University of Toronto Press's excellent three-volume Historical Atlas of Canada (and its offshoot, the Concise Historical Atlas of Canada), which offers all-new cartography based on recent scholarship, Hayes's Historical Atlas lets the antique documents--no matter how flawed or biased--tell their own stories. His insightful commentary, meanwhile, draws attention to just what the idiosyncrasies contained in these historical charts reveal about the nation and its people. All of the famous expeditions by European explorers--Saint Brendan, Leif the Lucky, Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, Henry Hudson, James Cook, John Palliser, and more--are here, as well as the handful of surviving maps produced by Canada's indigenous peoples. There is even an example by Shanawdithit, the woman believed to be the last survivor of the Beothuk nation. Yet Hayes, whose other titles include the award-winning Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, reaches beyond the obvious to shed light on some of the more obscure corners of his field, which makes this Historical Atlas--the first ever to be based entirly on antique sources--particularly compelling. He discusses, for example, how three-dimensional maps were created not as navigational tools but as marketing aids, gives examples of the industry-specific maps produced by fire insurance companies, and makes extensive case studies of figures like Peter Pond (a cofounder of the North West Company) whose remarkably detailed maps reflect their maker's flawed but optimistic belief that Great Slave Lake drains into the Pacific Ocean.

The maps themselves are stunning. Overall, this Historical Atlas of Canada is as handsome as it is fascinating. --Deirdre Hanna

"This is a gorgeous piece of work, rich and heavy and brimming with the minutiae of attempts to capture aspects of the Canadian landscape by cartography." -- The Georgia Straight --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Canada's history comes alive in this magnificent depiction of the path of our shared adventure. Original maps, many never before reproduced, reinvigorate the drama of the settling and shaping of this land.

People love maps! Maps show the way things were-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 Canada's aboriginal peoples before significant contact with Europeans.

The Historical Atlas of Canada covers a period of a thousand years and contains the historically significant maps of Canada gathered from major archives and libraries around the world, including treasures of the National Archives of Canada-many never before published-and the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company. The atlas tells Canada's history using maps that depict the seizing of an empire and the settlement of the prairie, of war and wanderlust, battles and boundaries, forts and the fur trade, river communications and railway surveys, rebellion and gold rushes.

All of the major cities in Canada are represented, including the map attached to the treaty purchasing Toronto from the Indians. Many of the maps are artistic, some utilitarian, but all are included for their historical significance and the stories they tell. The result is an understanding of Canada's past from a profoundly new perspective.

Included within this atlas are maps by the founder of New France, Samuel de Champlain; master mapmaker James Cook; master surveyors David Thompson, Philip Turnor and Peter Fidler, along with English, French, Spanish, Russian, American, Italian and Dutch maps; and maps drawn by Native people such as the Beothuk, Blackfoot and Cree.

Derek Hayes has been interested in old maps for most of his life. After completing a degree in geography, he constructed many of his own maps as a city planner and consultant. He is the author of the award-winning Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest and Historical Atlas of the North Pacific Ocean. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.