A Country So Interesting: The Hudson's Bay Company and Two Centuries of Mapping, 1670-1870

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Ruggles’s work is unquestionably a landmark in the history of Canadian
cartography. It brings order, explanation, and enhanced accessibility to
the enormous mass of material produced by the “servants” of the
Hudson’s Bay Company in 200 years of mapmaking.

This oversized book is an introduction and source guide to that
archival material—838 maps and more than 500 sketch maps. Ruggles
explains the cartographer’s arts, tools, and challenges, and presents
a catalogue of the Hudson’s Bay map collections, both in Canada and
England. At the same time he gives us vivid portraits of the period’s
most notable explorers/cartographers, as well as a good deal of
information about the methods and policies under which these early
explorers and surveyors worked.

An interesting feature of the book is a series of “progress report”
maps, showing what parts of Canada were known/unknown to European
explorers at various intervals in our history.

The heavy slogging of the detailed, carefully researched text is
relieved by a selection of 66 glossy plates depicting maps, charts,
sketches, and plans, dating from the 1670s.

This is an essential addition to any Canadian-history collection.