Credit River Valley

Hans B. Neumann is a history lecturer at Scarborough College, University
of Toronto.

This large-format, beautifully illustrated book is an impressive
pictorial tribute to that river flowing into Lake Ontario just west of
Toronto.

De Visser, long one of Canada’s outstanding landscape photographers,
has done a masterful job pictorially documenting the course of the
Credit River from source to mouth. He takes the reader on a vicarious
trip down the river’s watershed, skilfully blending in the rapidly
changing scenery as the river flows southward toward Lake Ontario. His
outstanding all-color, mostly full-page photographs provide an excellent
visual impression of the varied zones traversed by the river’s course.

The pictures are accompanied by a well-written and -researched text
that explains the general history of the Credit River watershed.
Separate chapters deal with such diverse subjects as the geology of the
region, its settlement by humans (most extensively Europeans), and the
commercial industrial history of the area. The book concludes with an
evocatively illustrated chapter on Rattray Marsh (long a favorite with
local naturalists), which is located near the mouth of the river.

Intelligently conceived, organized, and presented, this volume belongs
on the bookshelves of all ecologically minded readers.