Every Trail Has a Story: Heritage Travel in Canada

William A. Waiser is a professor of history at the University of
Saskatchewan. He is the author of Saskatchewan’s Playground and Park
Prisoners.  His book, Loyal Till Death: Indians and the North-West
Rebellion, was nominated for a 1997 Governor Genera

I want to go on a trip with Bob Henderson. An instructor of outdoor
education at McMaster University, Henderson draws on his training as a
historian and his first-hand experience in the field to offer a
collection of heritage trips into Canada’s past.

After an opening section on special places, including the Chilkoot
Trail made famous by the Klondike Gold Rush, he talks about different
ways of exploring early Canada—by horseback, dogsled, cross-country
skiing, and of course, hiking and canoeing. He concludes with a section
on traveller’s journals and how their writing can be used to shape and
inform a visit to the same place today.

Every Trail Has a Story is a perfect gift for anyone with an interest
in the outdoors and Canada’s history. Readers will not only gain an
appreciation of what to expect when they visit some of these historic
places or routes today, they’ll also gain an understanding of what
these places meant to Canada’s history at an earlier time. Henderson
provides the reader with an opportunity to look into the past and try to
imagine what it was like years ago. Heritage travel is the way that
tourism is increasingly headed these days, and as Every Trail Has A
Story attests, Canadians don’t have to leave the country to experience
it.