Tales from the Great Lakes

Contributor to newspapers and magazines in Canada, Britain and United States on travel- and transportation themes.

Author: Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific's greatest ship (Erin: Boston Mills, 1992).

Reviewer for CBRA since 1993.

For about 25 years, C.H.J. Snider wrote a weekly column entitled
“Schooner Days” for the Toronto Evening Telegram. Snider’s own
research and his many conversations with yarn-spinning old sailors
provided the basis for the columns, most of which dealt with the wooden
sailing ships that played an important, if largely unheralded role, in
the shipping scene of Lake Ontario in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Snider’s final column appeared 40 years ago. Robert Townsend has
selected for this volume about 50 of the 1300 columns that were
published.

Snider writes with a distinctive and appealing style. His columns are
strong on anecdote, and he displays a genuine fondness for the sailors
who confronted the worst of wind and wave, sometimes with an irrational
faith in the indestructibility of their ships. That so many ships and
sailors survived as long as they did is testimony to the skill of the
crews and the capability of the shipbuilders. The pleasure of reading
Snider’s deft portraits of the sailing-ship era is muted by some
sloppy proofreading, which has led to such transmutations as “boot
traps” for “boot straps” and “jailshaft tunnel” for
“tailshaft tunnel.”