River Song: Sailing the History of the St Lawrence

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

Phil Jenkins’s style is as fluid as his subject as he moves through
decades of history to celebrate Canada’s great river and her national
record. From its beginning in Lake Ontario near Wolfe Island to the
lighthouse at Pointe-des-Monts east of Godbout, the St. Lawrence has
seen wars and shipwrecks for hundreds of years.

Jenkins sailed a tall ship from one end of the river to the other, and
tells the river’s history along the way. The book is nicely designed
with one small oval black-and-white photograph at the start of each
chapter. Jenkins’s narrative is personal and easy-going and includes
intriguing quotations from Canadian writers, such as the following from
Hugh MacLennan’s Rivers of Canada, another impressive tribute to the
great river: “The eternal river is always a new river yet forever the
same: just as men are new in each generation but forever the same, and
always must learn what the others learned before them.”

An Ottawa resident since his teen years, Jenkins is a journalist and a
newspaper columnist. He is also a singer and songwriter. River Song is a
companionable tale, perfect for armchair sailors, geographers, and
anyone fond of good stories. This history goes down easily.