The Steamboat Era in the Muskokas: Volume 1 (1st Edition)

For more than two hundred years, thousands of giant sailing ships traversed the Great Lakes carrying cargo and passengers. The memory of the romance and elegance of these beautiful ships has almost been forgotten in the search for greater efficiency and speed in our modern world. C.H.J. Snider (1879-1971) chronicled this era in his 1,303 "Schooner Days" columns for Toronto's The Evening Telegram between 1931 and 1954. A great marine researcher and artist, Snider himself worked aboard schooners in his youth and studied first-hand the development of the Great Lakes region. Coupled with Snider’s writings are those of Robert B. Townsend, who, besides introducing Snider’'s stories, adds some of his own.

Steamboats once traveled all of Ontario's navigable waterways -- the Great Lakes, the Ottawa River, the Rideau, the Kawarthas, the Muskoka Lakes -- but nowhere did they find a greater variety of employment than in the North. Here, steamboats served the lumber trade, brought settlers to their new lands, transported produce to markets, and helped to make possible the railways, the mining industry, paper mills, and tourism. They were lifelines to isolated communities and remote island villages. This fascinating account of the heyday of steam-boating in the North is a timely sequel to Richard Tatley's previous books, as divers probe the depths of northern waters for wrecks and our marine heritage is once again an important topic in the popular media and at museums across the country.