Jack Boudreau – författare

The story of men who braved the dangerous waterways of the uppper Fraser River to build the GTP Railway. Forbidding canyons, raging rapids and menacing rocks -- this was the daily challenge that faced whitewater men who worked the wild rivers and creeks to bring freight and supplies to northern BC in the years before the Grand Trunk Railway. In particular, the Grand Canyon of British Columbia's Fraser River was infamous for swallowing at least 200 luckless occupants of rafts and small craft between the years 1862-1921. 'Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats' is the story of the 'Canyon Cats' who made their living running the Grand Canyon and other equally dangerous waterways. A total of twelve steamers worked the upper Fraser River during the period 1862-1921 and the dangers faced by these vessels and their steel-nerved captains are legend. It was a perilous existence hauling supplies to the isolated construction camps of the GTP Railroad and in retrospect it seems ironic that these steamers were made obsolete by this same railway upon its completion. 'Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats' is a chronicle of the men whose feats almost defy belief and whose contribution to BC history has gone long unrecognised.

In 1934 international entrepreneur and filmmaker Charles Bedeaux hired a team of Canadian men to trail blaze from Edmonton, Alberta, to Telegraph Creek, BC. What started out as adventure for Carl Davidson and Bob Beattie soon became a treacherous and heartbreaking journey. While Bedeaux hob-nobbed with Europe's elite in Paris, Beattie and Davidson suffered impossible challenges and near starvation in BC's harshest country. After five years of misadventure and virtually no communication from Bedeaux, Beattie and Davidson were informed that the mission had been called off, just before Bedeaux was arrested for espionage. The ill-fated trip is just one of many stories gleaned from the memories of pioneers who settled the interior of British Columbia during the first half of the twentieth century. Hardships and misfortune were the norm, but as Boudreau discovers, many possessed an intangible mettle and a sense of humour that saw them through rough times. In this book, Boudreau has preserved stories in danger of disappearing, and his extraordinary research has also uncovered a collection of intriguing and previously unpublished photographs.

In 1967, in celebration of Canada's 100th birthday, Les Voyageurs left Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, in ten 26-foot canoes. These one hundred gallant men, representing eight provinces and two territories, travelled 5,286 kilometres to Expo '67 in Montreal. The trip took them across such major lakes as Winnipeg, Lake of the Woods, Superior, Nipissing, Huron and Georgian Bay and through 68 gruelling portages. After 104 days of travel, the team from Manitoba paddled into the Expo site as the winners and claimed first prize. In Whitewater Devils Boudreau includes an unbelievable collection of adventures that take place on, in and below the raging rivers and mighty lakes of BC. There are the "grizzly" stories of wildlife photographer Leon Lorenz and the tales of Ian Norn, whose love of kayaking has taken him to roaring rapids and canyons that were out of the reach of humans just a few short years ago. Then there is diver Russ Logan, whose normal day on the job sends him swimming through 85 feet of 36-inch pipe beneath four feet of riverbed or, on another occasion, into the darkness of the Nechako River to remove a drowned moose that was caught in the trash rack of a pulp mill. In his eighth collection, Boudreau once again shares the stories of the brave, adventurous -- sometimes foolhardy--men and women of Northern BC and beyond.