Mark Bourrie – författare

Many a Midnight Ship brings to life the powerful history of the greatest northern waterway of the North American continent. These fourteen stories illustrate the majesty of the Great Lakes and the tragedy bestowed upon its waters. From the "coffin" ship Atlantic, which foundered in 1852 along with some 300 lives, and which salvagers say still has millions of dollars of gold on board, to the burning of the Erie and some 250 Dutch immigrants, to the violent storm that tore the Algoma apart off Isle Royale, where crew and passengers clamored for their lives only twenty yards form shore as treacherous currents prevented most of them from reaching land. These stories recount not only the calamities the Great Lakes have seen, but the remarkable acts of heroism, courage, and survival that have arisen when humans defy nature.

Ninety Fathoms Down is the first collection of Canadian stories about the Great Lakes, the inland seas that shaped the development of Ontario. This fascinating book explains the history of the Canadian side of the Great Lakes by telling the stories of people whose lives took dramatic turns on the vast lakes. In these pages you will meet people like Paul Ragueneau, the Jesuit priest who tried to save thousands of starving Hurons in 1650; the seventeenth-century dreamer Rene-Robert Cavalier de La Salle, whose luck always let him down; and Lt. Miller Worsley, who takes revenge on the loss of his little supply ship Nancy by capturing two of the American warships that sank his schooner in the War of 1812. The people whose stories are told here are often at odds with the power of the lakes themselves. For instance, the three hundred sailors who lost their lives in the great storm of 1913 and the passengers of the steamship Algoma, torn apart on a Lake Superior beach by hurricane winds in 1885, learned that there are times when the lakes are unforgiving. Politics, too, play a role in the lore of the Great Lakes. Confederate pirates once prowled Lake Erie, hoping someday for a chance to attack Buffalo or Cleveland and change the outcome of the Civil War. Politicians, including Sir John A. Macdonald, have been at the mercy of the lakes in shipwrecks that have changed Ontario’s history. The Great Lakes have been a stage for courage, greed, misfortune, and murder. Ninety Fathoms Down fills an important void in Ontario’s popular history by using the theme of the great waterways to show the development of central Canada.

In the summer of 1993, people in Ontario were shocked by one of the most bizarre murders in the province’s history. A patient at the Brockville psychiatric hospital was brutally killed in a forest grove on the grounds of the institution. One of the killers, a nearly blind psychiatric patient, walked into a nearby police station and turned himself in. The other murderer lay near the body in a sleeping bag, drugged into unconsciousness. Police found that the myopic suspect is one of the Canada’s most dangerous killers, David Michael Krueger. His accomplice was Bruce Hamill, a murderer who had been freed after years of treatment at Penatanguishene’s Oak Ridge Institution for the criminally insane. Brockville hospital authorities had let Hamill escort Krueger on his first day pass in thirty-five years. How could this killing have happened?The bizarre story of Krueger’s life unfolds in this tightly-written book. It explores how Krueger allowed his strange fantasies to run his own life and how he was able to dupe psychiatrists, lawyers, and fellow inmates of the country’s toughest institution into doing his bidding.

WINNER OF THE 2020 RBC TAYLOR PRIZE • "Readers might well wonder if Jonathan Swift at his edgiest has been at work."—RBC Taylor Prize Jury Citation • "A remarkable biography of an even more remarkable 17th-century individual … Beautifully written and endlessly thought-provoking."—Maclean’sMurderer. Salesman. Pirate. Adventurer. Cannibal. Co-founder of the Hudson's Bay Company.Known to some as the first European to explore the upper Mississippi, and widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described, writes Mark Bourrie, as “an eager hustler with no known scruples.” Kidnapped by Mohawk warriors at the age of fifteen, Radisson assimilated and was adopted by a powerful family, only to escape to New York City after less than a year. After being recaptured, he defected from a raiding party to the Dutch and crossed the Atlantic to Holland—thus beginning a lifetime of seized opportunities and frustrated ambitions.A guest among First Nations communities, French fur traders, and royal courts; witness to London’s Great Plague and Great Fire; and unwitting agent of the Jesuits’ corporate espionage, Radisson double-crossed the English, French, Dutch, and his adoptive Mohawk family alike, found himself marooned by pirates in Spain, and lived through shipwreck on the reefs of Venezuela. His most lasting venture as an Artic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operates today, 350 years later, as North America’s oldest corporation.Sourced from Radisson’s journals, which are the best first-hand accounts of 17th century Canada, Bush Runner tells the extraordinary true story of this protean 17th-century figure, a man more trading partner than colonizer, a peddler of goods and not worldview—and with it offers a fresh perspective on the world in which he lived.

Nominated for the 2023 Heritage Toronto Book Award • Finalist for the 2023 Ottawa Book Award in English Nonfiction • Longlisted for the 2023 National Business Book AwardThe remarkable true story of the rise and fall of one of North America's most influential media moguls.When George McCullagh bought The Globe and The Mail and Empire and merged them into the Globe and Mail, the charismatic 31-year-old high school dropout had already made millions on the stock market. It was just the beginning of the meteoric rise of a man widely expected to one day be prime minister of Canada. But the charismatic McCullagh had a dark side. Dogged by the bipolar disorder that destroyed his political ambitions and eventually killed him, he was all but written out of history. It was a loss so significant that journalist Robert Fulford has called McCullagh’s biography "one of the great unwritten books in Canadian history"—until now. In Big Men Fear Me, award-winning historian Mark Bourrie tells the remarkable story of McCullagh’s inspirational rise and devastating fall, and with it sheds new light on the resurgence of populist politics, challenges to collective action, and attacks on the free press that characterize our own tumultuous era.

Shortlisted for the 2025 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024From the bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Esprit-RadissonThis is the story of the collision of two worlds. In the early 1600s, the Jesuits—the Catholic Church’s most ferocious warriors for Christ—tried to create their own nation on the Great Lakes and turn the Huron (Wendat) Confederacy into a model Jesuit state. At the centre of their campaign was missionary Jean de Brébeuf, a mystic who sought to die a martyr's death. He lived among a proud people who valued kindness and rights for all, especially women. In the end, Huronia was destroyed. Brébeuf became a Catholic saint, and the Jesuit's "martyrdom" became one of the founding myths of Canada.In this first secular biography of Brébeuf, historian Mark Bourrie, bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, recounts the missionary's fascinating life and tells the tragic story of the remarkable people he lived among. Drawing on the letters and documents of the time—including Brébeuf's accounts of his bizarre spirituality—and modern studies of the Jesuits, Bourrie shows how Huron leaders tried to navigate this new world and the people struggled to cope as their nation came apart. Riveting, clearly told, and deeply researched, Crosses in the Sky is an essential addition to—and expansion of—Canadian history.