Bush Runner by Mark Bourrie

This book’s full title is Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson by Mark Bourrie. I loved this book. This is a book I got at a Ben McNally Brunch at the King Eddie. These are great events as you get a good breakfast at the King Eddie and hear four authors speak about their books. I have bought a number of books at these events as the most of the speakers are great. The link is here. It is hard to say if there will be more events at this point.

I had heard, of course, about Pierre Radisson in Canadian history, but always in the context of Radisson and Groseilliers. In any Canadian history I took, they never just talked about the adventures of Radisson and that is too bad. In any event, history taught in schools is whitewashed. This book does not whitewash anything. This is history as it should be told and it is fascinating. If history was told as in this book Then maybe students could learn to love history as I do. My love of history goes back to one great history teacher I had in high school.

The stories told about him in this book shows him double-crossing everyone, especially the French, English, and Mohawks. He probably felt he had no choice and he probably didn’t. He is an interesting character who was in North America, Caribbean, France, Holland, and Britain. It is surprising how many times he went from the New World to the Old World and how much he travelled around the New World considering how long these journeys took and how fraught with danger they were.

Most reviews just talk about the travels mentioned in the book. However, you have to read the book to get the full favour of his adventures. Just reading a review of where he went is not that interesting. Mark Bourrie writes an exciting tale about his adventures, so it is well worth reading. Michael Taube gives a review of this book in the Washington Times. This is a more interesting review by Dave Waddell in the Windsor Star as the reviewer talks to Mark Bourrie. James M. Fisher at Miramichi Reader gives an ok review, but it still better to read the book.

The is a podcast interviewing Mark Bourrie on CBC if you do not mind podcasts. Not a bad interview, but podcasts are not my favourite media. Mark Bourrie is interviewed on the Morning Show on Global News.

This is a great Canadian History story and history as it should be told. It is well worth the read.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.