100 Books Like Buffalo Flats

Snow Man offers a portrait of John Hornby, an Arctic adventurer who had no interest in being the first person to visit the North Pole or traverse the Northwest Passage, but who simply wanted to hang out in the Arctic in order to experience both hardships and delight. The book’s story deals with Hornby’s overwintering in an esker in the Central Canadian Arctic with a total novice, an Englishman named Critchell-Bullock. This 1931 book had been neglected, so I got it back into print and I wrote an introduction to it.

Barry Lopez was a nature writer and environmentalist.

He died on Christmas day 2020, and although we are fortunate to have his valedictory book Horizon, published when his traveling days were pretty well behind him, Arctic Dreams is the real deal, with Lopez as raconteur, but practitioner too, thoroughly in his element.

Lopez writes about exploration and the aurora, animals and the weather, ice and myth and survival and joy. He’s effortless. You’ll learn more than you knew there was to know about the high north, and the pleasure is in the learning.

If you must cut to the chase with these five books, Arctic Dreams is the book, because Barry Lopez got things right.

Have you ever been cold, in your bones cold? That’s what I felt reading Athabasca. Growing up in northern Utah, I thought I knew cold. Then Alistair MacLean introduced me to a true, icy, desperate cold. The atmosphere is so much a part of this story, it’s like a character. I’ll admit, this book challenged me as a young reader. It tends to plod along at glacial pace until the last third of the book, but that end is feverishly spectacular. This book is the first I read by this author and I rapidly devoured all his other titles.

Terry Lynn Johnson has written many books on sled dogs. Dog Driven does a great job of sharing what a junior race is like: the competitiveness, the setbacks, and the thrill of the sport. It also addresses facing an issue head-on. In this book, the main character is struggling with worsening eyesight. I think middle grade readers will relate to feeling apprehensive when facing something difficult. 

The Norse site at L’Anse aux Meadows was discovered by the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad in 1960. The following year he returned to the site with his wife Anne Stina, a trained archaeologist who led the annual summer excavations until 1968. This book is her memoir of the digs, which was published in Norwegian in 1975 and translated for the predecessor to this edition in 2006. The book ranges beyond the archaeology to encompass an evocative and sometimes lyrical account of the Ingstads’ spartan life on the site, its moments of great excitement when Norse artefacts were found, and their experience of the local community.

Few Americans–or Canadians, for that matter–realize how significant it is that the year Canada was born as a country, 1867, came just two years after the American Civil War ended. And in many ways, the war south of the border played a huge role in the creation of Canada.

Looking back at my school years, I was appalled at how little we were taught of the truth of Canada’s connections to slavery and the slave South. Many members of Canada’s elites–bankers, politicians, newspaper publishers, Church leaders–opposed Lincoln for various reasons.

Boyko does an excellent job of explaining how fears about the turmoil in the Civil War, American annexation ambitions and distrust of popular democracy forged a new nation north of the 49th parallel.

I love this book’s choc-a-block presentation of actual archival fragments from Jewish life in the British colonies that would eventually become Canada.

I also like that the book’s husband-wife, antiquarian, author team aimed to fuse together two objectives in one book: on the one hand, to paint a relatable picture of what Jewish life looked like during this period when Upper Canada was still being formed, and on the other hand, to account for the step-by-step process of Jews gaining civil rights in the new world.

When I teach Canadian Jewish history, I not only read this book with my students but also bring them into the archives that contain Godfrey’s trove of archival fragments of early Jewish Canadiana, which they collected before and while writing the book.

This book dovetails with those of Kitnick as well as Sharma and Singh. While framed by a broader concern with the emergence of the Toronto School of Communication, it gives particular attention to how McLuhan’s notions about “information art,” came to influence artistic practice through initiatives such as “N.E. Thing and Company” (NETCO), Robert Smithson’s West Coast work and “General Idea.” Echoing some of the issues raised by the Sharma/Singh collection, he examines these ventures through the lens of power and gender. It is impeccably edited and handsomely illustrated, in line with the high production standards of McGill-Queen’s University Press.

To Speak for the Trees is one of my favorite books ever, partly because I love trees, and partly because of my own Celtic heritage from my maternal line. Diana Beresord-Kroeger, a scientist in biochemistry and botany, begins with her childhood in Ireland. After losing her parents at a young age, she is raised in the ancient Celtic nature wisdom and Druid beliefs by an entire community, and literally taught the language of trees: Ogham. Blending scientific discoveries about trees and the importance of forests to our species' survival, this book is a fast and delightful read that I won’t forget. I feel enriched from having been blessed to spend time with such a brilliant woman through the pages of her book. 

This book, which was written when serious questions were being asked about Canadian immigration, is a gold mine of information on this delicate and emotional subject. The research is both extensive and meticulous. Moreover, the author does not just cite and explain facts about events and circumstances, she also provides clues as to what she feels constitutes an immigration policy.