Reminiscences of a Raconteur, Between the '40s and the '20s

Between the '40s and the '20s spans nearly a century of Canadian life as seen through the eyes of a natural storyteller. George H. Ham arrived in Canada as a boy in the 1840s and lived to see the nation transformed: frontier settlements became cities, horse-drawn carriages gave way to automobiles, and the old order gave birth to the modern world. This is memoir as time capsule, populated with the rough-hewn characters Ham encountered as businessman, journalist, and observer of his country's becoming. Ham writes with the ease of a man who has seen too much to keep quiet about any of it. His anecdotes illuminate the customs, contradictions, and raw energy of a young country finding itself. For readers hungry for authentic voices from the past, here is one who remembered everything and told it with relish. The book endures because it captures what no textbook can: the texture of lived experience, the humor and hardship of people building a nation from scratch.