About
HACC Trilogy Vol. 3: The Coppermine and Beyond
Historic photos by George M. Douglas, Library and Archives Canada
“Michael Peake’s The Coppermine and Beyond is both a great book and the most wonderful canoe trip of a lifetime – in fact, it is about a lifetime of tripping, whitewater, exploration and northern adventure. Some 80 years after George Douglas photographed the Mackenzie, Coppermine and other rivers, the four Peake brothers – The Hide-Away Canoe Club – retraced his paddle strokes and re-photographed the scenes Douglas found. This is the story of the Canadian north, filled with such characters as Robert Service, Pierre Trudeau, Eric Morse, Bill Mason and, indeed, the Peake boys themselves. A book to treasure.”
Roy MacGregor, author of Canoe Country: The Making of Canada and Original Highways: Travelling the Great Rivers of Canada
“Michael Peake has outperformed once again while sharing his canoe trips and his love for wilderness travel. His latest work, the third volume of the Hide-Away Canoe Club trilogy, is outstanding. The photos are mesmerizing, the written words are captivating, and the historical content makes this book a must have for any canoe tripper’s book shelf.” Kevin Callan, The Happy Camper
"When I reviewed Michael Peake's first book, UNGAVA, I glowingly praised it and said that "No one writes books like this anymore!" Double-ditto, his latest work, THE COPPERMINE AND BEYOND, which takes the wilderness tripping experience it to an even higher level. There are hundreds of colour photos plus dozens of rare black-and-white historical pictures. Where else might you find photos of nomadic Inuit families on the Coppermine River (1912); John Hornby on Great Slave Lake (1924); Robert Service paddling a birch-bark canoe (1911), and standing google-eyed next to Marlene Dietrich during the making of a Hollywood film in 1942? If you want to know what it's like to canoe the most remote and wildest rivers on the continent,
THE COPPERMINE AND BEYOND is a must read." Cliff Jacobson, author of Canoeing Wild Rivers and many other books
Book or PDF
Click on the book to view a complete PDF
Volume III of the HACC Trilogy, The Coppermine and Beyond, is available soon as a printed book or PDF. The book is printed privately as no publisher wants to deal with this many photos or the large format.
With 144 pages and more than 300 modern and historic photos, this final volume of the HACC Trilogy looks at several classic northern trips and rivers and featured several never published photos by George Douglas from 1911-12 in the Coppermine region.
This includes:
• Two journeys down the Coppermine from Great Bear Lake retracing Douglas’s Lands Forlorn route and then charting our own.
• Crossing the Western Cordillera going up from the Mackenzie River to McDougall Pass ascending the Rat River and then down to Old Crow, Yukon on the Bell and Porcupine rivers, as Eric Morse did in 1965. Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon, travelled north with Douglas in 1911 and did this trip back to the Yukon after parting ways with Douglas and is covered in the book.
• We unearthed an 1840’s plan to rescue the missing Franklin Expedition proposed by George Back’s ship surgeon, Dr. Richard King. The Arctic Land Expedition covered 1,000 miles over 50 days from Lake Athabasca to the Back River following several historical routes on seven rivers north including the Baillie, Back and Hanbury.
Also included in this book are shorter accounts from the Missinaibi, French, Churchill, Nahanni, Winisk and Fond du Lac rivers, plus trips in Quetico Provincial Park and the Lake Superior region. All this along with numerous historical stories and photographs from those who travelled there long before us.
NOTE ON PRICING: The book is printed to order and is sold to cover costs which depends on when it is printed. We will keep a small number in stock.