Rinkrats I Have Known and Other Stories

About the Book

Think you know your country's past?

Ever heard of "Black Pete", the fightingest foreman in the Ottawa Valley? Or Larry Frost?

And, speaking of scrappers, ever heard of the Irish weaver, Johnny McGinnis, captured by the American cavalry, fighting alongside the great Shawnee warrior, Tecumseh?

Or, how about Lewis McLauchlan, the Klondike Mountie, who helped break up "The Order of the Midnight Sun"?

Or Roy Brown, who shot down the famous "Red Baron" in World War One?

Or fighter pilot Ross Smither, who died in a dogfight when his Hawker Hurricane was shot down on Battle of Britain Day in World War Two?

All true heroes of our Canada.

Then there's the spooky "Sage of Aru", hounded out of the U.S. by a pair of relentless Pinkerton men, to settle in and mystify a small Ontario town.

Want to hear about them?

Here are twenty-seven true stories of our unsung heroes and forgotten characters that you will never forget.

About the Author

Donald A. "Don" McKellar is a student of the history of Canada, the people histories that reveal events as they really were, described by the people who actually lived them. As a boy, he much preferred his grandfather's tales of the Ottawa Valley loggers, river drivers, lumber barons and yes, even bankers, to the schoolbook history he was taught. So his weekends are spent roaming historic sites, little corners of wilderness hidden among the high rises and the small greenbelts with the usually-ignored bronze plaques telling of early day communities. And then happy hours of archival delving to flesh out the real stories behind and beyond the scope of the stiff prose of most history texts. His writing reflects the fun and excitement of his quests and the rough and rollicking times that forged our nation. Then, as old Linus, he relates them to a fictional grandson named Brendan. Don makes his home in Toronto, where he works for the Bank of Nova Scotia, but his heart is in the camps and cabins of Canada's past. And his readers reap the armchair treasures.