All Afloat

“Canada is the child of the sea,” William Wood begins—not with a ship, but with waterways so immense that the Great Lakes hold more fresh water than all the world beside.

Writing in the early twentieth century, Wood traces Canada through its rivers, lakes, and ocean shores, where the St. Lawrence offered a highway into the continent long before roads and railways. Canoes and portages carried pioneers across thousands of miles; later, canals joined waterways and opened a route from Lake Superior to the Atlantic. But these waters brought more than travel and trade: they shaped national growth and drew rival powers into disputes over fisheries, frontiers, and sea-power. In Wood’s account, the story of Canada is never far from the water—or from the conflicts that gathered along its shores. What does a nation become when its waterways connect it to the whole world?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.