Boni Thompson's 3 favorite reads in 2024

This is the story of an early fur trader in the Canadian wilderness in the mid-1600s. What a tale!

Pierre is 14 when he wanders from his fort hunting ducks with two friends, only to be surprised by an Iroquois war party. His friends are killed, but because of his extraordinary good looks, something the Iroquois admired, he is saved and adopted by an Iroquois family far away from Trois Riviere Fort.

How this man survived his own life is beyond understanding. He learns to speak Indigenous languages, dresses, and acts like an Iroquois warrior, and only escapes back to the French when he is recognized as such by a Dutch fur trader who helps him.

His life is an endless series of hair-raising activities with Indigenous, French, English, and Dutch friends and enemies. He ends up writing his memoirs for King Charles, where they are discovered in the Queen's library only recently. Mark Bourrie has put together a story based on remarkable research and Pierre's own words. I literally read it almost non stop.

I guarantee you will give thanks that you were born in the 20th century and not the 17th when you finally put this book down.

Another Canadian story, this time of the terrible fire and evacuation of Fort McMurray, a few years back. Fort McMurray is a town completely and utterly entwined with the energy sector. This book starts off telling us all about that. It is enough to make you feel queasy, the way the earth is treated, so violently, with such disregard for ecosystems, and creatures and everything that is beautiful in the north.

The colossal fire, that caused the evacuation of an entire city, then burned a large portion of it is next, another wretched story. What keeps you going, keeps you reading, is the human element, good people, sacrificing, working, in the face of terror. What also keeps you going is coming to understand the unbelievable monstrosity of this fire.

In the end the message is just as terrible... don't get too comfortable now that its over... its not over... this will happen again.

This book is an entire education... on energy, on fire, on climate change. Things that will change your outlook on the earth itself, and perhaps, on how you live your life.

Who knew that an entire book about a piece of embroidery could be so fascinating.

I stayed in a small hotel in Bayeux pre-pandemic and, on a whim, strolled over to the small museum that holds this 1000-year-old, massive, 200-foot-long tapestry telling the story of the Norman Conquest. I saw for myself the intricate embroidery, the artistic flair, the comic details, and the horror of war, spread out like one of today's graphic novels. When I heard about this book on CBC radio, I had to get myself a copy. I'm so glad I did.

It reads like a novel, not an academic work, although I suppose it is.

It takes the tapestry section by section and weaves a story out of history that is quite remarkable. The characters come alive. It is almost like watching a movie in your head. And to think it was all embroidered by a team of women and kept safe through the centuries, through the wars and fires and madness of 1000 years.

What a great gift Musgrove and Lewis have given us, sharing the history of it. Nevertheless, I will have to go back and look at the tapestry again, this time with educated eyes.