Ninety Fathoms Down is the first collection of Canadian stories about the Great Lakes, the inland seas that shaped the development of Ontario. This fascinating book explains the history of the Canadian side of the Great Lakes by telling the stories of people whose lives took dramatic turns on the vast lakes. In these pages you will meet people like Paul Ragueneau, the Jesuit priest who tried to save thousands of starving Hurons in 1650; the seventeenth-century dreamer Rene-Robert Cavalier de La Salle, whose luck always let him down; and Lt. Miller Worsley, who takes revenge on the loss of his little supply ship Nancy by capturing two of the American warships that sank his schooner in the War of 1812.

The people whose stories are told here are often at odds with the power of the lakes themselves. For instance, the three hundred sailors who lost their lives in the great storm of 1913 and the passengers of the steamship Algoma, torn apart on a Lake Superior beach by hurricane winds in 1885, learned that there are times when the lakes are unforgiving.

Politics, too, play a role in the lore of the Great Lakes. Confederate pirates once prowled Lake Erie, hoping someday for a chance to attack Buffalo or Cleveland and change the outcome of the Civil War. Politicians, including Sir John A. Macdonald, have been at the mercy of the lakes in shipwrecks that have changed Ontario’s history. The Great Lakes have been a stage for courage, greed, misfortune, and murder. Ninety Fathoms Down fills an important void in Ontario’s popular history by using the theme of the great waterways to show the development of central Canada.

MARK BOURRIE holds a PhD in Canadian media and military history; he is a National Magazine Award–winning journalist and has been a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1994. He has written hundreds of freelance pieces for most of the country’s major magazines and newspapers, which have resulted in several awards and nominations.

Bourrie lectures on propaganda and censorship at the Department of National Defence School of Public Affairs; media history and propaganda at Carleton University; and Canadian studies at the University of Ottawa, where he is also working on a Juris Doctor degree.

Bourrie’s book The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada’s Media in World War Two was the first examination of Canada’s wartime news-control system. It reached number six on the Maclean’s bestseller list. His academic paper “The Myth of the 'Gagged Clam': William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Press Relations,” published in Global Media Journal in 2010, is considered the authoritative analysis of the media strategies of Canada’s longest-serving prime minister. In 2011, Bourrie was invited to contribute to a collection of papers written by Canada’s top military historians. His essay “Harnessing Journalists to the War Machine” was published in 2012 in Canada and the Second World War.

Bourrie lives in Ottawa and is married to Marion Van de Wetering, a corporate lawyer working for the federal government. They have three children.

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