The canoe is an enduring symbol of many things in Canada including how to run a successful business. Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company 1820-1850 took the helm of a nearly bankrupt company and turned it back to profitability through what might...
A young man called Angulalik Pedersen, from the western Nunavut Community of Kugluktuk, won a scholarship to attend high school at Upper Canada College in Toronto. A dream that emerged in the south was to one day take a few of his classmates to his home town. James...
A rollicking good canoe story about the 26' voyageur and its crew from the Canadian Canoe Museum who came to represent Canada in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Flotilla on the Thames River on Sunday, June 3rd, 2012. Going back to the drafting of the British North...
When legendary Canadian solo canoeist Herb Pohl died tragically on Lake Superior in 2007, friends found on his desk a rough memoir about 40 years of wilderness travel that he intended to publish in a book he wanted to call The Lure of Faraway Places. James knew Herb,...
James Raffan first encountered Kirk Wipper and his passion for canoes and collecting at Camp Kandalore as 5-year old camper at Wipper's summer camp for boys called Kandalore. Although their paths diverged for several decades, James got reconnected with Kirk's canoe...
This presentation, developed originally as a keynote for the annual conference of the Canadian Heritage Rivers System, is James's celebration of the river-as-teacher in his own life, growing up on the Speed River in southern Ontario but then moves on to a...
As a Patron of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's Boreal Program, James participated in the organization and execution of a special project to raise public awareness of the value and fragility of the Boreal Forest. Of ten river trips involving a host of...
Holling Clancy Holling's 1942 classic children's book character, the little carved Indian in a canoe called "Paddle to the Sea," captivated generations of readers, including Canadian filmmaker, Bill Mason, who went on to make a movie about Paddle that became the most...
In 2007 the canoe was named a wonder of Canada in a national poll conducted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Celebrating that development, James created this presentation and took it across the country. Audiences in cities and towns from Halifax to Victoria...
One of the most remarkable characters in the pantheon of canoeists is unquestionably Bill Mason, subject of James Raffan's acclaimed best-selling biography, Fire in the Bones. As with all of his projects, James dived into the research with abandon, committed to total...
James's research into all of his book topics takes him always into the Archive of the Feet, which means onto the ground and into the experiences of whatever or whomever he is writing about. This was particularly the case as he entered the life of Sir George Simpson,...
This is James at his informed, entertaining and irreverent best talking about his favourite two subjects: Canada and canoes. Originally prepared for a lecture tour for the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and since presented in across Canada as well as in various...
This is the remarkable story of a man's journey to retrace the his father's steps in a bark canoe in Northern Saskatchewan. As a young Anglican minister, Bill Buxton's father spent the summers of 1939-40 teaching in the Cree Community of Pelican Narrows during...