Chronicles of Canada Volume 31 - All Afloat: A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways - William Wood

No exhaustive Canadian 'water history' can possibly be attempted here. That would require a series of its own. But at least a first attempt will be made to give some general idea of what such a history would contain in fuller detail: of the kayaks and canoes the Eskimos and Indians used before the white man came, and use today; of the small craft moved by oar and sail that slowly displaced those moved only by the paddle; of the sailing vessels proper, and how they plied along Canadian waterways, and on all the Seven Seas; of the steamers, which shed so much forgotten lustre on Canadian enterprise; of the teeming fisheries which the far-seeing Lord Bacon rightly thought 'richer treasures than the mines of Mexico and of Peru'; of the Dominion's trade and government relations with nations that 'have their business in great waters'; and, finally, of that guardian Navy, without whose freely given care the 'water history' of Canada could never have been made at all. (Summary modified from the text)