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John Ware, Canada’s Legendary Cowboy (1845-1905)

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This Article is dedicated to Nettie Ware (1893-1989)

Note: A previous version of this article was provided to Oxford University Press Canada for use in their Canadian high school textbook Inside Track 1.

“A man of unquestioned honesty and agreeable nature…[who] boasted the rare distinction of never having been thrown from a horse. At roughriding and roping he was an expert’ (Turner, 1950, pg. 461).

John and Mildred (Lewis) Ware, circa 1898 (source: Glenbow Museum)

“a man of unquestioned honesty and agreeable nature…[who] boasted the rare distinction of never having been thrown from a horse. At roughriding and roping he was an expert’’ (Turner, 1950, pg. 461).

29. Champlain and his mentor King Henry IV

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Samuel de Champlain learned how to successfully lead from his mentor King Heny IV, the king of France from 1553 to 1610.

Henry IV King of France (1553 — 1610).

Henry IV, King of France from 1553 to 1610, shared much in common with the People of Saintonge. Both were cheerful and optimistic. They loved life. They were ambitious. They were full of energy and were comfortable with both Protestantism and Catholicism. This was reflected in the name given to the French monarch - le Bon Roi Henri, the Good King Henry. His reign ended the exhausting war between these religions. Never again would France suffer a civil war like the Wars of Religion, until the horrific death toll of the French Revolution. Sadly, Henry would be assassinated in 1610 by an extremist Catholic.

28. Saintonge, the birthplace of Canada

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“He who goes easy goes far” - Proverb of Saintonge.

Model of 17th Century Brouage

What do you think of when asked “What is the origin of Canada”?

Do you think of the encounter by Jacques Cartier with the St. Lawrence Iroquois in 1535 at the “narrowing of the great river”, otherwise known as Quebec?

Cartier meets Donnacona

Perhaps you might think of the Italian explorer John Cabot hoisting the English royal banner at a place later called Bonavista, Newfoundland during his voyage in 1497?

Learning more about Sir Martin Frobisher

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sir Martin Frobisher (from 1620)

In my series of articles on Martin Frobisher in my Substack Beyond Brant and Brock, I provide an overview of the life of Sir Martin Frobisher as it relates to the founding of Canada. To achieve that I had to be selective.

22: Preparing to journey to the Artic: Martin Frobisher becomes a Privateer by Glenn J Lea

The Englishman Martin Frobisher is credited with first venturing into the Artic to the west of Greenland in search of the Northwest Passage. The idea for the expedition didn't come out of nowhere.

Why Canada?

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I believe many Canadians know little about the discovery and development of what would become Canada beyond the two superstars in Canadian history: the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, whose real name was Thayendanegea, and the British General Isaac Brock. And maybe also Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain.

Beyond Brant and Brock hopes to fix that.

Canada after Confederation (1870).

What is Canada?

Canada is hockey.
Canada is baseball.
Canada is basketball.
Canada is fishing along rivers catching perch or on a lake landing a muskellunge (Musky).
Canada is the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
Canada is the great open plains of the West and big sky country.
Canada is the majestic peaks, glaciers, mountain streams and thick forests of the Rockies.
Canada is the long backroads heading off into the horizon past farms, villages, forests, and lakes. Canada is a beaver dam, a moose wandering amongst trees in the boreal forest.

OK, so now that we have finished flipping through the pictures on the wall calendar, let’s discover how much Canada is more than these wall-posters.

27 - Sir Martin Frobisher meets Samuel de Champlain

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Frobisher leads a successful assault on El Leon, a key Spanish fort in Brittany, with the help of French troops among whom was a young Samuel de Champlain.

Northern coast of Brittany

Sometimes, as the saying goes, facts are more fascinating than fiction. In this, the last chapter of Sir Martin Frobisher, historians could not write a better ending for the great Privateer’s life. Frobisher exited history on the same peninsula that Samuel de Champlain entered history.1

26 - Frobisher’s final voyage to the Arctic

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“The singular achievement of this new expedition was not so much that it met most of its objectives, but that it did so in the face of many strong reasons to abandon the voyage entirely. If this untypical commitment and cohesion was an occasion for praise, a great part was due to Frobisher himself.”

Locations of Frobisher's Final Voyage

Frobisher prepares for his final voyage to the Arctic

When Martin Frobisher returned from his second voyage in 1576 with 200 tons of mined ore, he was at the zenith of his reputation1. Up and down England he was hailed as a hero and great explorer in the same class that Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh would be. But unlike these explorers, Frobisher’s peak veneration would not last. His financially disastrous third voyage in 1578 would lead to the ruin of the “Company of Cathay” investors. It would also result in a debacle of failed attempts at extracting gold from the 800 or so tons of ore extracted from the Arctic.

25 - Frobisher’s second voyage to the Arctic

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Michael Lok believed a dubious opinion that the black rock from the Arctic contained gold. A second voyage was sent to Little Hall’s Island to mine 200 tonnes of the rock.

Sample of the rock that cost many lives and fortunes lost

While on an island during Frobisher’s first voyage to the Arctic in 1576, one of his mariners picked up an unusual black rock that had within it something that glittered.

24 - Origins and history of the Inuit

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Martin Frobisher unexpectedly met the Indigenous peoples who inhabited the Arctic. We need to understand who they were before continuing our story.

1578 watercolor by John White depicting three Inuits abducted by Frobisher during his 1578 voyage to Baffin Island.

The Inuit peoples

Before we continue the story of Frobisher’s voyages to the Arcti, some context about the peoples Martin Frobisher and his crews encountered would be helpful.

23 - Frobisher sails into the unknown

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Martin Frobisher led his small fleet in search of the “Straight of Anian” only to experience a close encounter with the Inuit people of Frobisher Bay.

The coast of Baffin Island. (Source: Wikipedia)

Why search for the Northwest passage?

Securing funding for Frobisher’s voyage to search for a north-west passage to the Pacific Ocean was proving to be very difficult. As no concrete evidence was available that this route existed, speculators needed good reasons to back a venture that could potentially ruin them.

22: Frobisher prepares to journey to the Arctic by privateering

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Martin Frobisher is credited with the first expedition into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. But the idea for the journey didn’t come out of nowhere.

Portrait of Martin Frobisher painted two decades after his death. Source: Wikipedia.

North America witnessed its first Thanksgiving feast in 1621, or so the myth goes. “Pilgrims” who were in fact religious dissidents (not Anglican) landed in what would become Plymouth, Massachusetts, but being non-explorers, their food ran out. Their new theocratic settlement in the vein of “The Handmade’s Tale” were saved by the Wampanoag peoples who took pity on these rattled foreigners.

Why does Canada have so many great writers?

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been told that Canadians are excellent writers. If there ever was an overstatement this certainly is one of them.

Yet Canada has produced some world renowned authors. Think Margaret Atwood (“The Handmaid’s Tale”), Nobel prize winning Alice Munroe (“Lives of Girls and Women), Lucy Maud Montgomery (“Anne of Green Gables”), Mordecai Richler (“Barney’s Version”), Yann Martel ()“Life of Pi”), Leonard Cohen, Northrop Frye (“Fearful Symmetry”) and Malcolm Gladwell (“Outliers”, “Tipping Point”) to name a few.

List of English and French Sovereigns

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I find having a list of English and French Monarchs handy is a good idea when trying to place an explorer or event within a certain era. This is a simple list of the various “Houses” that ruled the kingdoms from the time of John Cabot in 1490s to the 1800s (1700s for France).

French Sovereigns (1519 to 1774)

House of Valois

(1515 - 1547) Francis I
(1547 - 1559) Henry II

The Canon, a poem by Glenn J Lea

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a little poem called The Canon during my university days. A Canon typically defines the acceptable, standard set of literature for a specific genre. English Literature in academia has an accepted list of stories, poems and plays which an English Lit student must read to understand Western culture and civilization.

As required by my professors, I used my dog-eared Norton Anthology of English Literature to analyze Shakespeare, Milton, Woodsworth, Shelly, Faulkner, and a hundred other famous writers in the Anglo-Saxon world.

About

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 15:16:42 +0200

Another History of Canada Blog?

In my experience, few Canadians and even less non-Canadians know little about how Canada came to exist. For most of my life, I only really knew about the two superstars in Canadian history:

The Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, whose real name was Thayendanegea.
The British General Isaac Brock.

I had heard about Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain, but not much else. So, I started my Substack The Story of Canada: Beyond Brant and Brock to fix that. This site provides supporting material for my Substack articles.

About - Detailed

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A (not very) brief biography

I’m a Canadian based in Berlin, Germany. My day job is a senior technical writer but I am a historian (and carpenter) by training.

Toronto

My hometown is Toronto, Canada. Its no longer the sleepy and slow town it was when I grew up there in the 60s/70s. My family moved north to Richmond Hill, an even more sleepy town than Toronto. I made up for that by customizing muscle cars and racing them on the empty roads in the back country. In those days, these empty night-time streets were ideal race tracks to push the pedal to the metal and see what my car could do (Plymouth GTXs).

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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