These beautifully illustrated stories of natural history in nineteenth-century Canada are about the curious men and women who crossed the oceans from Europe to explore, map, draw, puzzle about, collect and exhibit nature in Canada. Informed by French, British and Indigenous naturalists, they tried to understand what they saw. What did it all mean about the origins of the world? Louisa Blair, an amateur naturalist in Quebec and a transatlantic species herself, tells tales on Darwin, Russell Wallace and James Cook, and lingers on the strange and colourful details of Canada's stubborn resistance to evolutionism and its first natural history museums with their penchant for deformities. These stories feature Indigenous mapmakers, botanical artists, bug-bitten rock fanatics, arctic explorers, and a trio of Quebec women who managed to get plants named after themselves. To make her case, Louisa Blair has gathered a vast collection of vintage illustrations. In short, muddy boots, cold hands, a pocket full of fossils, a mind full of existential questions.

Louisa Blair is writer, editor and translator who was born in Quebec city, raised in the UK, and returned to live in Quebec 25 years ago. Her books in English include The Anglos: The Hidden Face of Quebec City and Iron Bars and Bookshelves: A History of the Morrin Centre. She has also translated numerous books and exhibitions about history, culture and politics in Quebec. Her translation of Robert Lepage's play 887 (House of Anansi Press, 2019) was nominated for a Governor General's prize.