On September 1, 1905, Alberta and Saskatchewan became Canada’s eighth and ninth provinces. Long before provincehood, though, the plains had a European pathfinder: Pierre de La Vérendrye.
Pathfinders of the Great Plains by Lawrence J. Burpee, from the Chronicles of Canada series, follows La Vérendrye and his sons as they pushed west from Lake Superior in the 1730s — the first Europeans to record the country that became the prairie provinces. Burpee wrote exploration history with a mapmaker’s precision.
