Book description
After a shipwreck in 1809, Peter finds himself the victim of amnesia.
The sea captain who finds the teenager gives him the only name he
knows, while others derisively dub him Peter No-Name. Eventually,
Peter finds employment in a Montreal tavern where he meets a French
voyageur called Boulard who changes his life irrevocably.
Boulard works for fur trader David Thompson, soon to become one of
the world's most famous explorers and mapmakers. Thompson is impressed
with the teenager and enlists him in his obsessive quest to establish
an overland "northwest" passage to the Pacific Ocean via the
Columbia River.
With Thompson, Peter embarks on an amazing series of adventures that
brings him face to face with hostile Natives and exposes him to the
hardships and life-threatening challenges of formidable mountains and
primeval forests as the intrepid outdoorsmen canoe, ride, and sled
across a continent still largely untouched by European civilization.
B. J. Bayle's Battle Cry at Batoche was a Canadian
Children's Book Centre Our Choice, while Perilous Passage,
about explorer and mapmaker David Thompson, was nominated for a Red
Maple Award. Also the author of Shadow Riders, about the RCMP's
early history, she lives in Cochrane, Alberta.
