Warriors & Warships

By Robert D. Banks

Dundurn Press, Hardcover, 343 pages, www.dundurn.com

This is a historical look at the early years of Canada’s military and the role played by the people and the ships built at Point Frederick, the location of a dockyard in Kingston that is the current site of the Royal Military College. This point of land was the dockyard home in 1789 of the Provincial Marine on Lake Ontario and the headquarters of Britain’s Royal Navy from 1813 to 1853, and produced sailing ships and steamers that played pivotal roles in the War of 1812 with the U.S., the Rebellion of 1837, the settling of Upper Canada and the early planning of the Rideau Canal. The author, a graduate himself of the Royal Military College who went on to become a military pilot, flight surgeon and NASA consultant (he lives in Barrie, Ontario and San Antonio, Texas) touches on the roles played by people like Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, his wife Elizabeth Posthuma, General Isaac Brock and, curiously enough, Charles Dickens.