William Bleasdell Cameron

author

William Bleasdell Cameron

1862–1951

An adventurer as well as a writer, he turned dramatic firsthand experience on the Canadian frontier into vivid memoir and historical storytelling. Best known for surviving the 1885 Frog Lake attack, he later built a varied career in journalism, editing, and public life.

1 Audiobook

The war trail of Big Bear : being the story of the connection of Big Bear and other Cree Indian chiefs and their followers with the Canadian North-west rebellion of 1885, the Frog Lake massacre and events leading up to and following it, and of two month's imprisonment in the camp of the hostiles

The war trail of Big Bear : being the story of the connection of Big Bear and other Cree Indian chiefs and their followers with the Canadian North-west rebellion of 1885, the Frog Lake massacre and events leading up to and following it, and of two month's imprisonment in the camp of the hostiles

by William Bleasdell Cameron

About the author

Born in Trenton, Ontario, in 1862, William Bleasdell Cameron headed west while still a young man and worked in the Canadian frontier trade. He is most widely remembered as a survivor of the Frog Lake attack during the North-West Resistance of 1885, an experience that deeply shaped his later writing.

Cameron went on to become a journalist, editor, and author whose books drew on western Canadian history and his own life in the West. His best-known work is The War Trail of Big Bear, a memoir-based account of the events surrounding Frog Lake and his captivity, and he also wrote other books and articles over a long career.

Across the years he held an unusually wide range of jobs, including newspaperman, editor, land agent, pharmacist, municipal politician, mink rancher, and movie consultant. He died in 1951, leaving behind a body of work that blends personal adventure with eyewitness history.