Authors Note:In telling this tale, I hope to portray some of the most crucial events in Canadas passage to nationhood. Though my main aim is to simply entertain, I also wish to build new appreciation of the Mackenzie rebellion as something more than a flash-in-the-pan. Brief, almost laughable at times, as that uprising is often dismissed today, in reality it involved more than enough blood-letting and suffering by those gallant men and women of 1837 and for years after.It is particularly challenging to a writer to attempt to describe for a modern audience the often callous and primitive society which existed just 160 years ago. Many bizarre or savage details in this story which may appear to be exaggeration on my part actually happened. In fact, the original circumstances were so grim that sometimes I had to tone them down, if anything. However, all details of contemporary attitudes, military events, politics, penal colonies, and aboriginal life at the time are as accurate as painstaking research can ensure.Although Jeremy Kane, Renard, Hardacre, the Van Wycks, and many other characters are fictional, they are shown among actual events and real individuals. No historical personage is made to say or do anything contrary to his or her known beliefs, and as much as possible I let them speak in their own recorded words.Sidney Allinson,Victoria, B.C., Canada.