When I began researching the career of doomed explorer Henry Hudson about ten years ago, I happened upon mentions of contemporary English seafarers who had converted to Islam and made a terrifying name for themselves as Barbary pirates. They seemed to be a sort of 17th-century John Walker Lindh, the young American who went off to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against troops from his own…
Douglas Hunter
Douglas Hunter is a past winner of the National Business Book Award and a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award.
Articles by
Douglas Hunter
A Tangled Tale
Were early British moves in the St. Lawrence the result of sophisticated diplomacy or commercial greed? December 2010
In the rogues’ gallery of Canadian history, few figures measure up to the men of the Kirke family, who carved a remarkably eventful swath through the 17th century. These English wine merchants, with French roots and an elbows-up attitude, tried hedging their risks by diversifying into the St. Lawrence fur trade through brute force. Beginning with a privateering raid on French assets in the…