Norman Leach

A GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLERHad there been no Sam Steele, it has been observed, Hollywood would have had to invent him. Born into the comparative stability of the Victorian era's Pax Britannica, Steele lived to witness the postwar turmoil of the Lost Generation. From humble beginnings in what is now Bracebridge, Ontario, to his knighthood in England two years before his death in 1919, Steele's life epitomized the themes of personal adventure, service to crown and country, and the zeal for modernization and social order that characterized nineteenth-century Canada within the British Empire.Steele's long and storied career threaded through many pivotal moments in Canada’s settlement and development history: the Fenian raids, the expansion of law and order (on horseback and sporting red serge) across the North-West Territories, the exile of Sitting Bull into Canada, the construction of the national railway that welded together the nation, Riel's Rebellion, the Klondike Gold Rush and opening of the North, the Boer War, and the Canada's coming of age during the First World War.

Many of the airmen of the First Word War who challenged both the enemy and death did not survive. These are their stories. In the clinging mud and trench warfare of WWI, it was soon clear that the cavalry — the elite of the elite — would be of little use. The dashing men and officers of the cavalry searched for a way to be front and center in the conflict, and found it in the new air forces being established on both sides of the Western Front. Soon lances and sabres were replaced by silk scarves and machine guns. Combat on horseback was replaced by dogfights in the air — one-on-one and in great flying formations — always between warriors. No technology changed more in the five years of the war, and none would have a bigger impact. From Great Britain to Canada to Australia and New Zealand, new heroes took the honour and dash of the cavalry to the air in flying machines — which would change the face of war forever.