A few years back, we published a book, About Canada, by Earle Gray, a longtime friend and widely-published author.

Over the years, Earle has collected hundreds of fascinating and largely unknown stories about Canada, culled from publications stretching back to before Confederation. He has now assembled them into a new collection, Unfamiliar History: Canada @150, which Civil Sector Press is publishing as our contribution to Canada’s 150th birthday year. Starting now, Charity eNEWS will also regularly feature a story from Unfamiliar History and we’ll just keep going, at least throughout the year, until it seems time to stop.

From a 1951 article on west coast logging life to the discovery in Ontario of the missing link in Darwin’s theory of evolution —an excerpt from current work in progress — Earle offers a fascinating panorama of little-known Canadian history. Unfamiliar History, his 11th published book, is also Earle's first e-book. “This is my offering to Canada’s 150th birthday party,” he says. “It gives me satisfaction any time my work casts a little more light.”

Charity eNEWS readers are charity managers - mostly but not entirely fundraisers - and that’s of course what we write about. But many readers are also Canadian and therefore beneficiaries of the heritage we share, and to which people flock from all over the world. And, 150 years is not an insignificant birthday! So once again Hilborn's little publishing company is breaking the mold, to help us all see our individual roles as played out on a much bigger stage and in a much more extended time-frame than our regular day-to-day scramble usually allows.

We like to say that, internationally, Canada punches above its weight. Well, watch for a new story each week to see a little bit of how we got there.

Meet Earle Gray at his website, http://earlegray.com