Edited with a new Introduction and Notes by R.H. Cockburn.
Distant Summers (Vol. I.) contains the accounts of P. G. Downes' 1936 and 1937 trips in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and of his 1938 journey to Great Bear and Great Slave lakes. Downes wrote a classic of northern canoe travel, Sleeping Island, originally published in 1943. This is the first time his remarkably detailed journals have appeared in book format.