James Fontana was born in 1938 in Fort Frances, Ontario, where he grew up within a fifteen-minute walk to the river where the great La Vérendrye's expedition passed with his huge, heavily loaded freighter canoes numerous times.

His interest in writing was instilled by the nuns at St. Mary's, the teaching personnel at Fort Frances High. It developed further at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, where he attained his BA. James then studied law at University of Ottawa, being called to the Bar of Ontario in 1966. After thirty years on the bench - four years as an Assistant Crown Attorney, twenty years with a private practice, and six years as a Judge of the Ontario Court of Justice - he retired in 2014.

In retirement he has returned to writing for the sheer enjoyment and has produced over seven books. He lives with his wife, Margaret, and their little dog, Reggi. His crime novels include "No Cause of Death" (1994) and "The Mad Bomber of Parliament Hill" (2005, Borealis).

In 1734, at the command of the Governor of New France, explorer Pierre Gaulthier de Varennes de La Vérendrye, together with his three sons including his eldest, Jean-Baptiste, and a young Jesuit missionary, Father Pierre Aulneau, set out from Montreal (Ville Ste-Marie) with an expedition of fifty men on a 1,500 mile trek into North America's wild uncharted interior.

His aims were to discover new lands for France and new sources of beaver pelts for Montreal, to evangelize the Native population, and to seek and find a mysterious Native nation called the Mandan. But the main prize was to find a route to Cathay via the Great Western Sea, that is, the Pacific Ocean.

Eventually La Vérendrye discovered the Mandan and the Turtle Mountains, but not without extreme hardship and tragedy. This is his story.

Une terrible explosion secoue l'enceinte du Parlement canadien. Le corps d'un homme littéralement eventer gît sure le plancher, les viscères éparpillés tout autour. Une odeur âcre s'exhale de la pièce...

Les évènements racontés dans ce livre sont authentigues. Ils eurent lieu en 1966. Les souvenirs s'estompent toutefois et les sources s'anéantissent, ainsi donc les évènments doivent être reconstitués à partir des rapports officiels de la police, des archives consignées dans le palais de justice, des procès verbaux parlementaires et de réminiscences personnelles.

Les faits furent colligés, jugés, disséqués et enfin adaptés pour en faire un roman. Cependant, l'enchaînement des épisodes est fondamentalement véridique. Les écrits de Paul Chartier, le desperado aux idées subversives, sont cités textuellement. Un personnage fictif fut introduit, le travailleur en construction. Il était bien connu que Paul Chartier fréquentait les cabarets et les pubs et régalait d'anecdotes quiconque voulait bien lui prêter une oreille attentive.

The 1000 Mile Dream takes you behind the scenes on a nostalgic, wheel-gripping ride-along in a Mille Miglia of the late 1950's. An eclectic, international cast of characters, each with his own agenda including seduction and intrigue, race against each other for the coveted Coppa Mazzotti in an all-out, death dealing circuit around Italy. Their individual triumphs and failures are not resolved until the winning car crosses the finish line in Brescia in an unexpected ending.

The eBook of 1000 Mile Dream is available now:

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   The events described here are true. They took place in 1966. Memories fade however, and sources are lost, so the events must be reconstructed from police reports, court records, Hansard reports and recollections. The facts have been collated, analysed, selected, and finally, dramatized. But the sequences and events are accurate, as are Paul Chartier´s writings, quoted exactly as he wrote them.