"Bill Freeman is an award winning author who has written historical fiction for young people, plays, and adult non-fiction. He is the co-writer of a television series being developed for the CBC by Norflicks Productions, and has been a script consultant on films and videos made for television.
While still a graduate student, Bill began work on a series of novels for young people set in Canada in the latter part of the nineteenth century which has come to be called the Bains Series. To date there are seven novels in this series and an eigth will be published in the spring of 1999.
Each of Bill Freeman's novels explores different aspects of working life. Bill Freeman lives on Toronto Island and works as a freelance writer. he has toured schools across Canada speaking to young people about thehistory of Canada in the 1870's and telling his stories of the adventures of the Bains family during that time. Bill has been a judge of the marion Drysdale Award for the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation since 1987, and is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada, PEN Canada and CANSCAIP.
All of these books have received high critical acclaim. Shantymen of Cache Lake was awarded the Canada council Award as the best children's book of 1976, and in 1984, the entire series was awarded the prestigious Vicky Metcalfe Award for Children's Literature. "

Shantymen of Cache Lake (1975)

This is the story of 14-year-old John bains andhis sister Meg, 13, and the winter they spend working in a lumber camp in the Ottawa Valley. their father has been killed and they have to find work to support their family. After a long and adventurous trip, the two reach the camp to find it torn by tension between the foreman and the lumbermen. Meg and John are drawn into the fight as they work alongside the shantymen. The story reaches a dramatic end with the dangerous and exciting log drive down the Ottawa River.

Last Voyage of the Scotian (1976)

This exciting tale opens with John and Meg being shanghaied aboard a Nova Scotian square rigged ship called the Scotian. In the first leg of the voyage to Jamaica, the kids learn that the ship's captain is a tyrant. As they travel to Liverpool, England, with a cargo of sugar cane, they begin to understand his motivation more clearly, but it is when they are coming back to Canada, with the hold filled with immigrants, living under dreadful conditions, that they come to appreciate the grim reality of their captain and their voyage.

First Spring on the Grand Banks, (1978)

In this exciting tale set in the 1870's, John and Meg Bains and their friend Canso arrive in Nova Scotia to find that Canso's father has died and his schooner seized for debts. Refused credit for a fishing trip by the merchant Hunter, they take the schooner and flee to Tower Rock, Newfoundland, intending to make enough money fishing to repay the debts. But then the law aarrives and Canso is jailed. Their only hope is to persuade the women of Tower rock to catch cod with them. And that is just what happens.

Trouble at Lachine Mill, (1983)

Meg and her twelve-year-old brother Jamie take jobs in a shirt factory in Montreal. Soon they discover they have been hired at rock-bottom wages to replace striking workers. First it's the anger of the strikers and then it's the cold, hunger and long, exhausting days that start to drag them down.

Slowly, however, they make new friends and discover that if they work together, they can make changes even in the evil world of factory work of the 1870's.

Harbour Thieves, (1984)

The adventures of Meg and John Bains continue with an exciting story of kids living by their wits in the Toronto of 1875. The fifth book on Bill Freeman's award-winning series finds 14 year-old Meg and her 12 year-old brother Jamie in search of work to help support their family. Jamie starts selling newpapers in the street and falls in with a gang of street kids and a couple of ne'er-do-well adults. Jamie is forced to join a theft ring and is caught by the police. But he has a hunch about where the loot is stashed on Toronto Island: finding it is his one chance to avoid a future in the reformatory.

Danger on the Tracks, (1987)

In this historical adventure novel set in the frontier country around London, Ontario, in the 1870's, Meg and Jamie Bains find themselves in the midst of a bitter feud between the gun-toting Ryan brothers, owners of the stagecoach line, and the owners of the railroad. When the railway offers a $200 reward to anyone who can solve the mystery of a horrible railway accident, Meg, determined to win it, comes up with the perfect plan to find the culprit: a race between the stagecoach and the train!

Prairie Fire, (1998)

The year is 1876. Jamie, Meg, and Kate Bains have travelled to Manitoba's Portage La Prairie with their mother to claim free land for a homestead. As they view their quarter section of property, the children are filled with excitement at the prospect of finally owning their own farm.
As they set out to plough, plant, and build a new home, they meet some unexpected challenges. some are natural, like the flash fires that suddenly rage across the prairie, destroying everything for miles. Others are human, like the conflict over land rights that smoulders between the English settlers and their Métis neighbours.
Prairie Fire! is an exciting adventure story as well as a fascinating account of what homesteading was like in the 1870's. Illustrated with sketches and photographs from the period, Prairie Fire! is the first of six new books in the already successful Bains Series.

Photographs and text provided by Lorna Tergesen and
"posting rights" granted by Bill Freeman.
We are most grateful for this privilege!

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