Bush Runner

The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson

By: Mark Bourrie

Narrated by: Jeff Burling

Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's Summary

Murderer. Salesman. Pirate. Adventurer. Cannibal. Cofounder of the Hudson's Bay Company. Known to some as the first European to explore the upper Mississippi, and widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described, writes Mark Bourrie, as “an eager hustler with no known scruples”. Kidnapped by Mohawk warriors at the age of 15, Radisson assimilated and was adopted by a powerful family, only to escape to New York City after less than a year. After being recaptured, he defected from a raiding party to the Dutch and crossed the Atlantic to Holland - thus beginning a lifetime of seized opportunities and frustrated ambitions.

A guest among First Nations communities, French fur traders, and royal courts; witness to London’s Great Plague and Great Fire; and unwitting agent of the Jesuits’ corporate espionage, Radisson double-crossed the English, French, Dutch, and his adoptive Mohawk family alike, found himself marooned by pirates in Spain, and lived through shipwreck on the reefs of Venezuela. His most lasting venture as an Arctic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operates today, 350 years later, as North America’s oldest corporation. 

Sourced from Radisson’s journals, which are the best firsthand accounts of 17th-century Canada, Bush Runner tells the extraordinary true story of this protean 17th-century figure, a man more trading partner than colonizer, a peddler of goods and not worldview - and with it offers a fresh perspective on the world in which he lived.

©Mark Bourrie, 2019 (P)2020 Audible, Inc.

Distracting reader

The story is interesting and fairly well written but the reader mispronounces so many words that the narration is actually a distraction. Place names, well-known names of people, and other common words are frequently well off the mark of accepted pronunciation.

Great Read!

An amazing scoundrel, an amazing story. Well written and well read, one of those stories that if it were not history you'd never except the plot as possible. I knew a little bit about Radisson from studying the fur trade in New France. But I had no idea the amazing life he lived, and what a horrible person he was at times. Then again, those were different and perilous times. Great information on indigenous cultures, a history of New France, and the beginning of the Hudson's Bay Company. At a time when most didn't travel more than 20 miles from their home in a lifetime he was a World traveler. If you start this you will not be able to put it down.