On target

Shooting a bow is a lot harder than they make it look on television shows like Arrow or movies like Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

A few years back, my brother bought a compound bow, thinking he might use it for hunting deer. I’m not sure if he ever bagged a buck with it — but he did hit a lot of straw bales along the way during archery practice.

I tried drawing the bow once during a trip home to Nova Scotia and was surprised at how tough it was to pull, aim, and fire with anything close to representing a proper technique. Trust me, any nearby deer were in no danger from my shaky marksmanship.

So imagine the strength and skill required to draw a bow while racing across the prairie on horseback. Or the steel nerve necessary to maintain aim as your foes rush headlong toward you during a battle.

In this issue, one of Canada’s leading experts on Indigenous peoples’ material cultures takes us on a journey into the history of the bow and arrow.

Roland Bohr, a historian at the University of Winnipeg, teaches Indigenous North American history and crafts bows using centuries-old techniques perfected by the First Peoples of this continent.

Whether used for hunting or as a weapon of war, the bow was a transformative tool for Aboriginal people. Each bow was carefully crafted from local materials and perfected through generations of use.

In some cases, Indigenous people preferred bows to the firearms brought to the Americas by the European newcomers. Unlike blunderbusses or muskets, bows could be fired quickly and with virtually no sound — a decided advantage during both hunting and warfare.

Elsewhere in this issue, we bring you a series of unique perspectives on Canada’s first French-Canadian prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, on the 175th anniversary of his birth. Three authors who have written about Laurier examine his “sunny ways” brand of politics, his paradoxical personality, and his complicated love life.

Finally, we share the little-known story of the army filmmakers who documented the efforts of Canadian soldiers during the Second World War.

Embedded with the troops, the cameramen often found themselves in the thick of the fighting, wielding weapons as well as cameras. In many cases, and on many fronts, they were able to scoop their rivals from the United States and Great Britain.