Bastedo is the author of Shield Country, a well-received guide about the rocks, birds and general ecology of the Northern shield, and Blue Lake and Rocky Shore, an outdoor guide to the Yellowknife area.

"Generally, my new book is a book of dramatic non-fiction. It's real stories about real people who related to the land," Bastedo says.

"The entire subarctic cannot be squeezed into words any more than you can haul up a river with a fish net," he wrote in the foreword, but this book at least offers the first accounts of some of the pioneers who worked in the region.

His book captures the stories of people like Katsunori Nagase, who in the late 1980s returned repeatedly to Yellowknife to study the Northern Lights.

"He took lots of pictures and wrote me many long letters that were very fascinating," Bastedo says. Nagase was a pioneer in introducing the aurora to the Japanese -- thousands of whom now travel in flocks to view them every winter.

His book also pays tribute to local pioneers, including William MacDonald, a geologist whom Bastedo considers to have made one of the best contributions to his field.

"He's an unsung local hero in my mind. All his exploring that he did of this region, it was much deeper than just rocks. He was first and foremost a naturalist."

A naturalist himself, Bastedo and his family live in Yellowknife where he operates an environmental consulting firm.