Chris Petrakos, Historian, Writer, Photographer

Christopher Petrakos is a historian and Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto Mississauga. At the Wallace Stegner House he will finish his book, The Spiritual Borderlands at the Edge of Empire: William Carpenter Bompas and Charlotte Bompas in the British-Canadian North, 1865-1906 (Lexington Books/Fortress Press, 2026). The project investigates two eccentric missionaries at the furthest reaches of the British-Canadian and American empires during an era of profound transformation. Through their extraordinary lives and work, Petrakos tells the broader story of northern North American history—Canadian Confederation, the Alaska Purchase, the evolution of the fur trade, and the Klondike Gold Rush. At its heart, however, the book examines the complex relationships between these missionaries and Northern Indigenous peoples during this fraught period of national and economic expansion.

Like William and Charlotte Bompas (and Wallace Stegner), Petrakos is a border crosser. His archival research has taken him across the English-speaking world—from the British Library in London to the territorial archives in Whitehorse, the state archives in Juneau, and beyond. A Chicagoan by birth but a Canadian by choice, Christopher moved to Toronto in 2012. In 2016, he and his wife built a cabin on a small Saskatchewan lake where the prairies touch the boreal forest. There he spends his summer, finding inspiration in the solitude of nature, pursuing wildlife photography, hiking, and taking his motorcycle on the roads and trails less traveled.