People of the West: A short story timeline Different people for different lands but they survived, for a while and built western North America. No heroes, just those doing what had to be done. An explorer, a rebel, a Métis family, a young mother and rancher, a hobo, a fighter pilot, a family of pioneers battered by progress. Through it all, opinions good and bad. Nine short pieces of fiction constructed around 170 years of North American history and interspersed at intervals by fourteen poems. The first story is a fictional accounting of the first European to reach the Pacific coast of Canada. Following are fictional pictures of the winners and losers who became builders of North America and thus, eventually, all winners and though they didn't know it or want it, builders of what exists today.