Service Alert
CD service concludes July 31, 2025
CELA's audiobooks and magazines are available in Direct to Player and downloadable formats. We no longer mail out CDs. Please contact us for more information.
CELA's audiobooks and magazines are available in Direct to Player and downloadable formats. We no longer mail out CDs. Please contact us for more information.
Showing 1 - 3 of 3 items
By Peter Edwards, Kevin Loring. 2024
From bestselling true-crime author Peter Edwards and Governor General's Award-winning playwright Kevin Loring, two sons of Lytton, BC, the town…
that burned to the ground in 2021, comes a meditation on hometown―when hometown is gone.&“It&’s dire,&” Greta Thunberg retweeted Mayor JanPolderman. &“The whole town is on fire. It took a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere.&”Before it made global headlines as the small town that burned down during a record-breaking heatwave in June 2021, while briefly the hottest placeon Earth, Lytton, British Columbia, had a curious past. Named for the author of the infamous line, &“It was a dark and stormy night,&” Lytton was also where Peter Edwards, organized-crime journalist and author of seventeen non-fiction books, spent his childhood. Although only about 500 people lived in Lytton, Peter liked to joke that he was only the second-best writer to come from his tiny hometown. His grade-school classmate&’s nephew Kevin Loring, Nlaka&’pamux from Lytton First Nation, had grown up to be a Governor General&’s Award–winning playwright. The Nlaka&’pamux called Lytton &“The Centre of the World,&” a view Buddhists would share in the late twentieth century, as they set up a temple just outside town. A gold rush in 1858 saw conflict with a wave of Californians come to a head with the Canyon War at the junction of the mighty Fraser and Thompson rivers. The Nlaka&’pamux lost over thirty lives in that conflict, as did the American gold seekers. In modern times, many outsiders would seek shelter there, often people who just didn&’t fit anywhere else and were hoping for a little anonymity in the mountains. Told from the shared perspective of an Indigenous playwright and the journalist son of a settler doctor who pushed back against the divisions that existed between populations, Lytton portrays all the warmth, humour and sincerity of small-town life. A colourful little town that burned to the ground could be every town&’s warning if we don&’t take seriously what this unique place has to teach us.By Tanya Talaga. 2025
From Tanya Talaga, the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers, comes a riveting exploration of her family’s…
story and a retelling of the history of the country we now call Canada For generations, Indigenous People have known that their family members disappeared, many of them after being sent to residential schools, “Indian hospitals” and asylums through a coordinated system designed to destroy who the First Nations, Métis and Inuit people are. This is one of Canada’s greatest open secrets, an unhealed wound that until recently lay hidden by shame and abandonment. The Knowing is the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have ever read before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of this country as only she can—through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned enfranchisement and genocide. Deeply personal and meticulously researched, The Knowing is a seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People that continues to reverberate in these communities today.By Joelle Peters. 2024
It’s summertime on the rez. The frybread is sizzling, and the local radio station plays bluegrass, Anishinaabemowin lessons, and Friday-night…
bingo numbers. Lenna, the youngest of the Little family, is preparing to leave home for her first year of college, with little enthusiasm or help from her stubborn father and reckless brother. Amidst lingering doubts about departing the family flock, Lenna collides into a meet-cute with the charming and awkward Sam Thomas, who is returning to the reserve after many years away. With the promise of a romance budding between them, Lenna is caught in a whirlwind of uncertainty, wondering if she’s ready to bid farewell just as she's about to take flight.Filled with Indigenous humour, small-town seasoning, and dream-world interludes, this heartwarming love story captures the bittersweet highs and lows of a rural teenage upbringing. A love letter to community, Niizh is a refreshing coming-of-age romcom about two young lovebirds leaving the nest.