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Showing 1 - 9 of 9 items
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Customs and cultures, Biography, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Searching for Serafim is a layered exploration of the life of Serafim "Joe" Fortes. A Trinidad native who arrived on…
the shores of Canada in 1885, Fortes was heralded as a hero in Vancouver for saving dozens of people from drowning as the city's first lifeguard, and his funeral drew the largest crowd ever recorded in the city's history. Since his passing, Fortes has been commemorated with a postage stamp and local buildings named in his honour. Yet, little has been discussed about how he navigated an openly white supremacist society as an Afro Latino man. In Searching for Serafim, author Ruby Smith Díaz seeks to unravel the complicated legacy of a local legend to learn more about who Fortes was as a person. She draws from historical documents to form an insightful critique of the role that settler colonialism and anti-Black racism played in Fortes's publicized story and reconstructs his life, from over a century later, through a contemporary Black perspective, weaving poetry and personal reflections alongside archival research. The result is a moving and thought-provoking book about displacement, identity, and dignity. With black-and-white photos
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
Serious and literary fiction, General fiction, Family stories
Human-narrated audio, Automated braille
In this stunning tale of love and loss, a middle-aged cartographer, suffering from memory loss and claustrophobia, hikes through the…
interior of British Columbia in search of a treehouse where he spent one memorable summer on the run with his four siblings. In Rufous and Calliope, Sarah Louise Butler takes readers deep into the rugged British Columbia Interior, where the mysteries of nature collide with the fragile threads of memory. Rufous Flanagan, a modern-day cartographer, embarks on a solo trek through an ancient mountain pass in search of the treehouse hideaway where he spent one memorable childhood summer on the run with his three older half-siblings and his twin sister, Calliope. With every step, the vast, untamed wilderness presents both a physical and emotional challenge, as Rufous must confront not only treacherous terrain, but the unravelling of his own mind. His memories-sometimes vivid, sometimes slipping away-become a map guiding him through towering forests, dry creek beds and smoke-filled skies. Yet, in this wilderness, not everything is as it seems. Echoes of the past lead Rufous on a journey that blurs the line between dream and reality. As the elements close in, this novel offers an unforgettable tale of survival, memory and the bond between siblings.
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY Audio (Direct to Player), DAISY Audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
General fiction, Indigenous peoples in Canada fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
It's the summer of 1989, and Mia is on her own—adjusting to life without her ex-best friend, Lara. Summer vacation…
starts off well enough as Mia binges MuchMusic and learns how to jar fish with her aunty and uncle. Then her grandma starts feeling unwell. At first, Mia isn't too worried, but when a call comes in from the clinic to say her grandmother has to go to the hospital in Vancouver, everyone realizes this is serious. Mia and her mom and aunties head to the city to be by her grandmother's side. Mia mostly ping-pongs from the hospital to the motel, but she also gets to see some of the city and eat (too much) takeout. She even joins a basketball camp at the Friendship Centre, where she meets a teen coach who inspires her to get back into the game she loves and delve deeper into what it means to be Indigenous. As time passes, Mia's grandmother's health doesn't improve, and she has to face the fact that her beloved grandma might not get better
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Biography
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
A personal and historical story of identity, place, and belonging from a Musqueam-Chinese Elder caught between cultures. It's taken most…
of Larry Grant's long life for his extraordinary heritage to be appreciated. He was born in a hop field outside Vancouver in 1936, the son of a Musqueam cultural leader and an immigrant from a village in Guangdong, China. In 1940, when the Indian agent discovered that their mother had married a non-status man, Larry and his two siblings were stripped of their status. With one stroke of the pen, they were disenfranchised—no longer recognized as Indigenous. Reconciling is a series of conversations between Larry and writer Scott Steedman as they visit pivotal geographical places together, including the Musqueam reserve, Chinatown, the site of the Mission residential school, the Vancouver docks and the University of British Columbia. Larry tells the story of his life, including his thoughts on reconciliation and the path forward for First Nations and Canada. His life echoes the barely known story of Vancouver and spans key events of the last two centuries, including Chinese immigration and the Head Tax, the ravages of residential school and now Indigenous revival and the accompanying change in worldview. When Larry talks about reconciliation, he uses the verb reconciling , an ongoing, unfinished process we're all going through, Indigenous and settler, immigrant and Canadian-born. "I have been reconciling my whole life, with my inner self," he explains. "To not belong was forced upon me by the colonial society that surrounded me. But reconciling with myself is part of all that."
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Environment, Science and technology, Economics, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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An incendiary anti-capitalist response to climate change rooted in hope for the future, this book is a tool or a…
weapon, depending on how you use it Despite the naysayers, climate change is a fact. We know that global temperatures are rising, that weather patterns are changing, that forest fires, droughts, flooding, severe storms, and heat waves are the new normal. We know this planet is teetering on the edge of climate collapse, an apocalyptic event that threatens not only the future of human civilization, but also the millions of other unique life forms on Earth. We know it's all our fault-it's the direct result of human beings burning fossil fuels and spewing out carbon emissions at such a fantastic pace that we've changed the fate of the entire planet, and it leaves most of us feeling helpless. What can any of us really do? This Book Is a Knife is a startling essay collection that explores the origins and dangers of climate change through a critique of capitalism and an exploration of the ways in which we might radically reimagine our world before it's too late. Rooted in L.E. Fox's background as a science journalist, This Book Is a Knife is a frank, plain-spoken, and sharply incisive series of missives designed to wake us up to the urgent reality of climate change and the lies we are fed based on the fact that the real issue is neither climate nor the environment-it's capitalism. Fierce and unapologetic, This Book Is a Knife is a passionate and unique dissection of climate change that offers new possibilities for saving the world.
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Women biography, Journals and memoirs, Science and medicine biography, Canadian authors (Non-fiction), Nature, Science and technology
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
In Meltdown, Sarah Boon tells us about field adventures in snow and ice, the tough decision of choosing an academic…
career over that of a writer, and the challenges she faces as a woman in science. Her story blends adventure and academia as she traverses John Evans Glacier on Ellesmere Island, builds weather stations in northern British Columbia, samples proglacial rivers, and scares away grizzlies with helicopters. Along the way, Boon finds inspiration in the stories of historic female explorers like Mary Schäffer Warren and Phyllis Munday, celebrating the tenacity of women in the field. But her path isn't without obstacles. In addition to the physical and psychological rigors of fieldwork, Boon faces gender bias, departmental politics, and job insecurity in academia. Her journey is also marked by injury, struggles with imposter syndrome, and a serious mental health diagnosis. Meltdown is an honest and reflective narrative about the process of finding your identity, the need for open conversations around mental health and science, and one woman's pursuit of balance between her career and personal life.
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY Audio (Direct to Player), DAISY Audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
Canadian non-fiction, Poetry, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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The Book of Z reconsiders mystical possibilities - above all, longing for divine union - found by poets within scriptural…
language. For a thousand years the story of Zulaykha - "the wife of Aziz" in the Qur'an - and her passion for Yusuf has been celebrated in classical and contemporary Persian and Urdu poetry, in Muslim folk traditions, and in Persian and Mughal miniature painting. At the same time, as the Biblical "wife of Potiphar" she has been just as indelibly cast as temptress in misogynistic cautionary tales and canonical Western art. Rahat Kurd writes in the vividly imagined voice of a Zulaykha who considers her Abrahamic lineage from its estranged and fragmented reality, asking what consolation human desire and divine longing might offer our shared present tense.
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Short stories, Humourous fiction, Canadian authors (Fiction)
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Set on an island in BC's Salish Sea, a richly imagined and often hilarious collection of linked stories by Bill…
Gaston, a master of the art of short fiction. Eleven stories feature a cast of characters striving to overcome pasts that often include a catastrophic error. On Tunnel Island, moral misjudgments, semi-legal schemes, and antisocial gaffes abound as characters seek a remedy for what ails them: loneliness, heartbreak, grief. Jack ekes out a living doing odd jobs and minding the estates of absent owners, until he takes a lover's bad advice and rents their houses through Airbnb. A dying woman retains her wry Wiccan sense of humour while lovingly ministered to by her partner - in between his trips to hand out Halloween candy at their door. The almost mystical disappearance of a toddler is revisited years later when her parents remarry in a surreal outdoor ceremony. Highly original and empathetic, Tunnel Island is electrified by dark undercurrents that jolt and illuminate by turns. Bill Gaston's bighearted vision of life on a heavily forested island immerses readers in a world rendered tender and tolerable by human folly and our stumbling attempts at redemption.
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Poetry, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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Amber Dawn's latest poetry collection flaunts the chronically pained body as a source of lewd feminine power As a novelist,…
memoirist, and poet, Amber Dawn regularly lays her heart bare in work that is fiery, raw, and intensely personal. In Buzzkill Clamshell, her third poetry collection, Amber Dawn circumvents the expectations of so-called confessional poetry, offering twisted mythmaking, extreme hyperbole, and lyrical gutter-mouthing that explore themes of sick and disabled queerness, aging, and desire. With poems populated by severed heads, domme swan maidens, horny oracles, and other horrible purveyors of pleasure, Buzzkill Clamshell reads as if a leather dyke and a demonic goat had a baby-gleefully embracing the perverse while stomping its way through chronic pain and complex PTSD. Already acclaimed for her candid and often kinky verse, Amber Dawn pushes further into trauma-informed eroticism with self-assured irreverence and uncomfortable abjectivity. Beneath her brilliant, carnivalesque imagery lies a prayer-not for the pain to end, but for finding fantastic new ways to cope with it.