Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 1 - 20 of 26128 items
Dubbed "the Jesse James of Canada," Norman "Red" Ryan was infamous in the 1920s and '30s until he was gunned…
down in an attempted robbery in Sarnia, Ontario. Ernest Hemingway wrote about Ryan's escape from Kingston Penitentiary for the Toronto Star, Morley Callaghan based a novel on him and stories of Ryan and his crimes filled newspapers and airwaves. One of the first Canadians to be granted parole, he was held up by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett as a model of rehabilitation and became a regular guest at Toronto police picnics. All the while, however, Ryan was continuing a crime spree on the side. Jim Brown, filmmaker and CBC Radio host, tells the incredible true story of "Red" Ryan, a larger-than-life criminal whose fame and legend were much encouraged by the media--he was the "Kardashian" of the time--and whose story endures.Arrested often as a teenager in New Orleans, Albert was behind bars in his early twenties when he was inspired…
to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living. He was serving a 50-year sentence in Angola prison in Louisiana for armed robbery when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were immediately accused of the crime and put in solitary confinement by the warden. Without a shred of actual evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice that gave them life sentences in solitary. Decades passed before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteen more years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released in February 2016. Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. 2019.By Ernie Louttit. 2019
The cop who blew the whistle on Saskatoon’s notorious “Starlight Tours,” Ernie Louttit is the bestselling author of two previous…
“Indian Ernie” books. He demonstrates in this latest title that being a leader means sticking to your convictions and sometimes standing up to the powers that be. One of the first Indigenous officers hired by the Saskatoon Police, he was an outsider who became an insider, with a difference. A former military man with a passion for the law, he was tough on the beat, but was also a role model for kids on the streets.By Madhur Anand. 2020
“Wondrously and elegantly written in language that astonishes and moves the reader…This is an important book: an emotional and intellectual…
tour de force.” —Jane Urquhart An experimental memoir about Partition, immigration, and generational storytelling, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart weaves together the poetry of memory with the science of embodied trauma, using the imagined voices of the past and the vital authority of the present. We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments. And when we turn the book over, we find the daughter's tale—we see how the rupture of Partition, the asymmetry of a father's leg, the virus of a mother's rage, makes its way to the next generation. Told through the lenses of biology, physics, history and poetry, this is a memoir that defies form and convention to immerse the reader in the feeling of what remains when we've heard as much of the truth as our families will allow, and we're left to search for ourselves among the pieces they've carried with them.By Ted Barris. 2007
National BestsellerAt the height of the First World War, on Easter Monday April 9, 1917, in early morning sleet, sixteen…
battalions of the Canadian Corps rose along a six-kilometre line of trenches in northern France against the occupying Germans. All four Canadian divisions advanced in a line behind a well-rehearsed creeping barrage of artillery fire. By nightfall, the Germans had suffered a major setback. The Ridge, which other Allied troops had assaulted previously and failed to take, was firmly in Canadian hands. The Canadian Corps had achieved perhaps the greatest lightning strike in Canadian military history. One Paris newspaper called it "Canada’s Easter gift to France." Of the 40,000 Canadians who fought at Vimy, nearly 10,000 became casualties. Many of their names are engraved on the famous monument that now stands on the ridge to commemorate the battle. It was the first time Canadians had fought as a distinct national army, and in many ways, it was a coming of age for the nation. The achievement of the Canadians on those April days in 1917 has become one of our lasting myths. Based on first-hand accounts, including archival photographs and maps, it is the voices of the soldiers who experienced the battle that comprise the thrust of the book. Like JUNO: Canadians at D-Day, Ted Barris paints a compelling and surprising human picture of what it was like to have stormed and taken Vimy Ridge.By Tyler LeBlanc. 2020
A Hill Times' 100 Best Books in 2020 SelectionOn Canada's History Bestseller ListGrowing up on the south shore of Nova…
Scotia, Tyler LeBlanc wasn’t fully aware of his family’s Acadian roots — until a chance encounter with an Acadian historian prompted him to delve into his family history. LeBlanc’s discovery that he could trace his family all the way to the time of the Acadian Expulsion and beyond forms the basis of this compelling account of Le Grand Dérangement.Piecing together his family history through archival documents, Tyler LeBlanc tells the story of Joseph LeBlanc (his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather), Joseph’s ten siblings, and their families. With descendants scattered across modern-day Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the LeBlancs provide a window into the diverse fates that awaited the Acadians when they were expelled from their homeland. Some escaped the deportation and were able to retreat into the wilderness. Others found their way back to Acadie. But many were exiled to Britain, France, or the future United States, where they faced suspicion and prejudice and struggled to settle into new lives.A unique biographical approach to the history of the Expulsion, Acadian Driftwood is a vivid insight into one family’s experience of this traumatic event.By Calvin Lawrence. 2019
A shocking, first-person account of a Mountie who went from small-town Newfoundland to undercover drug work in Toronto to guarding…
prime ministers and presidents. All along, the racism he encountered from the public was easier to handle than the racism of fellow police officers — and the RCMP hierarchy.By Ian Greene, Peter McCormick. 2019
By Tyler LeBlanc. 2020
Winner, 2021 Evelyn Richardson Award for Non-Fiction, 2021 Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical WritingShortlisted, 2021 Dartmouth Book Award…
for Non-Fiction, and the 2021 Margaret and John Savage Award for Best First Book (Non-fiction)A Hill Times' 100 Best Books in 2020 SelectionOn Canada's History Bestseller ListGrowing up on the south shore of Nova Scotia, Tyler LeBlanc wasn’t fully aware of his family’s Acadian roots — until a chance encounter with an Acadian historian prompted him to delve into his family history. LeBlanc’s discovery that he could trace his family all the way to the time of the Acadian Expulsion and beyond forms the basis of this compelling account of Le Grand Dérangement.Piecing together his family history through archival documents, Tyler LeBlanc tells the story of Joseph LeBlanc (his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather), Joseph’s ten siblings, and their families. With descendants scattered across modern-day Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the LeBlancs provide a window into the diverse fates that awaited the Acadians when they were expelled from their homeland. Some escaped the deportation and were able to retreat into the wilderness. Others found their way back to Acadie. But many were exiled to Britain, France, or the future United States, where they faced suspicion and prejudice and struggled to settle into new lives.A unique biographical approach to the history of the Expulsion, Acadian Driftwood is a vivid insight into one family’s experience of this traumatic event.By Deni Béchard. 2012
Almost unbelievable. You'll swear it's fiction."You haven't read a story like this one, even if your father was the kind…
of magnificent scoundrel you only find in Russian novels. Béchard is the rare writer who knows the secret to telling the true story." — Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven KillingsGrowing up in rural British Columbia, Deni Béchard worships his father, believing that he can do no wrong. Although his charismatic father is prone to racing trains and brawling, Deni has no idea how unusual his family is.But when Deni discovers his father's true identity (and his other life as a bank robber), his imagination is set on fire. Before long, he begins to see himself as a character in one of his father's stories. He can't escape the sense that his father's life holds the key to understanding his own passions, aversions, and motivations.Eventually Deni finds himself ensnared in the controlling impulses of his mysterious father and increasingly obsessed by his father's own muted recollections: the impoverished childhood in the Gaspé he'd fled long ago, the hunger for excitement and a better life, and a trail of crimes leading from Québec to the American west.At once an extraordinary family story and an unconventional portrait of the artist as a young man, Cures for Hunger is a singular, deeply affecting memoir by an acclaimed writer.A CBC Books Work of Canadian Nonfiction to Watch For in Spring 2022An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Biographies…
and MemoirsA Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List in FebruaryA Seattle Times Most Anticipated Book of 2022A Vanity Fair New Book to Read this MonthA Publishers Weekly’s Top Spring 2022 History TitleA Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2022A Town & Country Must-Read Book of Winter 2022A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of February 2022A The Lineup True Crime Book to Be Excited About in 2022A Bookpage Most Anticipated NonfictionA Bookriot 22 Great Books to Read in 2022A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022 A true-crime masterpiece, this is a story of wrongful exoneration about killer Edgar Smith and the prominent crusaders who fell prey to his charm.Having spent almost half his lifetime in California's state penitentiary system, convicted killer Edgar Smith died in obscurity in 2017 at the age of eighty-three—a miracle, really, as he was meant to be executed nearly six decades earlier. Tried and convicted in the state of New Jersey for the 1957 murder of fifteen-year-old Victoria Zielinski, Smith was once the most famous convict in America. Scoundrel tells the true, almost-too-bizarre story of a man saved from Death Row by way of an unlikely friendship—developed in nearly 2000 pages of prison correspondence—with National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the most famous figures in the neo-conservative movement. Buckley wrote articles, fundraised and hired lawyers to fight for a new trial, eventually enlisting the help of Sophie Wilkins, a book editor with whom Smith would have a torrid epistolary affair. As a result of these friends' advocacy, Smith not only gained his freedom, he vaulted to the highest intellectual echelons as a bestselling author, an expert on prison reform, and a minor celebrity—only to fall, spectacularly, back to earth, when his murderous impulses once more prevailed. Weinman's Scoundrel is a gripping investigation into a case where crime and culture intersect, where recent memory begins to slide into history and where the darkest of violent impulses meet literary ambition, human ego and hunger for fame.By Lezlie Lowe. 2022
The long-awaited narrative history of the women who volunteered in Nova Scotia during the Second World War by award-winning journalist…
and author of No Place to Go. "I was home cooking carrots because my mother was off winning the war." -- Patricia Timbrell, whose mother, Amy Jones, along with her friend Una Smith, established and ran the Central Magazine Exchange, which distributed four million used magazines and 30,000 packs of cards by June 1942 alone for troop and merchant ships in Halifax Harbour. Halifax women won the Second World War -- but not in the ways you might have been told. We all know the stories of Canadian women during the war who trained as machinists, welders, and streetcar drivers to fill the shoes of men who answered the call. We know how women kept the home fires lit while their husbands, brothers, and fathers fought. This is not that story. The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War is the untold story of Halifax women who geared up in a flash to focus on the comfort, community connections, and mental health of Halifax?s exploding population of sailors, soldiers, airmen, and merchant mariners. They did a job no government could have organized or afforded. They did it without being asked. And they did it with no respite from their daily duties. Thoroughly researched and compellingly told, and with a dozen archival images, The Volunteers examines the untold stories of the hardworking women whose unpaid and unacknowledged labour won the Second World War.By Dukesang Wong, Wanda Joy Hoe, David McIlwraith. 2020
Here is the only known first-person account from a Chinese worker on the famously treacherous parts of transcontinental railways that…
spanned the North American continent in the nineteenth century. The story of those Chinese workers has been told before, but never in a voice from among their number, never in a voice that lived through the experience. Here is that missing voice, a voice that changes our understanding of the history it tells and that so many believed was lost forever. Dukesang Wong’s written account of life working on the Canadian Pacific Railway, a Gold Mountain life, tells of the punishing work, the comradery, the sickness and starvation, the encounters with Indigenous Peoples, and the dark and shameful history of racism and exploitation that prevailed up and down the North American continent. The Diary of Dukesang Wong includes all the selected entries translated in the mid-1960s by his granddaughter, Wanda Joy Hoe, for an undergraduate sociology paper. Background history and explanations for the diary’s unexplained references are provided by David McIlwraith, the book’s editor, who also considers why the diarist’s voice and other Chinese voices have been silenced for so long.By Jolie Phuong Hoang. 2021
What would you risk to save your children? Jolie Phuong Hoang grew up as one of ten children, part of…
a loving, prosperous Vietnamese family. All that changed after the communists took over in 1975. Identified as a potential “bad element,” the family lived in constant fear of being sent to the dreaded new economic zone. Desperate to ensure the family’s safety and to provide a future for his children, Jolie’s father arranged three separate escapes. The first was a failure that cost most of their fortune, but the second was successful—six of his children reached Indonesia and ultimately settled in Canada. He and his youngest daughter drowned during the disastrous third attempt. Told from the author’s perspective and that of her father’s ghost, Three Funerals for My Father is a poignant story of love, grief and resilience that spans three countries and fifty years. In an era when anti-Asian racism is on the rise and the issue of human migration is front-page news, Three Funerals for My Father provides a vivid and timely first-hand account of what it is like to risk everything for a chance at freedom. It is at once an intimate story of one family, a testament to the collective experience of the “boat people” who escaped communist Vietnam, and a plea on behalf of the millions of refugees currently seeking asylum across the globe.By Donn F. Draeger. 1989
Ninja-the very word inspires awe and terror in equal measure. Master of espionage and assassination, stealth and concealment, the ninja's…
ability to move swiftly and silently gave rise to popular legends of amazing exploits, invincibility and supernatural powers.In Ninjutsu: The Art of Invisibility, Donn Draeger draws back the veil of mystery shrouding the arcane practices of feudal Japan's shadow warriors. Stripping away myth and exaggeration, Draeger reveals the secret tactics, exotic weapons, tricks and disguises that earned the ninja a reputation as history's most feared secret agents.By Rachel Seoighe. 2017
This book begins from a critical account of the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war, tracing themes of…
nationalism, discourse and conflict memory through this period of immense violence and into its aftermath. Using these themes to explore state crime, atrocity and its denial and representation, Seoighe offers an analysis of how stories of conflict are authored and constructed. This book examines the political discourse of the former Rajapaksa government, highlighting how fluency in international discourses of counter-terrorism, humanitarianism and the 'reconciliation' expected of states transitioning from conflict can be used to conceal and deny state violence. Drawing on extensive interviews with activists, academics, politicians, state representatives and international agency staff, and three months of observation in Sri Lanka in 2012, Seoighe demonstrates how the Rajapaksa government re-narrativised violence through orchestrated techniques of denial and mass ritual discourse. It drew on and perpetuated a heightened majoritarian Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism which consolidated power under Sinhalese political elites, generated minority grievances and, in turn, sustained the repression and dispossession of the Tamil community of the Northeast. A detailed and evocative study, this book will be of special interest to scholars of conflict studies, political violence and critical criminology.By Vijay Prashad. 2015
Operation Protective Edge, Israel's seven-week bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza in the summer of 2014, resulted in half…
a million displaced Gazans, tens of thousands of destroyed homes, and more than 2,000 deaths--and, yet, it was only the latest in a long series of assaults endured by Palestinians isolated in Gaza. But, following the conflict, polls revealed a startling fact: for the first time, a majority of Americans under thirty found Israel's actions unjustified. Jon Stewart aired a blistering attack on Israeli violence, and a video of a UN spokesperson weeping as he was interviewed in Gaza went viral, appearing on Vanity Fair and Buzzfeed, among other sites. This book traces this swelling American recognition of Palestinian suffering, struggle, and hope, in writing that is personal, lyrical, anguished, and inspiring. Some of the leading writers of our time, such as Junot Díaz and Teju Cole, poets and essayists, novelists and scholars, Palestinian American activists like Huwaida Arraf, Noura Erakat, and Remi Kanazi, give voice to feelings of empathy and solidarity--as well as anger at US support for Israeli policy--in intimate letters, beautiful essays, and furious poems. This is a landmark work of controversial, committed literary writing.From the Trade Paperback edition.By Bobby Singh Bansal. 2015
A fascinating chronicle that focuses on architectural gems of the Sikh Empire. Remnants of the Sikh Empire is a unique…
guide to the many important Sikh monuments located both in India and Pakistan. It catalogues numerous structures historically associated with the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh during the early nineteenth century. From Mughal to Sikh edifices, this book shines a spotlight on undiscovered masterpieces including forts, havelis (mansions), memorials and palaces across these countries, pictures of which have never been published before. The author travelled extensively across remote regions along the Afghan?Pakistan border with the assistance of the Pakistan Army in order to compile rare footage that documents these habitations. Some of the structures include strategic forts built in the tribal areas of Pakistan by the legendary Sikh hero Hari Singh Nalwa, the existence of which is completely unknown to the general public. Not only does this volume narrate the aesthetic and strategic history behind these structures but it also sheds light on the rich cultural traditions associated with the powerful nobles and courtiers of the Lahore Durbar who reshaped the architectural landscape of Punjab and Kashmir in the nineteenth century. Remnants of the Sikh Empire catapults the reader into an unforgettable journey, retracing the rich heritage of the Punjab in these countries where numerous iconic monuments still stand testament to the power and influence of the Sikh Empire.By Danny Danziger. 2011
300 million cubic miles of ocean.Stealthy, and deadly, the nuclear submarines of the Royal Navy lie in wait in the…
depths of the world's oceans, ready to listen, intercept, and attack wherever they may be needed - from the coastline of Libya to the ice caps of the Arctic. If the UK is hit by a devastating nuclear strike, they'll be the last military force standing.200 million pounds of hardware.Award-winning journalist Danny Danziger has been allowed unprecedented access to the elite crew of one of the UK's attack class submarines, joining them on operations and hearing their stories. Unrestricted, and uncompromising, Sub paints a vivid picture of this fascinating, little-known branch of our armed forces.One incredible hunter-killer.In an increasingly unstable world, these are the people who keep us safe. It is time for the silent service to be heard.By Danny Danziger. 2012
Mayday. Mayday. Mayday . . . Every member of the Goldfish Club has been forced to broadcast these terrifying words…
from a stricken aircraft, making them one of the most unusual fellowships in the world. Formed during the Second World War to foster comradeship among pilots who had been forced to bail out over water, the Goldfish Club has taken on new airmen (and one woman) ever since and there are hundreds of tales to be told. All are different. All are utterly gripping.Award winning journalist and author Danny Danziger has brought together some of the most powerful stories of this extraordinary brotherhood. A few will leave you open-mouthed, others may reduce you to tears, but all are a fascinating testament to the resilience of the human spirit.