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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.The Unexpected Cop: Indian Ernie on a Life of Leadership
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.Victory at Vimy: Canada Comes of Age, April 9-12, 1917
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.Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion
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.Black Cop: My 36 years in police work, and my career ending experiences with official racism
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.Beverley McLachlin: The Legacy of a Supreme Court Chief Justice
By Ian Greene, Peter McCormick. 2019
Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion
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.Cures for Hunger
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.When God Doesn't Make Sense
By James C. Dobson. 1993
1994 Gold Medallion Award winner! Every person who lives long enough will eventually encounter circumstances that are difficult to explain…
theologically. From years of counselling experience, Dr. James Dobson offers assurance of God's constant care, even when human suffering is beyond our comprehension.The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War
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.Three Funerals for My Father: Love, Loss and Escape from Vietnam
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.War, Denial and Nation-Building in Sri Lanka
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.Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide
By Claudia M ller-Ebeling, Christian R tsch. 2003
An examination of the sacred botany and the pagan origins and rituals of Christmas • Analyzes the symbolism of the…
many plants associated with Christmas • Reveals the shamanic rituals that are at the heart of the Christmas celebration The day on which many commemorate the birth of Christ has its origins in pagan rituals that center on tree worship, agriculture, magic, and social exchange. But Christmas is no ordinary folk observance. It is an evolving feast that over the centuries has absorbed elements from cultures all over the world--practices that give plants and plant spirits pride of place. In fact, the symbolic use of plants at Christmas effectively transforms the modern-day living room into a place of shamanic ritual. Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling show how the ancient meaning of the botanical elements of Christmas provides a unique view of the religion that existed in Europe before the introduction of Christianity. The fir tree was originally revered as the sacred World Tree in northern Europe. When the church was unable to drive the tree cult out of people’s consciousness, it incorporated the fir tree by dedicating it to the Christ child. Father Christmas in his red-and-white suit, who flies through the sky in a sleigh drawn by reindeer, has his mythological roots in the shamanic reindeer-herding tribes of arctic Europe and Siberia. These northern shamans used the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom, which is red and white, to make their soul flights to the other world. Apples, which figure heavily in Christmas baking, are symbols of the sun god Apollo, so they find a natural place at winter solstice celebrations of the return of the sun. In fact, the authors contend that the emphasis of Christmas on green plants and the promise of the return of life in the dead of winter is just an adaptation of the pagan winter solstice celebration.Powerful Prayers for Your Children (Powerful Prayers Series)
By Heather Kopp, David Kopp. 1997
From Spelling Tests to Future Mates-Learn to Pray for Every Aspect of Your Kids' Lives.AS A PARENT, you want your…
prayers to have an impact on the lives of your children. But how can you ensure that will happen? What are some of the vital things you should pray for? How can you claim God's glorious promises for your kids? In Powerful Prayers for Your Children, you'll find the answers to these questions, along with rich, Scripture-based prayers that will show you how to communicate more confidently, more fervently, and more effectively with the Lord. Most important, your prayer life will be forever changed as you learn to pray more intimately and wisely to the One who loves your children most of all.From the Trade Paperback edition.Agnostic Khushwant: There Is No God
By Khushwant Singh, Ashok Chopra. 2012
Instead of entering into a pointless debate on whether or not God exists it is more important to bear…
in mind that belief in the existence of God has little bearing on making a person a good or a bad citizen One can be a saintly person without believing in God and a detestable villain believing in Him In my personalized religion there is NO GOD Khushwant Singh over the decades has built up a reputation for coming up with something new and controversial in each book and he does not disappoint his readers this time too He begins with a chapter on the need for a new religion without God in which he questions the relevance of God He then moves on to describe how religion has proved to be more harmful than beneficial and in the process debunks astrologers and the breed of so-called godmen However he is not dismissive of religion Through his lucid writing he brings out the beauty and significance of holy books such as the Bhagvad Gita the Quran and the Granth Sahib He provides relevant extracts to highlight the poetry and the music in such books The author next tries to dispel the prejudices held by many non-Muslims against their Muslim compatriots by giving down-to-earth examples He also emphasizes the importance of the Ramzaan fast Khushwant Singh s description of the life and times of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh and his in-depth analysis of the Granth Sahib throw new light on a particularly troubled period in India s history The chapter devoted to the interaction of the author a confirmed agnostic with the Dalai Lama probably the world s most renowned spiritual leader makes for fascinating reading Here s one book containing a wealth of knowledge and information that you would want to read or consult again and againSub: Real Life on Board with the Hidden Heroes of the Royal Navy's Silent Service
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.The Goldfish Club
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.Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad
By David B. Edwards. 2002
If you want to read one book to understand the background to the political conflicts in Afghanistan and the Taliban's…
rise to power, this is the book. Edwards tells the stories of three men--a Marxist politician, a tribal leader, and an Islamic militant--to explain the complex political culture of Afghanistan.