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The curse of the narrows: the Halifax explosion, 1917
By Laura MacDonald. 2005
On December 7, 1917, in the heart of the World War I, two ships collided in Halifax harbour. The resulting…
explosion killed over 2,000 people and injured some 6,000 more. Macdonald presents the whole story of how the military, volunteers and ordinary citizens united to organize one of the most complex relief efforts in North American history. Descriptions of violence. 2005.Lusitania 1915, la dernière traversée
By Erik Larson, Paul Simon Bouffartigue. 2016
" Le 1er mai 1915, le Lusitania, un paquebot britannique, quitte New York pour rejoindre Liverpool, avec à son bord…
près de 2.000 passagers. Le capitaine sait qu'il n'a pas le droit de s'approcher de l'Angleterre, zone de guerre. Mais, les règles interdisent les attaques de bateaux civils. À bord du sous-marin allemand U-20, le capitaine Schwieger est cependant bien décidé à couler le navire. " Titre uniforme: Dead wake: the last crossing of the Lusitania.From Vimy to victory: Canada's fight to the finish in World War I
By Hugh Brewster. 2014
All was not quiet on the Western Front during the last years of WWI. Soldiers faced mud, trench foot, bombardments,…
barbed wire, snipers, and poison gas. Despite dreadful odds, the Canadian Corps moved forward, reaching deep inside enemy-occupied Belgium. The war cost Canada 60,661 of its finest citizens and thousands more who were wounded in body and mind. After their hard-won victory at Vimy Ridge, Canadians earned the admiration of the world — and a reputation as soldiers who could get the job done. From that moment in 1917, Canadian soldiers proved themselves again and again on the bloody battlefields of Europe. Grades 3-6. 2014.Churchill and the Dardanelles: myth, memory, and reputation
By M Christopher Bell. 2017
The failure of the Allied fleet to force a passage through the Straits of the Dardanelles in 1915 drove Winston…
Churchill from office in disgrace and nearly destroyed his political career. For over a century, Churchill has been both praised and condemned for his role in launching this highly controversial campaign. For some, the Dardanelles offensive was a brilliant concept that might have dramatically shortened the First World War. To many others, however, Churchill was a reckless amateur who drove his unwilling and misinformed colleagues into a venture that was doomed to fail. 2017.A soldier's sketchbook: the illustrated First World War diary of R.H. Rabjohn
By John Wilson. 2017
Russell Rabjohn was just eighteen years old when he joined up to fight in the First World War. In his…
three years of soldiering, he experienced the highs and lows of army life, from a carefree leave in Paris to the anguish of seeing friends die around him. Private Rabjohn was also a trained artist, and drew everything he saw, including a captured pilot of a downed German biplane; the horrific Flanders mud; a German observation balloon exploding in midair; and the jubilant mood in the streets of Belgium when the Armistice is finally signed. With no surviving veterans of the First World War, Rabjohn's drawings are an unmatched visual record of a lost time. Grades 4-7. 2017.A mind spread out on the ground
By Alicia Elliott. 2019
In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about Native people in North America while drawing on intimate…
details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight and understanding to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. What are the links between depression, colonialism and loss of language--both figurative and literal? How does white privilege operate in different contexts? How do we navigate the painful contours of mental illness in loved ones without turning them into their sickness? How does colonialism operate on the level of literary criticism? A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is Alicia Elliott's attempt to answer these questions and more. In the process, she engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, sexuality, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, writing and representation. Elliott makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long history with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft dinner to how systematic oppression is linked to depression in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott extends far beyond her own experiences to provide a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future. Bestseller. Winner of the 2020 Evergreen Award. 2019.The Man Who Lived with a Giant: Stories from Johnny Neyelle, Dene Elder
By Alana Fletcher, Morris Neyelle. 2019
Our parents always taught us well. They told us to look on the good side of life and to accept…
what has to happen. The Man Who Lived with a Giant is a collection of traditional and personal stories told by Johnny Neyelle, a Dene Elder from Déline, Northwest Territories. Johnny used storytelling to teach Dene youth and others to understand and celebrate Dene traditions and knowledge. Johnny’s voice makes his stories accessible to readers young and old, and his wisdom reinforces the right way to live: in harmony with people and places. Storytelling forms the core of Dene knowledge-keeping, making this a vital book for Dene people of today and tomorrow, researchers working with Indigenous cultures and oral histories, and all those dedicated to preserving Elders’ stories.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.Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools: A Memoir
By Theodore Fontaine. 2010
“Too many survivors of Canada’s Indian residential schools live to forget. Theodore Fontaine writes to remember." - Hana Gartner, CBC's…
The Fifth Estate Now an approved curriculum resource for grade 9–12 students in British Columbia and Manitoba. Theodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Canada. Twelve years later, he left school frozen at the emotional age of seven. He was confused, angry and conflicted, on a path of self-destruction. At age 29, he emerged from this blackness. By age 32, he had graduated from the Civil Engineering Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and begun a journey of self-exploration and healing. In this powerful and poignant memoir, Ted examines the impact of his psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, the loss of his language and culture, and, most important, the loss of his family and community. He goes beyond details of the abuses of Native children to relate a unique understanding of why most residential school survivors have post-traumatic stress disorders and why succeeding generations of First Nations children suffer from this dark chapter in history. Told as remembrances described with insights that have evolved through his healing, his story resonates with his resolve to help himself and other residential school survivors and to share his enduring belief that one can pick up the shattered pieces and use them for good.In Search of Almighty Voice: Resistance and Reconciliation
By Bill Waiser. 2020
In May 1897, Almighty Voice, a member of the One Arrow Willow Cree, died violently when Canada's North-West Mounted Police…
shelled the fugitive's hiding place. Since then, his violent death has spawned a succession of conflicting stories — from newspaper features, magazine articles and pulp fiction to plays and film.Almighty Voice has been maligned, misunderstood, romanticized, celebrated, and invented. Indeed, there have been many Almighty Voices over the years. What these stories have in common is that the Willow Cree man mattered. Understanding why he mattered has a direct bearing on reconciliation efforts today.Stories of Métis Women: Tales My Kookum Told Me (Indigenous Spirit of Nature)
By Bailey Oster. 2021
In this era of reconciliation, Stories of Métis Women explains the Métis Nation from the women’s perspective. Often misunderstood, the…
Métis are an Indigenous People with a unique and proud history and Nation. This book celebrates Nation building, culture, identity, and resilience, but also deals with the dark times of residential schools, discrimination, and racism. The women’s stories are in English and Northern Michif language.This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life
By Sharon Butala. 2021
A collection of essays on women and aging from Canadian legend Sharon Butala "What I didn't have a clue about…
was that I was soon to be old, or what being old would mean to my dreams and desires. While dreading old age with every fibre, I was at the same time in full denial that it would ever happen to me, and so, was shocked down to the soles of my feet when it did." In this incisive collection, Sharon Butala reflects on the ways her life has changed as she's grown old. She knows that society fails the elderly massively, and so she tackles ageism and loneliness, friendship and companionship. She writes with pointed wit and acerbic humour about dinner parties and health challenges and forgetfulness and complicated family relationships and the pandemic -- and lettuce. And she tells her story with the tremendous skill and beauty of a writer who has masterfully honed her craft over the course of her storied four-decade career. Butala gives us a book to be cherished -- an elegant and expansive look at the complexities and desires of aging and the aged, standing in stark contrast to the stereotyped, simplistic portrayals of the elderly in our culture. This Strange Visible Air is a true gift.Rez Rules: My Indictment of Canada's and America's Systemic Racism Against Indigenous Peoples
By Chief Clarence Louie. 2021
A common-sense blueprint for what the future of First Nations should look like as told through the fascinating life and…
legacy of a remarkable leader.In 1984, at the age of twenty-four, Clarence Louie was elected Chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band in the Okanagan Valley. Nineteen elections later, Chief Louie has led his community for nearly four decades. The story of how the Osoyoos Indian Band—“The Miracle in the Desert”—transformed from a Rez that once struggled with poverty into an economically independent people is well-known. Guided by his years growing up on the Rez, Chief Louie believes that economic and business independence are key to self-sufficiency, reconciliation, and justice for First Nations people. In Rez Rules, Chief Louie writes about his youth in Osoyoos, from early mornings working in the vineyards, to playing and coaching sports, and attending a largely white school in Oliver, B.C. He remembers enrolling in the “Native American Studies” program at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College in 1979 and falling in love with First Nations history. Learning about the historic significance of treaties was life-changing. He recalls his first involvement in activism: participating in a treaty bundle run across the country before embarking on a path of leadership. He and his band have worked hard to achieve economic growth and record levels of employment. Inspired by his ancestors’ working culture, and by the young people on the reserve, Chief Louie continues to work for First Nations’ self-sufficiency and independence. Direct and passionate, Chief Louie brings together wide-ranging subjects: life on the Rez, including Rez language and humour; per capita payments; the role of elected chiefs; the devastating impact of residential schools; the need to look to culture and ceremony for governance and guidance; the use of Indigenous names and logos by professional sports teams; his love for motorcycle honour rides; and what makes a good leader. He takes aim at systemic racism and examines the relationship between First Nations and colonial Canada and the United States, and sounds a call to action for First Nations to “Indian Up!” and “never forget our past.” Offering leadership lessons on and off the Rez, this memoir describes the fascinating life and legacy of a remarkable leader and provides a common-sense blueprint for the future of First Nations communities. In it, Chief Louie writes, “Damn, I’m lucky to be an Indian!”No time to spare: thinking about what matters
By Ursula K Le Guin. 2017
Occupying aging: delights, disabilities, and daily life
By Katherine Schneider. 2013
Retired psychologist and avid reader provides a year's worth of daily--and often humorous--musings. Illustrates how she personally approaches life now…
that the circumstances of being blind from birth and struggling with fibromyalgia for two decades have been combined with issues that accompany aging. Includes a recommended reading list. 2013Their promised land: my grandparents in love and war
By Ian Buruma. 2016
Winifred and Bernard Schlesinger were German-Jewish immigrants living in England. Their grandson weaves the story of their marriage, using letters…
written between the two as they faced separation, anti-Semitism, and the difficulties of war. Depicts how their marriage remained strong throughout it all. Some violence. 2016Still foolin' 'em: where I've been, where I'm going, and where the hell are my keys?
By Billy Crystal. 2013
Sixty-five-year-old comedian and actor Billy Crystal (born 1948) looks back at his accomplishments. Highlights his happy Long Island childhood, career…
success, and family life. Ponders the realities and humor of aging. Strong language. Bestseller. 2013Goshawk Squadron
By Derek Robinson. 2005
1918. Twenty-three-year-old Stanley Woolley, the disillusioned commander of a British flight squadron on the Western Front during World War I,…
trains his younger, inexperienced pilots to fly biplanes in combat--knowing they will all soon be dead. Some violence and some strong language. 1971The First World War: an illustrated history (Penguin Bks.)
By A. J. P Taylor. 1981
Oxford historian's year-by-year chronicle of World War I, which began with the assassination of Hapsburg archduke Franz Ferdinand and his…
wife Sophie on June 28, 1914, in Bosnia. Describes battles and behind-the-scenes politics, the use of poison gas and U-boats, and America's entry into the conflict. 1963Making rounds with Oscar: the extraordinary gift of an ordinary cat
By David Dosa. 2010
Geriatrician describes Oscar, a prickly cat living at a Rhode Island nursing home who senses when residents are dying and…
stays with them, providing comfort during their final hours. Details Dosa's and Oscar's interactions with the patients, many of whom have dementia, and their families, and discusses end-of-life care. Bestseller. 2010