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Into the blue: family secrets and the search for a Great Lakes shipwreck
By Andrea Curtis. 2003
Journalist Andrea Curtis remembered her grandmother Eleanor as a sophisticated Montreal matriarch. Then she began researching the 1906 sinking of…
the steamboat J. H. Jones, which had been captained by Eleanor's father. While looking into his role in the tragedy, she discovered Eleanor's hidden past. 2003.Canada's odyssey: a country based on incomplete conquests
By Peter H Russell. 2017
150 years after Confederation, Canada is known around the world for its social diversity and its commitment to principles of…
multiculturalism. But the road to contemporary Canada is a winding one, a story of division and conflict as well as union and accommodation. Russell provides an account of Canadian history from the pre-Confederation period to the present day. By focusing on what he calls the "three pillars" of English Canada, French Canada, and Aboriginal Canada, Russell advances an important view of our country as one founded on and informed by "incomplete conquests." It is the very incompleteness of these conquests that have made Canada what it is today, not just a multicultural society but a multinational one. 2017.Ghost empire: how the French almost conquered North America
By Philip Marchand. 2005
French North America, a country that might have been but never materialized, inspired Marchand to seek its traces, using the…
explorations of La Salle in the 1680s as a guide. He writes a regular travelogue to a dozen-plus sites of French colonial forts and settlements, then adds in reflections of habitant culture, its Catholicism and its relations with Indians. Marchand also includes his own ruminations on his Catholic faith and his reconnection with his French Canadian ancestry. Some descriptions of sex, explicit descriptions of violence, and some strong language. 2005.Hitching rides with Buddha: a journey across Japan
By Will Ferguson. 2005
With the same fervour they have for outlandish game shows and tiny gadgets, the Japanese go nuts each spring when…
the cherry blossoms sweep from island to island towards the country's northerly tip. Ferguson, after way too much sake, announced he would be the first person to follow the blossom's progress end to end. To make it a challenge worth doing, he'd hitchhike, resulting in a journey full of misadventures and revelations. 2005.Himalaya
By Michael Palin. 2004
In his most challenging journey, Michael Palin tackles the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on earth, a virtually unbroken wall…
of rock stretching 1800 miles from the borders of Afghanistan to southwest China. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in 6 months of hard travelling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the mighty peaks of K2, Annapurna and Everest, the bleak and barren plateau of Tibet, the gorges of the Yangtze, the tribal lands of the Indo-Burmese border and the vast Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. This book, compiled from his diaries, records the pleasure and pain of an extraordinary journey. 2004.Helpless: Caledonia's nightmare of fear and anarchy, and how the law failed all of us
By Christie Blatchford. 2010
February 28, 2006. A handful of protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, then a…
residential subdivision under construction, and blocked workers from entering. The occupiers, now in their fifth year, have been destructive, threatening, and violent, harassing the residents who live nearby and doing everything under the noses of the Ontario Provincial Police, who, often against their own best instincts, stood by and watched. Strong language and descriptions of violence. c2010.God's mercies: rivalry, betrayal and the dream of discovery
By Doug Hunter. 2007
France's Samuel de Champlain and Englishman Henry Hudson were rival explorers, both searching for the Northwest Passage. For Hudson the…
search proved fatal, as a mutiny in 1611 saw Hudson, his son, and seven others cast adrift in James Bay, never to be heard from again. In 1613, Champlain set out on a northern journey based on testimony from Nicolas de Vignau, who had spent 1611-12 with the Algonquin and returned to France with an incredible story: he had visited the Northern Sea. What's more, he had seen an English youth, the sole survivor of a shipwreck, held captive by the Nebicerini people as a gift for Champlain. Some descriptions of sex, explicit descriptions of violence and some strong language. 2007.For the love of history: celebrating the winners of the Pierre Berton Award
By Pierre Berton. 2005
The National History Society established the Pierre Berton Award for outstanding achievement in popularizing Canadian History. Its winners each provide…
an article which best captures the spirit of the award, including Peter C. Newman's account of the voyageurs, Charlotte Gray's biographical piece on Isabel King, and J. L. Granatstein's selection on the October Crisis. 2005.Beginnings: stories of Canada's past
By Ann Walsh. 2001
Fourteen stories about Canadian history, each focussing on a "first" - the first meeting between natives and Europeans; the first…
elections in which women were allowed to vote; an account of the first "Home Children" sent to Canada during the nineteenth century, supposedly for a better life, but often to work in slave-labour conditions. Includes additional accounts to provide historical context for each story, which cover the period from the mid-seventeenth century to the 1930s, as seen through the eyes of some of its youngest participants. Grades 4-7. 2001.Company of adventurers: The Story Of The Hudson's Bay Company
By Peter C Newman. 1985
Coal black heart: the story of coal and the lives it ruled
By John DeMont. 2009
Describes how Nova Scotia (especially Cape Breton) has been fundamentally shaped by the coal industry, with a combination of family,…
natural, social and labour history. While much of the book is about broken promises from governments and businessmen to the people who sometimes squandered their health or lost their lives in the mines, and who fought in violent labour disputes, DeMont also covers tales of miners - his own descendants among them - that provide glimpses into the joys and hardships of their lives. Some strong language. 2009.Causeway: a passage from innocence
By Linden MacIntyre. 2006
Linden MacIntyre remembers the day construction started on the Canso Causeway, which would link his Cape Breton village with the…
mainland. With its grand promises of jobs and riches and progress, the building of the causeway also became a personal icon for MacIntyre, the road that would bring him closer to the father who was always away. His memoir is a coming-of-age story, a portrait of a vanishing way of life, and a reflection on fathers and sons. Some descriptions of violence and some strong language. 2006.Canoe country: the making of Canada
By Roy MacGregor. 2015
From the earliest explorers on the Columbia River in BC to a doomed expedition of voyageurs up the Nile to…
rescue Khartoum; from the author's family roots deep in the Algonquin wilderness to modern families who have canoed across the country, this is a celebration of the essential and enduring love affair Canadians have with our first and still favourite means of getting around. Famous paddlers have been so enchanted with the canoe that one swore God made Canada as the perfect country in which to paddle it. Drawing on MacGregor's own decades spent whenever possible with a paddle in his hand, this is a story of high adventure on white water and the sweetest peace in nature's quietest corners, from the author best able to tell it. Bestseller. 2015.Blood and daring: how Canada fought the American Civil War and forged a nation
By John Boyko. 2013
Historian John Boyko makes a compelling argument that Confederation occurred when and as it did largely because of the pressures…
of the U.S. Civil War. Many readers will be shocked by Canada's deep connection to the war - Canadians fought in every major battle, supplied arms to the South, and many key Confederate meetings took place on Canadian soil. Boyko gives Americans a new understanding of the North American context of the war, and also shows how the political climate of the time created a more unified Canada, one that was able to successfully oppose American expansion. 2013.As near to heaven by sea: a history of Newfoundland and Labrador
By Kevin Major. 2001
Newfoundland author Major tells the history of his province with tales of lost Beothuk fishers and hunters, Leif Eriksson and…
his Viking colonists, waters teaming with fish, and hardy European settlers who made the Rock their home. Some of the stories verge on the fanciful and fantastic, including those about the earliest purported visitors. Major also captures the rowdy days of the 1700s when schools, doctors, and roads were nonexistent and corrupt, often-drunk British admirals dispensed frontier justice. 2001.Arabian sands
By Wilfred Thesiger. 1984
Thesiger, the son of a British diplomat, was born in a mud hut in Addis Ababa in 1910. This is…
the account of his travels from 1945 to 1950 during which he lived among the Bedouins and traversed the "Empty Quarter", a vast, arid desert. 1984.A place within: rediscovering India
By M. G Vassanji. 2008
Author M. G. Vassanji was born in Africa, where his Indian grandparents had settled, and his relationship to India had…
been complex and contradictory. Vassanji describes his many visits to India, encompassing bustling cities, quiet landscapes, fantastic stories and fascinating characters, in this his part travelogue and description, part history and meditation, and above all a quest for a lost homeland. Some descriptions of violence. Winner of the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction. Canada Reads 2012. 2008.A number of things: stories of Canada told through fifty objects
By Jane Urquhart. 2016
For Canada's 150th birthday, Urquhart chooses 50 Canadian objects and weaves a rich and surprising narrative that speaks to our…
collective experience as a nation. The fifty artifacts range from a Nobel Peace Prize medal, a literary cherry tree, a royal cowcatcher, a Beothuk legging, a famous skull and an iconic artist’s shoe, as well as an Innu tea doll, a Sikh RCMP turban, a Cree basket, a Massey-Harris tractor and a hanging rope. Bestseller. 2016.A nation forged in fire: Canadians and the Second World War, 1939-1945
By Desmond Morton, J. L Granatstein. 1989
While Canadian soldiers fought and died in World War II, Canada itself was changing. Ottawa was forced to turn to…
the United States for economic and strategic aid; women entered the work force; industry boomed; and old traditions and loyalties were swept away. 1989.A fair country: telling truths about Canada
By John Ralston Saul. 2008
In this vision of Canada, Saul unveils 3 founding myths: he argues that the famous "peace, order, and good government"…
that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country's true nature. He describes Canada as a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas. Lastly, he believes that Canada has a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada. c2008.