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Girls need not apply: field notes from the Forces /
By Kelly S. Thompson. 2019
At eighteen years old, Kelly Thompson enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces. Despite growing up in a military family --…
she would, in fact, be a fourth-generation soldier -- she couldn't shake the feeling that she didn't belong. From the moment she arrives for basic training at a Quebec military base, a young woman more interested in writing than weaponry, she quickly realizes that her conception of what being a soldier means, forged from a desire to serve her country after the 9/11 attacks, isn't entirely accurate. A career as a female officer will involve navigating a masculinized culture and coming to grips with her burgeoning feminism. In this compulsively readable memoir, Thompson writes with wit and honesty about her own development as a woman and a soldier, unsparingly highlighting truths about her time in the military. In sharply crafted prose, she chronicles the frequent sexism and misogyny she encounters both in training and later in the workplace, and explores her own feelings of pride and loyalty to the Forces, and a family legacy of PTSD, all while searching for an artistic identity in a career that demands conformity. When she sustains a career-altering injury, Thompson fearlessly re-examines her identity as a soldier. 2019.Scotty: A Hockey Life Like No Other
By Ken Dryden. 2019
NATIONAL BESTSELLERA hockey life like no other.A hockey book like no other.Scotty Bowman is recognized as the best coach in…
hockey history, and one of the greatest coaches in all of sports. He won more games and more Stanley Cups than anyone else. Remarkably, despite all the changes in hockey, he coached at the very top for more than four decades, his first Cup win and his last an astonishing thirty-nine years apart. Yet perhaps most uniquely, different from anyone else who has ever lived or ever will again, he has experienced the best of hockey continuously since he was fourteen years old. With his precious standing room pass to the Montreal Forum, he saw "Rocket" Richard play at his peak every Saturday night. He saw Gordie Howe as a seventeen-year-old just starting out. He scouted Bobby Orr as a thirteen-year-old in Parry Sound, Ontario. He coached Guy Lafleur and Mario Lemieux. He coached against Wayne Gretzky. For the past decade, as an advisor for the Chicago Blackhawks, he has watched Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, and Connor McDavid. He has seen it all up close. Ken Dryden was a Hall-of-Fame goaltender with the Montreal Canadiens. His critically acclaimed and bestselling books have shaped the way we read and think about hockey. Now the player and coach who won five Stanley Cups together team up once again.In Scotty, Dryden has given his coach a new test: Tell us about all these players and teams you've seen, but imagine yourself as their coach. Tell us about their weaknesses, not just their strengths. Tell us how you would coach them and coach against them. And then choose the top eight teams of all time, match them up against one another in a playoff series, and, separating the near-great from the great, tell us who would win. And why.This book is about a life—a hockey life, a Canadian life, a life of achievement. It is Scotty Bowman in his natural element, behind the bench one more time.Little Leaders: Bold Women In Black History (Vashti Harrison)
By Vashti Harrison. 2017
This beautifully illustrated board book edition of instant bestseller Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History showcases women who changed…
the world and is the perfect goodnight book to inspire big dreams. Featuring 18 trailblazing black women in American history, Dream Big, Little One is the irresistible board book adaptation of Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. Among these women, you'll find heroes, role models, and everyday women who did extraordinary things - bold women whose actions and beliefs contributed to making the world better for generations of girls and women to come. Whether they were putting pen to paper, soaring through the air or speaking up for the rights of others, the women profiled in these pages were all taking a stand against a world that didn't always accept them. The leaders in this book may be little, but they all did something big and amazing, inspiring generations to come.We the North: 25 Years of the Toronto Raptors
By Doug Smith. 2020
NATIONAL BESTSELLER"Doug Smith always gets the first question in any Raptors press conference--as the dean of our press corps, he's…
been in the front row for every development over the past 25 years. There's no one better placed to write a history of our team's first quarter century."--Nick Nurse, head coach, Toronto RaptorsBringing Jurassic Park to your home, a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Canada's most exciting team.When the Toronto Raptors first took the court back in 1995, the world was a very different place. Michael Jordan was tearing up the NBA. No one had email. And a lot of people wondered whether basketball could survive in Toronto, the holy city of hockey.Twenty-five years later, the Raptors are the heroes not only of the 416, but of the entire country. That is the incredible story of We the North, told by Doug Smith, the Toronto Starreporter who has been covering the team since the press conference announcing Canada's new franchise and the team's beat reporter from that day on.Comprising twenty-five chapters to mark the team's twenty-five years, We the North celebrates the biggest moments of the quarter-century--from Vince Carter's amazing display at the dunk competition to the play-off runs, the major trades, the Raptors'incredible fans, including Nav Bhatia and Drake, and,of course,the challenges that marked the route to the championship-clinching Game 6 that brought the whole countryto a standstill.We the North: 25 Years of the Toronto Raptors tells the story of Canada's most exciting team, charting their rise from a sporting oddity in a hockey-mad country to the status they hold today as the reigning NBA champions and national heroes.Change Up: How to Make the Great Game of Baseball Even Better
By Dan Robson, Buck Martinez. 2016
In the spirit of Moneyball, the voice of the Toronto Blue Jays offers cutting insights on baseballBuck Martinez has been…
in and around professional baseball for nearly fifty years as a player, manager and broadcaster. Currently the play-by-play announcer for the Toronto Blue Jays, Martinez has witnessed enormous change in the game he loves, as it has morphed from a grassroots pastime to big business. Not all of the change has been for the better, and today’s fans struggle to connect to their on-the-field heroes as loyalty to club and player wavers and free agency constantly changes the face of every team’s roster.In Change Up, Martinez offers his unique insights into how Major League Baseball might reconnect with its fanbase, how the clubs might train and prepare their players for their time in “The Show,” and how players might approach the sport in a time of sagging fan interest. Martinez isn’t shy with his opinions, whether they be on pitch count, how to develop players through the minor-league system, and even if there should be a minor-league system at all. Always entertaining, ever insightful, Martinez shares brilliant insights and inside pitches about summer’s favourite game.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.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.Pearleen Oliver: Canada's Black Crusader for Civil Rights
By Ronald Caplan. 2021
In a winning new book, Pearleen Oliver: Canada's Black Crusader for Civil Rights brings to life a compassionate and passionate…
African Nova Scotian, the story of her growth and activism — a book that shows how one woman's voice changed the course of Nova Scotia's history. Pearleen Oliver pushed open doors that blocked Black girls from nurses' training. She kicked Little Black Sambo out of public schools. She was spokesperson for Viola Desmond's appeal of her 1946 conviction for challenging racist customs. A founder of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Black United Front and the Black Cultural Centre, she was the first female moderator of the African United Baptist Association, and a founder of the AUBA Women's Institute. Editor Ronald Caplan weaves Pearleen's voice from her interviews and speeches. We experience Pearleen's awareness of injustice as she grew up in segregated New Glasgow schools. A married woman, we see her outrage re-kindled by a bewildered teenager at her door who was barred from nurses' training by her skin colour. Pearleen began to speak out before civic and religious and community groups, Boards of Trade, Rotary luncheons, B'nai B'rith and Baptist services and nuclear disarmament conferences. Newspapers carried her voice?a voice of reason and determination and common sense — across the province, and then across Canada. While raising five sons and carrying on the duties of a minister's wife, Pearleen mentored young girls and women in summer camps, church groups, continuing education, and women's groups. She was the organist in her churches, and she wrote histories of Black communities. In this eye-opening book Pearleen Oliver tells stories of activist journalist Carrie Best who published Nova Scotia's first Black newspaper, of successful businesswoman Viola Desmond who was sidetracked by petty racism, of Black soldiers who fought Nazi racism in the Second World War and then came home to racial discrimination in Canada. This book keeps alive a determined fighter for social justice who should not be forgotten. Pearleen Oliver demonstrated what one person, one voice, can do.Somebeachsomewhere: The Harness Racing Legend from a One-Horse Stable
By Marjorie Simmins. 2021
The Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini
By Bruce MacNab. 2015
Winner, Best Atlantic Published Book AwardShortlisted, Canadian Regional Design Awardmet-a-mor-pho-sis: a complete change of form, structure, or substance, as transformation…
by magic or witchcraft. In May of 1896, a young magician from New York City joined the cast of the Marco Magic Company and embarked on a summer-long tour of eastern Canada, including New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It was during this excursion that Handcuff Harry AKA Harry Houdini first showcased the talent that transformed him from a small-time conjurer, who performed for pennies in dime museums, into the world's most celebrated escape artist. When he wasn't performing on stage, Houdini was barnstorming through the streets of every town and city he visited, astounding onlookers in police stations, hardware stores and hospitals by freeing himself from the clutches of every restraining device strapped or wrapped around him. In this absorbing book, enriched by rare, period photographs, Bruce MacNab recounts a fascinating but shockingly untold chapter in the career of the man whose name is still synonymous with the word magic.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.Two Pieces of Cloth: One Family's Story of the Holocaust
By Joe Gold. 2021
Torn apart by war. Reunited through faith. In this remarkable true story of the Holocaust, we follow David Goldberger from…
the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, back to Budapest where his wife, Aurelia, and infant son are hiding under false Christian identities. By the time he is liberated by the allies, Goldberger weighs a skeletal sixty-five pounds and is told to wait for the Slovakian legion to rescue him. With the threat of typhus looming, Goldberger instead escapes with a group of men to Hannover. There, he is given two pieces of wool cloth-the key to rebuilding his future as he searches for his wife and child. Drawn from survivor testimony, personal conversations, and archival documents, and vividly brought to life by Goldberger's son Joe Gold, Two Pieces of Cloth bears witness to the horrors of the Holocaust, while serving as a testament to the power and resilience of the human spirit.Rebound: Sports, Community, and the Inclusive City
By Perry King. 2021
From basketball hoops to cricket bats, the role community sports play in our cities and how crucial they are to…
diversity and inclusion. “The virus exposed how we live and work. It also revealed how we play, and what we lose when we have to stop.” For every kid who makes it to the NBA, thousands more seek out the pleasure and camaraderie of pick-up basketball in their local community centre or neighbourhood park. It’s a story that plays out in sport after sport – team and individual, youth and adult, men's and women's. While the dazzle of pro athletes may command our attention, grassroots sports build the bridges that link city-dwellers together in ways that go well beyond the physical benefits. The pandemic and heightened awareness of racial exclusion reminded us of the importance of these pastimes and the public spaces where we play. In this closely reported exploration of the role of community sports in diverse cities, Toronto journalist Perry King makes an impassioned case for re-imagining neighbourhoods whose residents can be active, healthy, and connected. "I couldn’t stop reading Perry King’s Rebound. An evocative essay about the transformative and uniting power of local sports in a city with residents from every country in the world, the book is well researched, entertaining, and informative. It spoke to my own experiences as a young athlete fitting into a new city when I first came to Toronto – and to the importance our city government must place on local recreation and sports if our city is to help all residents reach their potential. A fantastic contribution to understanding Toronto – and to the power of local recreation in any major city." —David Miller, former mayor of TorontoThe Running-Shaped Hole
By Robert Earl Stewart. 2022
Robert Earl Stewart weighs 368 pounds and struggles to catch his breath while talking. He starts running to save his…
life. Along the way he loses 140 pounds, ends up in jail, and eventually runs the Detroit Free Press Half-Marathon.Amazing Athletes: An All-Star Look at Canada's Paralympians
By Howard Scott, Phyllis Aronoff, Marie-Claude Ouellet. 2021
Playing the Long Game: A Memoir
By Christine Sinclair. 2022
NATIONAL BESTSELLERFor the first time in depth and in public, Olympic soccer gold-medalist Christine Sinclair, the top international goal scorer…
of all time and one of Canada's greatest athletes, reflects on both her exhilarating successes and her heartbreaking failures. Playing the Long Game is a book of earned wisdom on the value of determination and team spirit, and on leadership that changed the landscape of women's sport.Christine Sinclair is one of the world's most respected and admired athletes. Not only is she the player who has scored the most goals on the international soccer stage, male or female, but more than two decades into her career, she is the heart of any team she plays on, the captain of both Canada's national team and the top-ranked Portland Thorns FC in the National Women's Soccer League. Working with the brilliant and bestselling sportswriter Stephen Brunt, who has followed her career for decades, the intensely private Sinclair will share her reflections on the significant moments and turning points in her life and career, the big wins and losses survived, not only on the pitch. Her extraordinary journey, combined with her candour, commitment and decency, will inspire and empower her fans and admirers, and girls and women everywhere.A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré
By John Le Carré. 2022
An archive of letters written by the late John le Carré, giving readers access to the intimate thoughts of one…
of the greatest writers of our time.The never-before-seen correspondence of John le Carré, one of the most important novelists of our generation, are collected in this beautiful volume. During his lifetime, le Carré wrote numerous letters to writers, spies, politicians, artists, actors, and public figures. This collection is a treasure trove, revealing the late author's humour, generosity, and wit—a side of him many readers have not previously seen.Gibby: Tales of a Baseball Lifer
By John Gibbons, Greg Oliver. 2023
Kid Olympians: True Tales of Childhood from Champions and Game Changers (Kid Legends #9)
By Robin Stevenson. 2024
Triumphant, relatable, and totally true biographies tell the childhood stories of a diverse group of international athletes who have captured…
the world’s attention at the Summer Olympics and Paralympics, like Simone Biles, Jesse Owens, Naomi Osaka, Tatyana McFadden, and 12 other incredible olympians.Athletes throughout history have dreamed of competing in the Olympics—and some were kids themselves when those dreams and plans began! In Kid Olympians: Summer, discover the childhood stories of legends such as: Usain Bolt, who used to skip practices to go to the arcade and play video games.Serena Williams, who sometimes hit her tennis ball over the fence on purpose!Tatyana McFadden, who had to fight to be allowed on her school’s track teamFeaturing kid-friendly text and full-color illustrations, you’ll be inspired to dream bigger, faster, and higher than ever before! The diverse and inspiring group also includes Michael Phelps, Yusra Mardini, Dick Fosbury, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Gertrude Ederle, Nadia Comaneci, Ellie Simmonds, Tommie Smith, Wilma Rudolph, and Megan Rapinoe.Undisputed: A Champion's Life
By Donovan Bailey. 2023
A memoir of Olympic glory, the value of mentorship and the courage to champion your own excellence, from the long-reigning…
world's fastest man, Canadian sprinting legend Donovan Bailey.From the lush fields of his boyhood in Jamaica, to the basketball courts of Oakville, where he came of age in one of Canada’s most thriving cultural mosaics, to his sprint toward double Olympic gold for Canada in Atlanta in 1996, Donovan Bailey got a long way on natural talent. But he also learned that in the bureaucratic world of Canadian sports, an athlete who didn't come up in the system needed to take charge of his fate if he was going to become the world’s best. As he ascended from outsider to dominant athlete, others didn’t always understand the rigour at work behind Bailey’s confident demeanour. He’d learned from watching Muhammad Ali that a champion needed to act like a champion. But media grew fixated on the sprinter’s immodesty, the likes of which they never saw from Canadian athletes, especially track athletes in the wake of the Ben Johnson doping scandal at Seoul in 1988. Bailey was having none of it, and when he called out Canada's subtle racism and contradicted the prevailing idea most Canadians had of their country, he left in his wake a media uproar and cracked wide open the nation’s moral complacency. In addition to his unforgettable 100-metre and 4x100 relay gold-medal sprints in Atlanta, Bailey's track career was a litany of records and rare accomplishments, including his audacious 1997 race in Toronto's SkyDome against American 200-metre Olympic champion Michael Johnson to determine who was really the world’s fastest man. There was no disputing the result. Bailey had been coached in success before he was seriously coached in athletics. Following the lead of his father, a machinist-turned-real estate investor, Bailey became a millionaire by the age of 21, an experience he continues to draw on as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. Frank about his dominance on the track and unapologetic for expecting as much of those around him as he expects of himself, Undisputed is an athlete's story that refuses to settle for second best.