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Showing 1 - 20 of 1723 items
By Scott Kennedy. 2013
How Toronto’s own city farms were crowded out First settled in the early nineteenth century, the area now known as…
Don Mills retained its rural character until the end of the Second World War. After the war, population growth resulted in pressure to develop the area around Toronto and, in a relatively short time, the landscape of Don Mills was irreparably altered. Today, the farms are all gone, as are almost all of the barns and farmhouses. Fields and forests have been replaced by the industries, homes, and shops of Canada’s “first subdivision.” In Don Mills: From Forests and Farms to Forces of Change, author Scott Kennedy remembers Don Mills as it was and takes great care to make sure that the farms and farmers are not forgotten.By J M S Careless. 1996
This sampling of the work of J.M.S. Careless in the area of Canadian historical studies was selected by the eminent…
scholar himself, and represents much of his finest work. The collection spans the years from 1940 to 1990 in the long and distinguished career of one of Canada’s best-known historians. In Careless’s own words, History is dated. Its very claim is that the past does not fade into nothing but continues to matter, whether or not the purely present-minded are able to recognize that basic fact. These essays cover the main lines of Careless’s career in Canadian scholarship. The collection is divided into four general subject areas each covering a main preoccupation in a distinguished career of over forty years. The first section concentrates on the earliest theme in his writing, George Brown and his times. The second centres on exploring various aspects of frontierism and metropolitanism in Canadian history. The third part deals with cities and regions focusing particularly on the West and nineteenth century Ontario. The final section picks up the threads of other themes including limited identities Canada and multiculturalism.By Lieutenant-General J H P M Caron, Roch Legault, Colonel Bernd Horn. 2007
French Canadians have a long, proud history of serving their nation. From the earliest beginnings, French Canadians assisted in carving…
out and defending the nascent country. They were critical as defenders and as allies against hostile Natives and competing European powers. In the aftermath of the conquest, they continued, albeit under a different flag, to defend Canada. Loyal Service examines the service of a number of French-Canadian leaders and their contributions to the nation during times of peace, crisis, and conflict spanning the entire historical spectrum from New France to the end of the twentieth century.By Bryan Prince. 2015
The story of African Canadians who fled slavery in the United States but returned to enlist in the Union forces…
during the American Civil War. On New Year’s Eve in 1862, blacks from across British North America joined in spirit with their American fellows in silent vigils to await the enactment of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The terms declared that slaves who were held in the districts that were in rebellion would be free and that blacks would now be allowed to enlist in the Union Army and participate in the civil war that had then raged for more than a year and a half. African Canadians who had fled from the United States had not forgotten their past and eagerly sought to do their part in securing rights and liberty for all. Leaving behind their freedom in Canada, many enlisted in the Union cause. Most served as soldiers or sailors while others became recruiters, surgeons, or regimental chaplains. Entire black communities were deeply affected by this war that profoundly and irrevocably changed North American history.By Melvin Juette, Ronald Berger. 2008
By Henry Kisor. 2010
Henry Kisor lost his hearing at age three to meningitis and encephalitis but went on to excel in the most…
verbal of professions as a literary journalist. This new and expanded edition of Kisor's engrossing memoir recounts his life as a deaf person in a hearing world and addresses heartening changes over the last two decades due to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and advancements in cochlear implants and modes of communication. _x000B_Kisor tells of his parents' drive to raise him as a member of the hearing and speaking world by teaching him effective lip-reading skills at a young age and encouraging him to communicate with his hearing peers. _x000B_Kisor updates the continuing disagreements between those who advocate sign language and those who practice speech and lip-reading, discusses the increased acceptance of deaf people's abilities and idiosyncrasies, and considers technological advancements that have enabled deaf people to communicate with the hearing world on its own terms.By Harry G. Lang. 2004
Edmund Booth was born in 1810 and died in 1905, and during the 94 years of his life, he epitomized…
virtually everything that characterized an American legend of that century. In his prime, Booth stood 6 feet, 3 inches tall, weighed in at 210 pounds, and wore a long, full beard. He taught school in Hartford, CT, then followed his wife-to-be Mary Ann Walworth west to Anamosa, Iowa, where in 1840, he built the area's first frame house. He pulled up stakes nine years later to travel the Overland Trail on his way to join the California Gold Rush. After he returned to Iowa in 1854, he became the editor of the Anamosa Eureka, the local newspaper. Edmund Booth fit perfectly the mold of the ingenious pioneer of 19th-century America, except for one unusual difference -- he was deaf. Edmund Booth: Deaf Pioneer follows the amazing career of this American original and his equally amazing wife in fascinating detail. Author Harry G. Lang vividly portrays Booth and his wife by drawing from a remarkable array of original material. A prolific writer, Booth corresponded with his fiancé from the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, and he kept a journal during his days on the California trail, parts of which have been reproduced here. He also wrote an autobiographical essay when he was 75, and his many newspaper articles through the years bore first-hand witness to the history of his times, from the Civil War to the advent of the 20th century. Edmund Booth depicts a larger-than-life man in larger-than-life times, but perhaps its greatest contribution derives from its narrative about pioneer days as seen through Deaf eyes. Booth became a respected senior statesman of the American Deaf community, and blended with his stories of the era's events are anecdotes and issues vital to Deaf people and their families. His story proves again that extraordinary people vary in many ways, but they often possess a common motive in acting to enhance their own communities.By Jennifer Noonan. 2016
A heartbreaking yet also funny and ultimately empowering memoir revealing the a multi-year journey into the latest science and treatments…
in order to rescue her kids and her family from autism.By Quentin Kenihan. 2016
Quentin Kenihan is living proof that superheroes don't need capes, just the right attitude. FOREWORD BY RAY MARTINWhen he was…
a kid, Quentin Kenihan loved Superman. Ironic, really. Quentin didn't need kryptonite to reveal his weakness - born with a rare bone disorder, osteogenesis imperfecta, his bones broke all on their own.When Quentin was seven, Mike Willesee made a documentary about him. Australians fell in love with his wit, and never-say-die attitude. Over the years he grew up before our eyes. But there was a dark side to his life. The true story was never told ... until now. A story of abandonment, drug addiction, dark days and thoughts of suicide. Battling through it all, Quentin's resilience is inspiring.Quentin is now determined to live life the best he can. Just turned 41, he is a filmmaker, stand-up comedian, radio host, actor and film critic; he's hung out with Angelina, accidentally ripped Jennifer Lopez's dress, talked sex with Jean-Claude Van Damme, appeared in MAD MAX and interviewed Julia Gillard, all the while showing that living in a wheelchair doesn't mean staying still.This is an unforgettable, brutally honest, at times heartbreaking memoir. Quentin Kenihan is living proof that superheroes don't need capes, just the right attitude!'Quentin is a hero of mine. Probably the toughest man I have ever met. Read this book and reconsider how hard you think your life is. It is a liberating experience to face life through his eyes.' - RUSSELL CROWEBy Colin Perkel. 2002
This is the story of a system that failed utterly, at almost every level, and with fatal effect. People died,…
hundreds of others were made horribly sick, and for days, no one knew what was happening, or why. There were rumours about the water, but the Public Utilities Commission blandly assured callers that the water was okay. Which left investigators trying to figure out if the problem was tainted food - or something else.Colin Perkel was among the first reporters to visit Walkerton when word finally got out that the water was poisoned. Using the interviews he conducted and the testimony given to the Walkerton Inquiry, Perkel has pieced together an authoritative and riveting account of the tragedy. He tells the story from the point of view of the people who lived through it. He shows how the virtues of a small town - its closeness, loyalty, tradition, and sense of community - contributed to the disaster. He shows how two brothers, Stan and Frank Koebel, were sustained by those virtues despite their own limitations. He provides a day-by-day account of the epidemic itself, the moments of heroism and good sense, and the instances of incompetence, wilful blindness, and plain stupidity.A few heroes do emerge: the pediatrician who was thoughtful and worried enough to raise the alarm; the investigator who worked feverishly through a holiday weekend to find the source of the poison; even perhaps the reporter at the local radio station who broadcast the boil-water advisory. Neither the politicians - at any level -nor the bureaucrats in the Department of Environment and the health ministry come out very well. But Colin Perkel never loses sight of the fact that this story is about real people. And his account of what happened is always set in the context of the complicated lives of the people who lived through it. There are no villains in this story, but only flawed humans.This is a superb piece of reporting. It deals with a tragedy that might have occurred - and might occur again - in virtually any community in Canada.By Thomas Guthrie Marquis, Clara Thomas, Douglas Lochhead, John George Bourinot, Camille Roy. 1973
These three works, displaying marked differences in purpose, tone, and effect, are all classics of Canadian literary and cultural criticism.John…
George Bourinot was a man of letters, an Imperialist, and a biculturalist, who was confident of his knowledge of the Canadian identity and felt it to be his public mission to align reality with his own personal vision. Writing in 1893 to the élite represented by the members of the Royal Society, he described his work as 'a monograph on the intellectual development of the Dominion,' describing 'the progress of culture in a country still struggling with the difficulties of the material development of half a continent.'Two decades later, Thomas Guthrie Marquis and Camille Roy wrote what were, in contrast, specialized assignments, contributions to the compendium history, Canada and Its Provinces (1913). Addressing a far larger audience, and treating a vastly enlarged body of Canadian literature, their work comes much closer to contemporary scholarship, with greater clarity, organization, and sheer bulk of information, but with the loss of some of the charm and assurance of Bourinot's wide sweep. In further contrast to Bourinot's determined biculturalism and will to unity, Roy and Marquis' essays display vivid differences in the emotional allegiances and convictions of the founding cultures. Marquis starts by asking the question, 'Has Canada a voice of her own in literature distinct from that of England?'; Roy treats French-Canadian literature in its Roman Catholic contexts.By Sarah Gibson, Arthur Milnes. 2014
To coincide with the bicentennial of Sir John A. Macdonald's birth, this is the first-ever selected collection of his most…
important and defining speeches. Published in collaboration with The Sir John A. Macdonald Bicentennial Commission, and endorsed by all of our living Prime Ministers, this is a beautifully produced book that deserves to be in all Canadian homes, schools, and libraries. The Sir John A. Macdonald Bicentennial Commission set out several years ago to collect, annotate, and footnote all of our first Prime Minister's speeches. Rather shockingly, this had not been done before; the speeches of even the most minor of US presidents are available in print and e-book form. Obviously, such a collection is a must for libraries and educational institutions across the country as a matter of historical record, but the speeches also make for great reading. His words have a Churchillian feel to them -- direct, decisive, visionary, and very often funny. Sir John A. is marvellously quotable, and through these speeches you understand how our country was formed, what its challenges were and often continue to be, and why our first PM was perhaps the best we'll ever have.By Wendy Bryden. 2011
The true love story of Florence and Guy Weadick, in celebration of the Centenary of the Calgary Stampede, 1912 -…
2012.The love story of rodeo promoter Guy Weadick and trick roper Flores LaDue began among the rough-and-tumble vaudevillians who preserved the frontier way of life in the first Wild West shows. Their love endured through North American performances in the small-time and big-time circuits, to the audiences of Europe, and culminated in 1912 with the most spectacular of accomplishments - the establishment of the greatest outdoor show on earth, the Calgary Stampede.By Anna Magdalene Handley. 2014
On the night of a debutante ball, events set in motion an emotive and intimate portrayal of the revelation of…
a life changing condition. Anna Magdalene plunges deep into a personal maelstrom that is both tender and hard-hitting as it explores the hidden recesses of social understanding of her condition, Friedreich's Ataxia. On the quest for healing, Anna embarks on brave and sometimes strange journeys of enlightenment to free herself from the bonds of her condition. In one of these adventures she stumbles on an unexpected answer that brings a true light in the most disarming way, changing her whole view of what freedom is. Simultaneously, she discovers a mutual hope to join life again and a way to live with her condition, 'Fred', while she must. (Blurb by Anna's Carers, Pierre and Lee Figueira)By John Lownsbrough. 2012
For six months in 1967, from late April until the end of October, Canada and its world’s fair, Expo ’67,…
became the focus of national and international attention in a way the country and its people had rarely experienced before. At a time when Canada celebrated its centennial, Expo 67 seemed in a lot of ways to crystallize the buoyant mood and newfound sense of confidence many felt that year. Expo was a great world’s fairsome claimed the greatestin the way it brought together the worlds of art and architecture, film and the performing arts, science and technology, under its theme of Man and His World. For many Canadians around at the time, whether or not they made the trip to Montreal, Expo’s host city, Expo became a touchstone, a popular event that penetrated the collective psyche. The Best Place to Be takes a look at Expo and at the context, social and political, in which it occurred. It is above all a story of people, the planners and administrators who took on the challenge of building and running Expo; the young men and women who worked there; the many visitors, not least the citizens of Montreal who returned again and again to savor the delights of an exhibition that helped to so transform their city. .By Lynne Bowen. 2011
Whoever Gives us Bread is a lively people's history from the 1860s to the 1960s, as told by an award-winning…
historian.In the early 1860s, Italians began trickling into British Columbia via San Francisco. Fleeing grinding poverty back home, they came north to the isolated valleys and cities of the province to pan for gold, raise cattle, dig coal, fell timber, build railroads, smelt copper and refine lead, or to start small businesses. BC welcomed them grudgingly.Recounting the stories of individual Italian immigrants, celebrated author Lynne Bowen has crafted a loosely chronological narrative of the Italian settlement of BC. It's a story rife with discrimination and tragedy, with families torn apart when their men left Italy for more promising futures, but always there is a rich sense of community and a sense of pride.Here we meet Joseph Fontana, who incensed his fellow striking miners when he crossed their picket line near Ladysmith. We meet Sabina Teti, who ran a boarding house in Vancouverís Italian district of Strathcona. We hear stories of the 53 Italians who were rounded up from BC and shipped off to Kananaskis internment camp for fear that they would form a fifth column in support of Mussolini. Through these stories, Bowen also reveals the Canadian immigration, labour, and multiculturalism issues of the time.Today, the BC Italian community is Canada's oldest by 50 years. Bowen has spent 10 years conducting interviews and combing through newspapers, government records and letters to write this definitive history. Whoever Gives Us Bread will appeal to the large Italian population in BC and across Canada as well as to readers of social history.By Watson Kirkconnell. 1967
Watson Kirkconnell is one of the most familiar figures in the world of Canadian letters Educated at Queen s…
and Oxford he has published several volumes of poetry and poetry translations was the founding father and first chairman of the Humanities Research Council a charter member and national president 1942-44 1956-58 of the Canadian Authors Association and has shared in university life for 45 years He has been active in many other areas of public life as one of the founders of the Prisoners Aid Society now the John Howard Society of Manitoba a joint organizer of the Citizenship Branch Ottawa a founder and first president of the Canadian-Polish Society as well as the Baptist Federation of Canada of which he was national president 1953-56 In widespread recognition of his work in these many fields Dr Kirkonnell has received twelve honorary doctorates from universities in Canada the United States Hungary and Germany knighthoods from Poland and Iceland and numerous awards from other countries The chronicle of such a full and active career offers a valuable look at many aspects of Canadian life in his memoirs Dr Kirkonnell has avoided a merely chronological arrangement of his autobiography but sought rather to take various phases of the Canadian tradition and to analyse his experience of each down through the years This Slice of Canada demonstrates the author s discerning faculty of observation and his close involvement not only with the arts but with education religion politics and other areas of Canadian lifeBy Laurel Lee Lewey, Louis J. Richard, Linda M. Turner. 2018
Prior to the implementation of the Equal Opportunity program in the 1960s most New Brunswickers many of them…
Francophone lived with limited access to welfare education and health services New Brunswick s social services framework was similar to that of nineteenth-century England and many people experienced the patronizing attitudes inherent in these laws New Brunswick Before the Equal Opportunity Program examines the observations and experiences of New Brunswick s early social workers who operated under this system and illuminates how Premier Louis J Robichaud s Equal Opportunity program transformed the province s social services Authors Laurel Lewey Louis J Richard and Linda Turner describe more than a century of social work history including the work of the earliest Acadian social workers They also address the fact that the federal government did not take responsibility for social welfare of the Mi kmaq and Maliseet people planning for assimilation instead Clan structures continued to be relied on while subsisting upon inadequate relief provisionsBy Roy Macgregor. 2007
Who are we? In Canadians, one of Canada's most intelligent and beloved writers maps our national psyche in a wonderful…
and ambitious work. Canadians is an entertaining portrait of this country and its people, through its history, popular culture, literature, sport, landscape, and weather. In his pursuit of the Canadian national identity,MacGregor has travelled far and wide, taking our pulse, telling our stories. A sparkling blend of historical, anecdotal, and reflective writing converges in a narrative that is extraordinarily learned in its perceptions and light in its delivery - all trademarks of this remarkable writer's work.By Stephen Osborne, George Melnyk, John Paskievich, Alison Gillmor. 2017
Cities and the people who live in them are enduring subjects of photography. Winnipeg’s North End is one of North…
America’s iconic neighbourhoods, a place where the city’s unique character and politics have been forged. First built when Winnipeg was the “Chicago of the North,” the North End is the great Canadian melting pot, where Indigenous peoples and Old World immigrants cross the boundaries of ethnicity, class, and culture. Like New York’s Lower East Side, the North End is also the place that helped to forge Winnipeg’s political identity of resistance and revolt. Award-winning filmmaker John Paskievich grew up in Winnipeg’s North End, and for the last forty years he has photographed its people and captured its spirit. Paskievich’s films, many made for the National Film Board of Canada, follow the lives of different outsiders, from Slovakian Roma to stutterers. The North End Revisited brings together many of the photographs from Paskievich’s now-classic book The North End (2007) with eighty additional images to present a deep and poignant picture of a special community. Texts by art critics Stephen Osborne and Alison Gillmor and film scholar George Melnyk explore the different aspects of Paskievich’s work and add context from Winnipeg’s history and culture.