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By Linden MacIntyre. 2019
On November 18, 1929, a tsunami struck Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula. Giant waves, up to three storeys high, hit the coast…
at a hundred kilometres per hour, flooding dozens of communities and washing entire houses out to sea. The most destructive earthquake-related event in Newfoundland's history, the disaster killed twenty-eight people and left hundreds more homeless or destitute. It took days for the outside world to find out about the death and damage caused by the tsunami, which forever changed the lives of the inhabitants of the fishing outports along the Burin Peninsula. Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning writer Linden MacIntyre was born near St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, one of the villages virtually destroyed by the tsunami. By the time of his birth, the cod-fishing industry lay in ruins and the village had become a mining town. MacIntyre's father, lured from Cape Breton to Newfoundland by a steady salary, worked in St. Lawrence in an underground mine that was later found to be radioactive. Hundreds of miners would die; hundreds more would struggle through shortened lives profoundly compromised by lung diseases ranging from silicosis and bronchitis to cancer. As MacIntyre says, though the tsunami killed twenty-eight people in 1929, it would claim hundreds if not thousands more lives in the decades to follow. Bestseller. 2019.By Naomi Klein. 2019
For more than twenty years, Naomi Klein has been the foremost chronicler of the economic war waged on both people…
and planet--and the champion of a sweeping environmental agenda with stability and justice at its center. In lucid dispatches from the frontlines--from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef, to the annual smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, to post-hurricane Puerto Rico, to a Vatican attempting an unprecedented "ecological conversion"--she has penned surging, indispensable lectures and essays for a wide public, with prescient, clarifying information about the future that awaits us and our children if we stick our heads in the sand. They show Klein at her most thoughtful, tracing the evolution of the climate crisis as the key issue of our time, not only as an immediate political challenge but as a spiritual and imaginative one too. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of "perpetual now," to the soaring history of humans' ability to change rapidly in the face of grave threat, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of "climate barbarism," this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink. Above all, she underscores how we can still rise to the existential challenge of the crisis if we are willing to transform our systems that are producing it, making clear how the battle for a greener world is indistinguishable from the fight for our lives. 2019.By Dorothy Ellen Palmer. 2019
Born with congenital anomalies in both feet, then called birth defects, Dorothy Ellen Palmer was adopted as a toddler by…
a wounded 1950s family who had no idea how to handle the tangled complexities of adoption and disability. From repeated childhood surgeries to an activist awakening at university to decades as a feminist teacher, mom, improv coach and unionist, she tried to hide being different. But now, standing proud with her walker, she's sharing her journey. Navigating abandonment, abuse and ableism, she finds her birth parents and a new chosen family in the disability community. 2019.A historical work of non-fiction that chronicles the little-known stories of black railway porters--the so-called "Pullmen" of the Canadian rail…
lines. The actions and spirit of these men helped define Canada as a nation in surprising ways, effecting race relations, human rights, North American multiculturalism, community building, the shape and structure of unions, and the nature of travel and business across the US and Canada. Drawing on the stories and legends of several of these influential early black Canadians, this book narrates the history of a very visible, but rarely considered, aspect of black life in railway-age Canada. These porters, who fought against the idea of Canada as White Man's Country, open only to immigrants from Europe, fought for and won a Canada that would provide opportunities for all its citizens. Bestseller. 2019.By Samra Habib. 2019
Growing up in Pakistan, Samra Habib lacks a blueprint for the life she wants. She has a mother who gave…
up everything to be a pious, dutiful wife and an overprotective father who seems to conspire against a life of any adventure. Plus, she has to hide the fact that she's Ahmadi to avoid persecution from religious extremists. As the threats against her family increase, they seek refuge in Canada, where new financial and cultural obstacles await them. When Samra discovers that her mother has arranged her marriage, she must again hide a part of herself--the fun-loving, feminist teenager that has begun to bloom--until she simply can't any longer. So begins a journey of self-discovery that takes her to Tokyo, where she comes to terms with her sexuality, and to a queer-friendly mosque in Toronto, where she returns to her faith in the same neighbourhood where she attended her first drag show. Along the way, she learns that the facets of her identity aren't as incompatible as she was led to believe, and that her people had always been there--the world just wasn't ready for them yet. 2019.By Amanda Leduc. 2020
Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty?…
If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference. ‘Leduc peels the flesh from the fairy tales we grew up loving and strips them down to their skeletons to skilfully reveal how they influence the way we think about disability. She contrasts the stories we have with the ones we wish we had, incorporating her own life. Her wisdom lands like a punch in the heart, leaving a sizable dent that reshapes how we see tales we’ve been telling for centuries. She also – and this is the best part – suggests how we might tell new fairy tales, how we can forge new stories.’ – Adam Pottle, author of Voice ‘A unique and dazzling study … a revolutionary approach to understanding why we are drawn to fairy tales and how they shape our lives.’ – Jack Zipes, author of Grimm Legacies ‘Each chapter is a gem, but the kind of gem that turns into a knife, into a mirror, into a portal. Leduc’s real magic? That she transforms her readers as surely as any world.’ – Mira Jacob, author of Good TalkBy David Wallace-Wells. 2019
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical…
prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday DemonNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus ReviewsIt is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s.LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD“The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times“Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist“Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times“The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post“The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of BooksBy Laura Trethewey. 2020
The vulnerable visage of the crown jewel of planet Earth.An exploration of the earth's last wild frontier, filled with high-stakes…
stories of people and places facing an uncertain future.On a life raft in the Mediterranean, a teenager from Ghana wonders whether he will reach Europe alive, and whether he will be allowed to stay. In the North Atlantic, a young chef disappears from a cruise ship, leaving a mystery for his friends and family to solve. A water-squatting community battles eviction from a harbour in British Columbia, raising the question of who owns the water.The Imperilled Ocean by Laura Trethewey is a deeply reported work of narrative journalism that follows people as they head out to sea. What they discover holds inspiring and dire implications for the life of the ocean — and for all of us back on land. Battles are fought, fortunes made, lives lost, and the ocean approaches an uncertain future. Behind this human drama, the ocean is growing ever more unstable, threatening to upend life on land.By Adam Chapnick. 2019
As the twentieth century ended, Canada was completing its sixth term on the UN Security Council. A decade later, Ottawa’s…
attempt to return to the council was dramatically rejected by its global peers, leaving Canadians – and international observers – shocked and disappointed. Canada on the United Nations Security Council tells the story of that defeat and what it means for future campaigns, describing and analyzing Canada’s attempts since 1946, both successful and unsuccessful, to gain a seat as a non-permanent member. Impeccably researched and clearly written, this is the definitive history of the Canadian experience on the world’s most powerful stage.By Rachel Matlow. 2020
"A hilarious memoir of effervescent misadventures." --Toronto Star"How am I laughing at someone's mother's cancer? How? We think we can't…
laugh about death, about cancer, about our mothers and their suffering . . . and we can't, but we can. And there's so much relief in that. I laughed, I cried, I laughed and laughed and laughed." --Carolyn Taylor, BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOWA traumedy about life and death (and every cosmic joke in between)When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Rachel Matlow is concerned but hopeful. It's Stage 1, so her mom will get surgery and everything will go back to normal. But growing up in Rachel's family, there was no normal. Elaine, an alternative school teacher and self-help junkie, was never a capital M "Mommy"--she spent more time meditating than packing lunches--and Rachel, who played hockey with the boys and refused to ever wear a dress, was no ordinary daughter.When Elaine decides to forgo conventional treatment and heal herself naturally, Rachel is forced to ponder whether the very things that made her mom so special--her independent spirit, her belief in being the author of her own story--are what will ultimately kill her. As the cancer progresses, so does Elaine's conviction in doing things her way. She assembles a dream team of alternative healers, gulps down herbal tinctures with every meal, and talks (with respect) to her cancer cells. Anxious and confused, Rachel is torn between indulging her pie-in-the-sky pursuits (ayahuasca and all) and pleading with the person who's taking her mother away.With irreverence and honesty--and a little help from Elaine's journals and self-published dating guide, plus hours of conversations recorded in her dying days--Matlow brings her inimitable mother to life on the page. Dead Mom Walking is the hilarious and heartfelt story of what happens when two people who've always written their own script go head to head with each other, and with life's least forgiving plot device.By Robert Budd, Roy Henry Vickers. 2019
The Skeena, second longest river in the province, remains an icon of British Columbia’s northwest. Called Xsien (“water of the…
clouds”) by the Tsimshian and Gitksan, it has always played a vital role in the lives of Indigenous people of the region. Since the 1800s, it has also become home to gold seekers, traders, salmon fishers and other settlers who were drawn by the area’s beauty and abundant natural resources. Voices from the Skeena will take readers on a journey inspired directly by the people who lived there. Combining forty illustrations with text selected from the pioneer interviews CBC radio producer Imbert Orchard recorded in the 1960s, the book follows the arrival of the Europeans and the introduction of the fur trade to the Omineca gold rush and the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad. Open the pages to meet Robert Cunningham, an Anglican missionary who would later become the founder of the thriving Port Essington. Here too is a man called Cataline, a packer for whom no settlement was too remote to reach, and the indominable Sarah Glassey, the first woman to pre-empt land in British Columbia. At the heart of these stories is the river, weaving together a narrative of a people and their culture. Pairing the stories with Roy Henry Vicker’s vibrant art creates a unique and captivating portrait of British Columbia that will appeal to art lovers and history readers alike.In the spring of 1970, seventeen women set out from Vancouver in a big yellow convertible, a Volkswagen bus, and…
a pickup truck. They called it the Abortion Caravan. Three thousand miles later, they “occupied” the prime minister’s front lawn in Ottawa, led a rally of 500 women on Parliament Hill, chained themselves to their chairs in the visitors’ galleries, and shut down the House of Commons, the first and only time this had ever happened. The seventeen were a motley crew. They argued, they were loud, and they wouldn't take no for an answer. They pulled off a national campaign in an era when there was no social media, and with a budget that didn't stretch to long-distance phone calls. It changed their lives. And at a time when thousands of women in Canada were dying from back street abortions, it pulled women together across the country.By Rebekah Taussig. 2020
A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to…
paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.Kids are on a mission to save the Earth! Recycle and Remake is the hands-on, practical guide you need to…
get started.This gentle, but empowering book is full of creative making activities, information, and ideas that give young eco-warriors (like you!) the know-how to really help the environment.With Recycle and Remake, you will soon be saving trees by making your own seeded recycled paper from junk mail, cleaning up the oceans by turning old carrier bags into kites, friendship bracelets, and colorful weaved baskets and repurposing a cardboard box into a periscope.You'll also learn about sustainable energies by creating a simple solar oven, cutting down on cling-film by making a food wrap from scrap cotton and beeswax, and turning an old t-shirt into a reusable tote bag so you never need to buy a plastic carrier bag again. You can even grow new plants to clean the air in your own upcycled milk bottle planters and using homemade compost.Each of the activities directly relates to an environmental hot topic, such as plastic pollution, food waste, or deforestation. Budding environmentalists all over the world are feeling inspired to do their bit for our unique planet.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.By Wade Davis. 2020
A captivating new book from Wade Davis--award-winning, bestselling author and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence for more than a decade-- that brings…
vividly to life the story of the great Río Magdalena, illuminating Colombia's complex past, present, and futureTravelers often become enchanted with the first country that captures their hearts and gives them license to be free. For Wade Davis, it was Colombia. Now in a masterful new book, the bestselling author tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of a land that is home to the greatest ecological and geographical diversity on the planet. Only in Colombia can a traveler wash ashore in a coastal desert, follow waterways through wetlands as wide as the sky, ascend narrow tracks through dense tropical forests, and reach verdant Andean valleys rising to soaring ice-clad summits. This rugged and impossible geography finds its perfect coefficient in the topography of the Colombian spirit: restive, potent, at times placid and calm, in moments explosive and wild. Both a corridor of commerce and a fountain of culture, the wellspring of Colombian music, literature, poetry and prayer, the Magdalena has served in dark times as the graveyard of the nation. And yet, always, it returns as a river of life. At once an absorbing adventure and an inspiring tale of hope and redemption, Magdalena gives us a rare, kaleidoscopic picture of a nation on the verge of a new period of peace. Braiding together memoir, history, and journalism, Wade Davis tells the story of the country's most magnificent river, and in doing so, tells the epic story of Colombia.By Thomas Anguti Johnston, Sigmundur Thorgeirsson. 2020
Inuit games have been played as long as anyone can remember! Learn all about Inuit games and why they are…
important for staying healthy and strong for life in the Arctic.By Elizabeth May. 2020
Originally published in 1990, Paradise Won has been updated and details the epic 12-year struggle to stop logging in the…
unique global ecosystem referred to as “Canada’s Galapagos.” Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve is located in the southernmost part of Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), 130 kilometres off the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. Gwaii Haanas protects an archipelago of 138 islands in the territory of the Haida people, who have lived in Haida Gwaii for well over 14,000 years. From the 1970s through the early 1980s, plans to expand logging in the area led to the first concerted efforts to protect Gwaii Haanas and – in 1985 – the Haida Nation created the “Haida Heritage Site.” In spite of efforts to protect the landscape, logging continued and resulted in a prolonged legal and political battle. In 1987, logging finally ended when the governments of Canada and British Columbia signed the South Moresby Memorandum of Understanding, which safeguarded the area and permitted shared stewardship, treating the unique marine and terrestrial environments as though they were a national park, though many land claims were still outstanding. This updated edition of Paradise Won includes a new foreword by the author and will bring back into focus this remarkable story of the power and importance of Indigenous rights and how activism can spur average citizens to action in order to fight climate change and protect fragile ecosystems everywhere.By Elizabeth Howell. 2020
With interviews from Chris Hadfield and Marc Garneau, the tale of Canada’s involvement in international space exploration from the 1960s…
to the present day Canada is a small but mighty power in space exploration. After providing the Canadarm robotic arm for the space shuttle in 1981, Canada received an invitation to start an astronaut program — a program that quickly let its people accumulate skill and prestige. Canadian astronauts have since commanded the International Space Station, flown as co-pilots on spacecraft, and even held senior roles within NASA. This book traces how Canada grew from small beginnings into a major player in international space policy. You will hear about Canada’s space program from the words of its astronauts, from Canadian celebrity Chris Hadfield to Liberal cabinet minister Marc Garneau to Governor General Julie Payette. You will experience the excitement and challenges of reporting on a rocket launch in Kazakhstan, as Canada sent its latest astronaut to space in preparation for possible moon missions in the 2020s. And you will learn from the people who work behind the scenes on Canadian space technology and space policy about why we are doing this — and what we plan to do next.A revelatory book about gender, mental illness, parenting, mortality, bike mechanics, work, class, and the task of living in a…
body. Inquisitive and expansive, Like a Boy but Not a Boy explores author andrea bennett's experiences with gender expectations, being a non-binary parent, and the sometimes funny and sometimes difficult task of living in a body. The book's fourteen essays also delve incisively into the interconnected themes of mental illness, mortality, creative work, class, and bike mechanics (apparently you can learn a lot about yourself through trueing a wheel). In "Tomboy," andrea articulates what it means to live in a gender in-between space, and why one might be necessary; "37 Jobs 21 Houses" interrogates the notion that the key to a better life is working hard and moving house. And interspersed throughout the book is "Everyone Is Sober and No One Can Drive," sixteen stories about queer millennials who grew up and came of age in small Canadian communities. With the same poignant spirit as Ivan Coyote's Tomboy Survival Guide, Like a Boy addresses the struggle to find acceptance, and to accept oneself; and how one can find one's place while learning to make space for others. The book also wonders what it means to be an atheist and search for faith that everything will be okay; what it means to learn how to love life even as you obsess over its brevity; and how to give birth, to bring new life, at what feels like the end of the world. With thoughtfulness and acute observation, andrea bennett reveals intimate truths about the human experience, whether one is outside the gender binary or not.