"The story of the individual always grips us - it is why biography remains so popular. But in Medicine and Duty we receive a double serving: the story of Medical Officer Captain Harold W. McGill coupled with the story of the many men who served in the 31st Battalion and what they together managed to achieve against such long odds." - Patrick Brenna …

In Policing the Wild North-West, the first comprehensive social history of provincial police in western Canada between 1905 and 1932, Zhiqiu Lin investigates the complex relationship between the role of policing, the political sphere, and social progress.

This book attempts to analyze the effects on provincial police in Alberta and Saskatchewan of v …

My Parents: Memoirs of New World Icelanders is a collection of essays written by second-generation Icelandic immigrants in North America, describing the lives of their parents. Originally collected in 1956 by Dr. Finnbogi Gumundsson, the first Chair of Icelandic at the University of Manitoba, seven of the fourteen memoirs are translated here from I …

Alberta is well known for its fossil treasures, and author John Acorn is as keen on the long-dead creatures of Alberta as he is on the living. Here, John features 80 of the most noteworthy fossils, fossil locations, and fossil hunters from this most palaeontological of provinces. There's more to the story of "deep Alberta" than dinosaurs, but dinos …

"Noble's work has always engaged, in its own way, with the Western Canadian tradition of poetry as intellectual experiment grounded on local experience.… Death Drive marks a counter-turn in the work of one of Southern Alberta's most distinctive writers." - Chris Jennings, Department of English, University of Ottawa

In this collection of poetry, Ch …

Working out in the gym has become one of the most popular sport activities in the western world. Thanks to tremendous scientific advances, the gym or fitness room has become a highly effective venue for body management. It helps to satisfy a broad array of physical, health, mental, and social needs, and offers suitable training conditions for a wid …

Son of Catharine Parr Traill and nephew of Susanna Moodie, William Edward Traill, better known as Willie, came by his literary talent naturally. He found employment with the Hudson’s Bay Company in what was to become the Canadian West. His letters home are a rich and detailed portrait of domestic life in the fur trade of the Northwest between 186 …

How does one learn to be a good citizen? A good Canadian? Creating Citizens looks at the role schools have played in creating and sustaining a sense of Canadian identity for generations of Alberta students. History and social studies classes, more than others, are designed to prepare young students for meaningful citizenship and address issues of i …

I Was There shares the insights and experiences of the generations of students, professors, and staff who lived and worked at the U of A for the past 100 years. First-person stories and period photographs present a unique insight into university lore from the vantage point of those who were most intimately involved in making the university what it …

The plea was advertised in the British Medical Journal in February 1929: seeking "strong energetic Medical Women with post-graduate experience in Midwifery" for "country work" in western Canada. A young Dr. Mary Percy was intrigued. After graduating with degrees in medicine and surgery from the University of Birmingham in 1927, she had been searchi …

Told with arresting candor, Leslie Greentree’s short fiction creates the satisfying sense of discovering someone’s long-kept secret, or the guilty pleasure of overhearing a scathing conversation. A housewife indulges in monthly purchases of specialty vinegar and savours her romantic fantasies about the local grocery store manager; a daughter ca …

“So often a long-awaited book is disappointing. Happily such is not the case with Sutherland’s masterpiece.” Robert M. Stamp, University of Calgary, in The Canadian Historical Review

“Sutherland’s work is destined to be a landmark in Canadian history, both as a first in its particular field and as a standard reference text.” J. Stewart …

Roughnecks, Rock Bits, and Rigs is a detailed study of an important and little-documented area of the history of oil and gas in Alberta. It is the first comprehensive study to focus on the technologies that made Alberta's oil industry viable. Author Sandy Gow provides an in-depth look at the evolution of oil well drilling technology from 1883 throu …

Mapper of Mountains follows the career of Dominion Land Surveyor Morrison Parsons Bridgland, who provided the first detailed maps of many regions of the Canadian Rockies. Between 1902 and 1930, this unheralded alpinist perfected phototopographical techniques to compile a series of mountaintop photographs during summers of field work, and spent his …

A pioneer in kidney transplantation in Canada in the late 1950s, Dr. John Dossetor was faced with making many ethical decisions in his ground-breaking research and practice in nephrology so it was with much personal experience that he embraced the study of medical ethics in his later years. His medical career spans decades of change as modern techn …

Phantom Lake explores the stories, legends, and tall tales that make up “Flin Flon,” a real imaginary place perched on rocky outcrops and lakes of the Canadian Shield. Birk Sproxton traverses the high latitudes of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in a quest for the mystery of Flin Flon and in search of himself. The northern stories, like Shield Lakes …

Based on original research, this exhaustive volume provides a rich background to Alberta's historic courthouses. Covering in detail all of Alberta's historic courthouses built between 1874 and 1950, this book considers many facets of these unique and significant structures. Using the backdrop of the major political periods in Alberta history, this …

Take a trip through Alberta with some of Canada's finest established and emerging poets as your guides. Writing the Terrain is the first anthology dedicated solely to the poetry of the Alberta landscape and cityscape, by authors who have travelled the main roads, back roads, and gravel roads of this vast province. This collection offers a series of …

Translated from Dutch to English, this collection of letters offers a unique, first-hand perspective on the early years of the Dutch community in southeastern Alberta.

A fascinating primary source, these letters provide accounts of the preparations to immigrate, the hardships of the pioneer years, and the transformation from the most basic homestea …

Translated from personal memoirs and diaries, this is a compelling story of Anthony Hlynka, the only sitting Member of Parliament of Ukrainian origin from 1940 to 1945. Representing the constituency of Vegreville, Alberta, for the Social Credit party, Hlynka was a high-profile Member of Parliament who garnered much attention from the English-langua …

Dedicated to the memory of Richard G. Forbis, this collection of papers presented by his students and colleagues represents more than a tribute to a pioneer and legend in Alberta archaeology. Dick Forbis was seminal in putting archaeology in Alberta on the road it has taken and in establishing the field of cultural resource management. Throughout h …

With iridescent blues and greens, damselflies are some of the most beautiful flying insects as well as the most primitive. As members of the insect order Odonata they are related to dragonflies but are classified in a separate suborder. These aquatic insects are a delight to the eye and a fascinating creature of study. In Damselflies of Alberta, na …

An Alberta Bestiary: Animals of the Rolling Hills seeks to build on the traditions of the medieval bestiary and considers the unique animals of the Alberta mountains and foothills. From the perspective of a rancher who has an intimate knowledge of the landscape and animals, the feel and texture of natural life are illuminated in prose that is both …

The search for a Métis identity and what constitutes that identity is a key issue facing many Aboriginals of mixed ancestry today. The People Who Own Themselves reconstructs 250 years of Desjarlais family history across a substantial area of North America, from colonial Louisiana, the St. Louis, Missouri, region, and the American Southwest to Red …

For much of its 130-year history, the Bar U Ranch can claim to have been one of the most famous ranches in Canada. Its reputation is firmly based on the historical role that the ranch has played, its size and longevity, and its association with some of the remarkable people who have helped develop the cattle business and build the Canadian West. Th …

During a time of two world wars and a sluggish world economy, many Northern Europeans left their homelands to build the American and Canadian West with dreams of abundance and new life. Spanning a period from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, To Be a Cowboy recounts the dreams and realities of a father and a son.

Otto Christensen came to North Ameri …

You're being watched. Former University of Alberta lecturer Randy Craig is now working part-time at Edmonton's Grant MacEwan College, and struggling to make ends meet. That is, until she takes an evening job monitoring a chat room called Babel for an employer she knows only as "Chatgod." Between shutting down an online bookie and patrolling for por …

Eric Hanson - Alberta’s first, and arguably greatest, economist - wrote a number of influential books on federal-provincial relations, education finance, health care finance, and energy economics. In 1949, he took a leave from the University of Alberta, where he was a lecturer, to write his PhD at Clark University in Worchester, Massachusetts. Hi …

The first multi-genre historical anthology of Alberta writing since 1979, The Wild Rose Anthology of Alberta Prose collects twentieth-century short fiction, excerpts from novels, and non-fiction. This anthology explores what writers-past and present-can tell us about what it means to be Albertan-and Canadian. Each piece is preceded by an introducti …

The field of Adapted Physical Activity is a rapidly expanding area in post-secondary education. As the profession grows, so does the demand for new texts that challenge students to think critically. "Adapted Physical Activity" edited by Steadward, Wheeler and Watkinson is a textbook that combines up-to-date information with a critical thinking appr …

Alberta's ranching heritage occupies an important place in the province's historical consciousness. Trails and Trials documents the development of the beef cattle industry in Alberta from its open-range ranching phase to the beginnings of the modern era. This narrative history documents how the beef cattle industry responded to the challenges follo …

With countless news stories about disappearing towns in the drylands, David Jones's Empire of Dust is being brought back into print. With a new preface, this enduring historical account of the settlement of the Palliser Triangle region chronicles the disturbing fate of thousands of people who were forced to abandon their farms as a result of prairi …

Ancestral Portraits is a retrospective of the art and life of Frederick R. McDonald, one of Alberta's most exciting Alberta First Nations artists working today, and a celebration of a rich Cree heritage. With one foot in the world of his ancestral peoples and the other in the realm of contemporary Canadian society, McDonald paints from a unique per …

We live in an age dominated by the cult of efficiency. Efficiency in the raging debate about public goods is often used as a code word to advance political agendas. When it is used correctly, efficiency is important: it must always be part of the conversation when resources are scarce and citizens and governments have important choices to make amon …

Alberta farmers and ranchers know that, in the frustrating business of agriculture, years of bounty inexplicably turn into years of despair. Looking back over the past half century, Jaques recounts the tumultuous history of the Alberta farm organization Unifarm. This book documents Alberta farmers' quest to increase control over the forces that hav …

How dangerous can words be?

The University of Alberta's English Department is caught up in a maelstrom of poison-pen letters, graffiti and misogyny. Miranda Craig seems to be both target and investigator, wreaking havoc on her new-found relationship with one of Edmonton's Finest.

The men's residence at the U of A wants to party and issues invitations …

Amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) are a significant but much-neglected component of the natural economy of the province of Alberta. This second edition, which continues both as a field guide and a comprehensive natural history, builds on the strengths of the first with a richly illustrated text and colour photographs of the species taken by re …

This valuable volume of investigative archaeology focuses on stone tools, the artifacts produced by these tools, and the revealing debris left behind at sites where they were produced. The majority of study sites discussed are in western North America, including Alberta's own Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a World Heritage Site.

Suitable for both th …

Before the fall of Imperial Rome, priests cast the guts of sacrificial animals on the temple floor, claiming to be able to divine the future from these entrails. By probing the remains of Alberta's past sacrifices (reading the entrails), the author believes we might dimly see an apparition of Alberta's future.

This controversial book vividly portra …

"Looking for Country" refers to the thought process of animals bent on escape. A stampeding herd, or a spooked horse running away with its rider, may be described as "looking for country." It could also be applied to this memoir in another sense -- immigrants were looking for land, a piece of new country, and, perhaps, an escape from their old coun …

An album of photographs and musical experiences during the first century of Alberta's history. Explore Alberta's astonishing musical heritage, from brass bands and minstrel shows to Ukrainian folk music and symphonies, from native singers to Wilf Carter.

Government and First Nations leaders have tended to operate within two different systems of knowledge and perception regarding treaty rights issues in Canada. While First Nations emphasize the original spirit or intent of an agreement, government stresses the letter of the agreement. The Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties has long been acknowled …

The book begins with a description of the impression Canada made on Gissing upon his arrival in this country in 1913 at the age of 18. Gissing wanted to be a cowboy. He travelled from Alberta to California and back on horseback, sketching and painting as he went. Examples of this early work appear in the book. Gissing began selling his work and sup …