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Port Alberni
Any community that has ever been labelled a “mill town” carries both the promise of prosperity and the constant threat of collapse, its fortune hinging on a single industry whose performance is as much related to the whims of a global economy as it is to the abundance of a key natural resource. The people of Port Alberni, located deep in Vancou …
Detecting Canada
The first serious book-length study of crime writing in Canada, Detecting Canada Canada’s most popular crime writers, including Peter Robinson, Giles Blunt, Gail Bowen, Thomas King, Michael Slade, Margaret Atwood, and Anthony Bidulka.
Genres examined range from the well-loved police procedural and the amateur sleuth to those less well known, such …
Parallel Encounters
The essays collected in offer close analysis of an array of cultural representations of the Canada–US border, in both site-specificity and in the ways in which they reveal and conceal cultural similarities and differences. Contributors focus on a range of regional sites along the border and examine a rich variety of expressive forms, including po …
Portrait of a Scandal
In the winter of 1868 a name Montreal society associated with art, good breeding, and culture became fodder for scandal mongers. The Notman name, synonymous with fine photography, was suddenly making headlines featuring the words "abortion" and "suicide." A dozen years earlier, two brothers fled their native Scotland . They were attracted to Montre …
Outlaws, Spies, and Gangsters
Experience all the thrills and suspense of chasing down the world’s highest-profile criminals.
What does it take to catch a criminal? Not just any criminal, but one of the world’s most wanted? In Outlaws, Spies, and Gangsters, Laura Scandiffo chronicles eight of history’s most famous manhunts, from searches for drug dealers to dictators, hacke …
From Realism to Abstraction
J. B. (Jack) Taylor (1917-1970) was an important figure in the history of Banff and western Canada’s artistic community. Inspired by the locale, Taylor spent his career striving to depict the idea of the mountain, moving over time from traditional representations of nature to an intuitive perception of the essential elements of landscape - rock, …
Serafim and Claire
From one of Canada’s brightest emerging writers comes an unforgettable tale of love, art, and life. Set in the vividly imagined streets of 1920s Montreal, Serafim and Claire is the beautiful, moving, and compulsively readable story of two dreamers whose worlds become forever connected.
Claire Audette is a dancer whose reputation in the vaudeville …
John C. Parkin, Archives and Photography
Architectural practice in post-World War II Canada brought substantial change to the face of the Canadian built environment, led by the contribution of John C. Parkin. As senior partner at the Toronto-based architectural firm John B. Parkin Associates (no relation) from 1947 to the 1970s, Parkin oversaw the creation of a large number of modernist p …
Sanctioned Ignorance
"There is no such thing as 'the ivory tower.' Rather, there sit side by side numerous windowless towers of knowledge, each seeming to have only a small entrance and no discernable exit." -Paul Martin Multilingual, multicultural, and vast, Canada enjoys a rich diversity of literatures. So, why does "Canadian Literature," as it has been taught, fail …
Trans/acting Culture, Writing, and Memory
Trans/acting Culture, Writing, and Memory is a collection of essays written in honour of Barbara Godard, one of the most original and wide-ranging literary critics, theorists, teachers, translators, and public intellectuals Canada has ever produced. The contributors, both established and emerging scholars, extend Godard’s work through engagements …
Harold Mortimer Lamb
Harold Mortimer-Lamb’s name is in the index of almost every book written on the history of Canadian art, yet his place in that world has never been clear. Photographer, writer, painter, promoter—he was a man of many parts and the ideal patron and friend to some of Canada's most famous artists, including A.Y. Jackson, Emily Carr, and Jack Shadbo …
Terrific Women Teachers
Maria Montessori, founder the Montessori method of self-directed learning Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, her "miracle worker", USA Christa McAuliffe, high school teacher who died in the space shuttle Challenger, USA Dorval Onesime, a Native Metis educator in the early 1900s from Saskatchewan, Canada Denise Fruchter, a special education teacher wi …
The Huron Carol
Renowned children's book illustrator Ian Wallace brings his masterful ability to paint landscape and his cultural sensitivity to The Huron Carol, a beautiful and unusual song with a rich history.
In the early 1600s Father Jean de Brébeuf came to Canada from his native France as a Jesuit missionary. He settled among the Huron, or Ouendat, people in …
149 Paintings You Really Need to See in Europe
Visit some of Europe’s greatest museums and galleries in the company of a knowledgeable tour guide.
"Who can resist an art critic with attitude?"
– Former Supreme Court of Canada Justice, Ian Binnie
"It was wonderful! Julian shared his enormous knowledge of the world’s best art with a panache that is irresistible."
– Justice Stephen Goudge, …
Don Messer
Don Messer was more than a household name in Canada — he was part of family life, the background music in Canadian kitchens — first on radio, and then on television. Private and unassuming, Don was everyman, and yet someone singular and special: a devoted family man, a rigid Calvinist, band diplomat, lover of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a music …
A Personal Calligraphy
Winner of the Newfoundland and Labrador Writers' Association Prize for Non-Fiction
Mary Pratt is famous throughout Canada for her luminous paintings and prints. Her 1995 exhibition, The Art of Mary Pratt: The Substance of Light, drew record-breaking crowds on its tour of Canada. It also resulted in an unprecedented amount of press coverage on the bi …
Looks Like Daylight
Author Deborah Ellis travels across the continent, interviewing more than forty Native American kids and letting them tell their own stories.
They come from all over the continent — from Iqaluit to Texas, Haida Gwaii to North Carolina. Their stories are sometimes heartbreaking; more often full of pride and hope.
You’ll meet Tingo, who has spent m …
Fists upon a Star
Fists upon a Star is the hard-hitting memoir of Florence James, a pioneering American theatre director, whose devastating experience with McCarthyism led her to flee to Canada.
The memoir is as epic as America itself. Born in 1892 in the frontier society of Idaho, she became a suffragette in New York City, was the first to put Jimmy Cagney on stage, …
Accusation
Selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013, a Canada Reads Top 40 Pick, and a NOW Magazine Book of the Year
While in Copenhagen, Sara Wheeler, a Toronto journalist, happens upon Cirkus Mirak, a touring Ethiopian children's circus. She later meets and is convinced to drive the circus founder, Raymond Renaud, through the night from Toronto to Montreal …
Just So Stories, Volume I
Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories is one of the best-loved story collections ever written for children. Now Ian Wallace, one of Canada's most accomplished children's book illustrators, reinterprets the famous tales with his vibrant art, bringing Kipling to a whole new generation of young readers.
Kipling wrote the stories for his young daughter, who …
The Art of Complaining
Defective cars, contaminated food, insurance company abuses, botched vacations, or government errors and indifference. The Art of Complaining evens the playing field.
Most people hate to complain and so they will put up with defective cars, contaminated food, insurance company abuses, botched vacations, and government errors and indifference. The A …
Secret of the Dance
In 1935, a nine-year-old boy's family held a forbidden Potlatch in faraway Kingcome Inlet. Watl'kina slipped from his bed to bear witness. In the Big House masked figures danced by firelight to the beat of the drum. And there, he saw a figure he knew. Aboriginal elder Alfred Scow and award-winning author Andrea Spalding collaborate to tell the stor …
Skin & Liars
Skin introduces us to a group of Canadian teenagers who are coming of age in the late 1980s. Faced with racial discrimination, Phiroza, Jennifer, and Tuan must navigate the choppy waters of high school, each confronting his or her own set of challenges. Ranging from academic difficulties, to budding relationships, to the trials of adapting to a for …
Red-Handed
The true stories that inspired Lisa Moore’s latest novel Caught.
When journalist Mike Landry called Lisa Moore for an interview, he began by listing four names, and asking, “What do these names mean to you?” The award-winning author of Alligator and February paused and took a deep breath. Not one of the names appears in Caught, but their stori …
Producing Canadian Literature
Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary Marketplace brings to light the relationship between writers in Canada and the marketplace within which their work circulates. Through a series of conversations with both established and younger writers from across the country, Kit Dobson and Smaro Kamboureli investigate how writers perce …
Cariboo Gold Rush
In 1858, some 30,000 gold seekers stampeded to the Fraser River. Scores perished during the gruelling journey, but some made their fortune and many pressed on northwards to the creeks of the Cariboo. Originally compiled by Art Downs, founder of Heritage House, this is a vivid and detailed account of the first gold strikes, the miners who made them …
The Broken Social Scene Story Project
Thirteen short stories inspired by Broken Social Scene’s groundbreaking album, You Forgot It In People. With a foreword by Carl Wilson, author of Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.
In celebration of both Arts & Crafts’ ten-year anniversary and You Forgot It In People, the acclaimed album that launched the rec …
Double-Takes
Over the past forty years, Canadian literature has found its way to the silver screen with increasing regularity. Beginning with the adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God to the Hollywood film Rachel, Rachel in 1966, Canadian writing would appear to have found a doubly successful life for itself at the movies: from the critically accla …
Hometown
Join beloved storyteller Anny Scoones as she sets out to discover the quaint and quirky charms of Victoria, BC. Not just a book of facts, Hometown is a gentle stroll through a diverse region with a fascinating and layered history. Observe, pause, ponder, and have what Anny likes to call “a little think” on the various characteristics and person …
And Neither Have I Wings to Fly
2014 Finalist for the Wales Book of the Year Award for Creative Non-Fiction
2014 Finalist for the MARTY People’s Choice Award for Literary Arts
2013 IPPY Bronze Medal Winner for Psychology/Mental Health
The shocking true story of the institutionalization and abuse of children and adults with intellectual and physical handicaps in Canada’s olde …
Cover and Uncover
Eric Cameron is a major contemporary Canadian artist. Born in 1935 in Leicester, England, he arrived in Canada in the 1970s and has taught at the University of Guelph, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and at the University of Calgary. Over the years Cameron has also continued to work in his primary medium, painting, but moved from traditi …
Rewriting Marpole
This book examines prehistoric culture change in the Gulf of Georgia region of the northwest coast of North America during the Locarno Beach (3500–1100 BP) and Marpole (2000–1100 BP) periods. The Marpole culture has traditionally been seen to possess all the traits associated with complex hunter-gatherers on the northwest coast (hereditary ine …
Jack Layton
Jack Layton: Art in Action is a collection of anecdotes about Jack Layton’s involvement in Canadian arts and culture, and how his spirit continues to influence activism in Canada today. His interest in the Canadian cultural landscape was an underlying presence throughout his career. Art in Action encourages readers to be proactive and, as Jack wo …
Reel Time
In this authoritative work, Seiler and Seiler argues that the establishment and development of moviegoing and movie exhibition in Prairie Canada is best understood in the context of changing late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century social, economic, and technological developments. From the first entrepreneurs who attempted to lure custom …
Dramatic Licence
Translation is tricky business. The translator has to transform the foreign to the familiar while moving and pleasing his or her audience. Louise Ladouceur knows theatre from a multi-dimensional perspective that gives her research a particular authority as she moves between two of the dominant cultures of Canada: French and English. Through the ana …
How to Get Along with Women
Longlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize
A sharply original debut collection, How To Get Along With Women showcases Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s keen eye and inventive voice. Infused with a close and present danger, these stories tighten the knot around power, identity, and sexuality, and draw the reader into the pivotal moments where-for better …
The Little Years
Kate possesses the makings of a gifted mathematician with an enthusiasm for exploring the mysteries of space and time. But this is the 1950s and women are routinely laughed out of scientific circles. Besides, every family has its star, and Kate's brother already holds that distinction. Hindered by prejudices against women, Kate is confined to a lif …
Loon
A gorgeously illustrated, lyrical non-fiction picture book about loons.
It’s summertime, and as darkness falls there is a haunting sound from the lake — Ooh-hoo-oo, ooh-hoo-oo. It is a loon calling to its family across the water.
This lyrical story follows the life cycle of two loon chicks. We see them breaking out of their eggshells, then learni …
Soldiers of Song
The seeds of irreverent humour that inspired the likes of Wayne and Shuster and Monty Python were sown in the trenches of the First World War, and The Dumbells—concert parties made up of fighting soldiers—were central to this process. Soldiers of Song tells their story.
Lucky soldiers who could sing a song, perform a skit, or pass as a “lady, …
West of Wawa
Emotionally battered and bruised, 29-year-old Australian immigrant Benny is looking for escape, not redemption. Escape from herself and the dismal failures of her life: her first solo art exhibition is panned by critics and her husband left her for an Andy Warhol look-alike. Isolated from her family, her career as an abstract artist in ruins, she c …
Hands of the Tyrants
An inexperienced CSIS agent, Lucas Young, infiltrates a collective of performance and conceptual artists dubbed “Apollo’s Army.” After assuming the identity of an experimental poet, Lucas joins the group on a cross-country tour of Canada in the summer of 2010. Along the way, this 21st century troupe of court jesters crash a poetry reading in …
Devil's Pass
Seventeen-year-old Webb's abusive stepfather has made it impossible for him to live at home, so Webb survives on the streets of Toronto by busking with his guitar and working as a dishwasher. When Webb's grandfather dies, his will stipulates that his grandsons fulfill specific requests. Webb's task takes him to the Canol Trail in Canada's Far North …
Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will
Kai Nielsen is one of Canada's most distinguished political philosophers. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has published more than 400 papers in political philosophy, ethics, meta-philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He has engaged much of the best work in Anglophone political philosophy, shedding light on many of the central debates and c …
Feet of the Angels
Ever since her brother's untimely death, Marie has been fascinated with angels, believing her brother has become one. Now as a young woman, she has dedicated her doctoral thesis to the subject: the sudden portrayal of angels with feet in Renaissance paintings. As Marie tries to analyze the motive behind this, she begins to uncover questions of exis …
Working the Dead Beat
Longlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize and selected as a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book and an iTunes Store Best Book
Globe and Mail columnist Sandra Martin honours the lives of Canada's famous, infamous, and unsung heroes in this unique collection of obituaries of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Here are Canadian icons such as Prime Min …
The Spencer Mansion
Built in 1889 and now home to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Spencer Mansion is a magnificent building with a rich and layered history. With detailed research, historian and author Robert Ratcliffe Taylor describes the original appearance of the house, designed by William Ridgway Wilson for Alexander Green and his family, as well as its i …
The Shadows Behind Me
For six desperate years, Willie Sterner’s skill as a painter saved him from death at the hands of the Nazis. Faced with inhumane conditions in slave labour camps and grieving the loss of his close-knit family, Sterner relied on courage and ingenuity to hold onto his dignity. Through almost random luck, he came under the protection of the famed Os …
Critical Perspectives in Canadian Music Education
Music education in Canada is a vast enterprise that encompasses teaching and learning in thousands of public and private schools, community groups, and colleges and universities. It involves participants from infancy to the elderly in formal and informal settings. Nevertheless, as post-secondary faculties of music and programs are growing significa …
Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile
This book examines the impact place and displacement can have on the composition and interpretation of Western art music, using as its primary objects of study the work of István Anhalt (1919–2012), György Kurtág (1926–), and Sándor Veress (1907–92).
Although all three composers are of Hungarian origin, their careers followed radically di …
Making It Like a Man
Making It Like a Man: Canadian Masculinities in Practice is a collection of essays on the practice of masculinities in Canadian arts and cultures, where to “make it like a man” is to participate in the cultural, sociological, and historical fluidity of ways of being a man in Canada, from the country’s origins in nineteenth-century Victorian v …