More than ever Canada’s constitutional monarchy should be treasured as a distinct asset for the nation.

Following Queen Elizabeth II’s historic Diamond Jubilee in 2012, there is renewed interest in the institution of the Crown in Canada and the roles of the queen, governor general, and lieutenant governor. Author D. Michael Jackson traces the s …

2017 Theatre Library Association Book Awards — Nominated, Richard Wall Memorial Award
2017 Heritage Toronto Book Award — Nominated

Slip once more into the back rows of the favourite movie theatres of your youth.

“Brought Back to Thrill You Again” was an advertisement employed by theatres to disguise that they were offering older films that we …

Terrorism and counter-terrorism have become key points in political talk and government policy. This No-Nonsense Guide has been revised and updated to take account of the major changes in global terrorism over the past seven years.

Jonathan Barker presents a highly accessible history of terrorism that looks at examples from the Middle East and else …

Set during a period of dramatically escalating piracy, Hostile Seas is a personal account of a mission on board a naval warship in the waters off Somalia.

In late 2008, piracy around the Horn of Africa escalated dramatically, threatening the passage of international merchant ships through a critical waterway. Not only were ships carrying goods to N …

A supernatural tour of the Ottawa region with ghostwatcher Mark Leslie as your guide.

Come along with paranormal raconteur Mark Leslie as he uncovers first-person accounts of ghostly happenings throughout Ottawa and the surrounding towns — the whole region is rife with ghostly encounters and creepy locales.

Discover the doomed financier who may be …

The protection of animal rights is more than a modern, western phenomenon. In fact, there is a long history of concern for animals around the world, and it is this concern that underlies today’s animal rights movement.

The No-Nonsense Guide to Animal Rights explains the key issues, charts the growth of the movement, looks at welfare and protectio …

Explore Ontario’s rich railway heritage — from stations and hotels to train rides, bridges, water towers, and roundhouses.

Rails Across Ontario will take the reader back to a time when the railway ruled the economy and the landscape.

Read about historic stations, railway museums, heritage train rides, and historic bridges. Follow old rail lines …

In Brink of Reality, Peter Steven examines the convergence of video-art and social-issue documentary, from the 1940s to the present. No other book has explored contemporary Canadian documentary so thoroughly, or provided as broad a view of the state of the art in the 1990s.

An exploration of the unique and unusual places in Ontario that are steeped in history and folklore.

Using updated and archival material from Discover Ontario, a popular radio show that ran from 1987 until 2004, author Terry Boyle invites you to explore the hidden, unusual, and unknown sites and stories from around Ontario.

Revisit an era of mobster …

Rarely a week goes by when juvenile delinquency or the Young Offenders Act are not discussed in the dominant media. Are we witnessing a moral panic over youth crime or a spate of “child-blaming” driven by the politics of law and order? Sangster traces the history of young women and crime and in so doing punctures dozens of myths surrounding the …

Terry Boyle is an incomparable observer of Ontario’s charming side, and its ghostly shadows. Presented here are five of his must-read guides for Ontarians everywhere interested in getting off the beaten track.

Includes:

• Discover Ontario
• Hidden Ontario
• Haunted Ontario
• Haunted Ontario 3
• Haunted Ontario 4

In Reasoning Otherwise, author Ian McKay returns to the concepts and methods of “reconnaissance” first outlined in Rebels, Reds, Radicals to examine the people and events that led to the rise of the left in Canada from 1890 to 1920. Reasoning Otherwise highlights how a new way of looking at the world based on theories of evolution transformed s …

What options did Paul Bernardo’s lawyer have when his client directed him to retrieve hidden evidence? Where would David Milgaard be today if a lawyer hadn’t doggedly challenged his murder conviction? And what should a defence lawyer do when told her client is a danger to the public?

In this equally inspiring and troubling book, leading Canadia …

Why was Canada not preparing for the Second World War when the rest of the world was ready to meet Hitler’s threats?
Despite Canada’s active participation in the First World War, which many claimed made Canada a nation, the country was almost defenceless in September 1939 when war was declared again.
Larry D. Rose, a long-time journalist and a …

Ten activists, scholars, and writers analyze contemporary development issues linking Canada and the Third World, and provide an in-depth critique of Canada’s role in perpetuating poverty in the nations of the South. Widely adopted as a course text at the college and university level.

The magnetic aura surrounding Sudbury, for both the living as well as the once-alive, is the backdrop for tales of mystery, wonder, and outright horror.

"I tried to leave" is a common theme for those from the Sudbury region. People often vow to move away, but something about the Nickel City keeps luring them back. Whether it’s the taste of fresh …

An in-depth study of European immigrants to Canada during the Cold War, Gatekeepers explores the interactions among these immigrants and the “gatekeepers”–mostly middle-class individuals and institutions whose definitions of citizenship significantly shaped the immigrant experience. Iacovetta’s deft discussion examines how dominant bourgeoi …

Even before September 11, 2001, Muslims were often framed by Western media and many non-Muslims as enemies of “freedom” and “progress.” Like other religions, Islam is not without its ongoing tensions and struggles. However, like other religions, there is a depth and richness to the Islamic faith that is too often overlooked because of stere …

The invasion attempt on Upper Canada by a new and vastly improved American army in the first six months of 1814.

Throughout 1812 and 1813, Upper Canada had been the principle target for a succession of American invasions and attacks. Fortunately they all had been repulsed, but at a high cost in lives and the devastation of property on both sides o …

A unique retelling of WWII’s most dramatic escape, told through first-hand recollections of the soldiers who experienced it.

On the night of March 24, 1944, 80 Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 336-foot-long tunnel and slipped into the forest beyond the wire of Stalag Luft III, a German POW compound near Sagan, Poland. The event became known …

For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as th …

It's 1854 at the start of Now We Are Brody. The mill is boarded up as the townsfolk attempt to bury a dark shame from their past, but the arrival of a young woman with the deed to the mill threatens to unearth its secret. In The Huron Bride it is 1834 and Hazel Sheehan has braved the perilous journey across the Atlantic to work as a hired hand at h …

Back by popular demand, here is the encore edition of the ultimate guide to Canadian music, featuring the best albums that Canadian musicians ever produced and some new interviews not included in the original hardcover edition. An unprecedented book, The Top 100 Canadian Albums includes the finest albums in Canadian music history chosen by a blue-r …

Why do planes disappear or fall out of the sky? Brace for Impact traces the evolution of accident investigation and explains why flying is the safest form of travel.

The history of air accidents is a harrowing one. Yet today flying is the safest mode of transportation, thanks in no small part to the work of crash detectives. Whenever a plane falls f …

Winner, Canadian Authors Award for Canadian History, Jeanne Clarke Memorial Local History Award, and Prince Edward Island Book Award for Non-Fiction

Is it possible to reach back in time and solve an unsolved murder, more than 170 years after it was committed?

Just after midnight on April 21, 1842, John McLoughlin, Jr. — the chief trader for the Hud …

Real and imagined encounters among Aboriginal peoples, European colonists, Chinese migrants, and mixed-race populations produced racial anxieties that underwrote crossracial contacts in the salmon canneries, the illicit liquor trade, and the (white) slavery scare in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia. Colonial Proximities …

Francis Pegahmagabow (1889–1952), a member of the Ojibwe nation, was born in Shawanaga, Ontario. Enlisting at the onset of the First World War, he became the most decorated Canadian Indigenous soldier for bravery and the most accomplished sniper in North American military history. After the war, Pegahmagabow settled in Wasauksing, Ontario. He ser …

Shortlisted for the 2014 Governor General's Award for Poetry

Shortlisted for the 2014 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Poetry.

Moving from the Enlightenment science of natural history to the contemporary science of global warming, Light Light is a provocative engagement with the technologies and languages that shape discourses of knowing. It bridges …

In 2008 the Canadian government apologized to the victims of the notorious Indian residential school system, and established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose goal was to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that engineered the system.

Unsettling the Settler Within argues that in order to truly participat …

John Lutz traces Aboriginal people’s involvement in the new economy, and their displacement from it, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the 1970s. Drawing on an extensive array of oral histories, manuscripts, newspaper accounts, biographies, and statistical analysis, Lutz shows that Aboriginal people flocked to the workforce and prospered …

Secession/Insecession is a homage to the acts of reading, writing and translating poetry. In it, Chus Pato's Galician biopoetics of poet and nation, Secession - translated by Erín Moure - joins Moure's Canadian translational biopoetics, Insecession. To Pato, the poem is an insurrection against normalized language; to Moure, translation itself dis …

Take one prankster, put her together with the editor of the world's most boring school newspaper, add one over-worked principal, and you've got a recipe for the most chaotic few weeks in the history of Upland Green Elementary. The unlikely duo of Martin Wettmore, editor and expert grammarian, and Trixi Wilder, prankster extraordinaire, is given the …

This new edition of this best-selling book presents updated results of over twenty-five years of killer whale research in British Columbia and Washington. Intended for both whale enthusiasts and researchers, it contains the latest information on killer whale natural history and presents a catalogue of close to 300 photographs of "resident" killer w …

The first comprehensive history of the Aboriginal First World War experience on the battlefield and the home front. When the call to arms was heard at the outbreak of the First World War, Canada’s First Nations pledged their men and money to the Crown to honour their long-standing tradition of forming military alliances with Europeans during time …

In 1955, two fifteen-year-olds with immeasurable optimism shared a summer working as waitresses in the small town of Franklin's flourishing Britannia Hotel. Forty years later, Hannah, now a successful teacher with a younger lover, rushes home from Toronto to find her mother in hospital while Colleen, still living in Franklin and married with five c …

As Tammy Armstrong rode horseback on a one-month sojourn in Iceland, up rose the ley lines that crosshatched the landscape — ancient tracks rife with saga, myth, and human history. In this collection, her poems both respond to W.H. Auden's poetic travelogue, Letters from Iceland, and evoke her raw relationship to the native natural world of North …

Winner, City of Hamilton Arts Award, Established Artist, Writing

Beginning with an autobiographical account of the mind, Jeffery Donaldson's marvellous new collection moves from personal history to national history, concluding with "Province House," where the ghost of Sir John A. Macdonald has the last word on metaphor.

In his fourth collection, Dona …

Shortlisted, Thomas Head Raddall Award

When Stella disappears, leaving her toddler and husband behind, her mother Sonia, a widowed farm wife and former lighthouse keeper, struggles to face the possibility that her daughter may not have slipped through the ice. She may have been pushed.

In a intensely memorable narrative with the deceptive pull of an …

Building New Brunswick takes us on a journey through time and place to discover this province's architectural legacy. Beginning with the homes of the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet, we move forward through the past: Acadian and Loyalist settlement, colonial and post-colonial periods, both post-World War eras, and on into the 21st century. A wealth of photogr …

Healing Histories is the first detailed collection of Indigenous perspectives on the history of tuberculosis in Canada's Indigenous communities and on the federal government's Indian Health Services. Featuring oral accounts from patients, families, and workers who experienced Canada's Indian Hospital system, it presents a fresh perspective on healt …

Many people have a mental picture of the Canadian north that juxtaposes beauty with harshness. For the Van Tat Gwich'in, the northern Yukon is home, with a living history passed on from Elders to youth. This book consists of oral accounts that the Elders have been recording for 50 years, representing more than 150 years of their history, all meticu …

"Polari," from the Italian "polare" ("to talk") is a coded language, originating in the U.K. and dating as far back as the 16th century. Overheard in outdoor markets, the theatre, fairgrounds, and circuses, it was appropriated by gay men to provide them with cover as well as with a way to assert personal and shared identities. It spread around the …

In his second collection of poems, Jeff Latosik looks to those provisional moments of arrival and anchoring in what Canadian poet Don Coles has called "the catastrophe of time."

Safely Home Pacific Western is a combination of words common to travel-package tour buses, and, as the title implies, there will be journeys to be had: into ruined stretches …

Shortlisted, Hamilton Literary Award (Non-Fiction)

Ypres, the Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele, Amiens — to many, these are the names of battles far away and long ago. To thousands of soldiers, now gone, the battles were hard-fought and costly campaigns fraught with danger, pain, and tears. Today, these combat zones are trod by tourists in search of a c …

In his most personal collection to date, Brian Bartlett meditates upon time and family. We share his son's discovery of newborn spiders and his daughter's first grasp of infinity as a concept. In companion poems on the births of his mother and father, Bartlett makes you feel as if you were alive at those moments in history. The opening poem, "All t …

Dieppe, the Battle of Hong Kong, the Mora River Campaign, the Invasion of Normandy, the Siege of Dunkirk, — battles not as distant as we may think. The constant gunfire, the whistle of bombs, the hiss of gas, the cold, the wet, the fear, the loneliness, and the anguish of losing friends and colleagues.

Outside of the military, no one can quite ima …

This oral autobiography of two remarkable Cree women tells their life stories against a backdrop of government discrimination, First Nations activism, and the resurgence of First Nations communities. Nellie Carlson and Kathleen Steinhauer, who helped to organize the Indian Rights for Indian Women movement in western Canada in the 1960s, fought the …

Saint John became a gateway to what is now Canada in the early 1600s, and Fort La Tour, built in 1632, was one of the three main forts of Acadie. In Saint John Fortifications, Roger Sarty and Doug Knight trace the history of the port's defences, from the earliest log palisades to the bunkers, gun emplacements, and communications stations built duri …

Great Maritime Inventions 1833-1950 is a delightful look at how innovative Maritime ideas changed the world. Between 1833 and 1950, over 3,300 patents were granted to residents of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI. From the scuba tank to the variable pitch propeller to two-piece long underwear, Great Maritime Inventions profiles the best of the be …

The story of the growth and destruction of Toronto's first 'priority neighbourhood.'

From the 1840s until the Second World War, waves of newcomers who migrated to Toronto – Irish, Jewish, Italian, African American and Chinese, among others – landed in 'The Ward.' Crammed with rundown housing and immigrant-owned businesses, this area, bordered by …