Shimmerdogs is the story of young Lester B. Hopkins — Mike to almost everyone except his mother, Master Corporal Alice Mackelwain. He is just a boy trying to make sense of his life, which is becoming more complicated by the world of his absent soldiering mother. Mike is very worried about his mother’s safety while she is in Bosnia. He, like his …

Evocative and superbly rakish, these essays are a generous diagnosis of the often offbeat worlds of family, writing, travel, sex and death as interpreted through the real life adventures of Susan Musgrave. Equally at home recounting the lore of her outlaw husband Stephen Reid, or interpreting the arcane rituals of her teenage girls, Musgrave brings …

In the heady days of the 1920s Jazz Age, people went to the movies almost every day, living vicariously through their heroes: Valentino, Garbo, Fairbanks, and Pickford. But comedians were the biggest draw, and broad slapstick the order of the day, with one very significant exception. Standing beside Keaton and Chaplin in popularity and prowess was …

Iconoclast David F. Noble traces the evolution and eclipse of the biblical mythology of the Promised Land, the foundational story of Western Culture. Part impassioned manifesto, part masterful survey of opposed philosophical and economic schools, Beyond the Promised Land brings into focus the twisted template of the Western imagination and its fait …

“Nothing is going to go wrong.” -Mike Harris, 2001

Privatization of power soon became one of the biggest political disasters in Ontario history. Hydro reveals a train wreck that was decades in the making. First there was blind faith in the nuclear option, steeped in ecological arrogance. Then came the promise of marketplace magic.

Jamie Swift and …

Young Canadians are increasingly active and engaged in global issues. Many are eagerly poised to contribute—in smaller and even larger ways—to international development and the Canadian national politics that, for better or worse, shape the field.

Generation NGO captures some of the first impressions of these young international development pro …

I Don't Know How To Behave combines the true story of Canadian daredevil and stunt driver Ken Carter (1938-1983) with imagined biographical elements from the lives of Canadian film director Bruce Mcdonald and Canadian poet Gillian Sze. Along the way, this quintessential Canadian story crashes head first into many related things, from screenplay the …

On the morning of June 13, 1886, a rogue wind fanned the flames of a small clearing fire—and within five hours, the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, had been reduced to smoldering ash. Vancouver is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 is the first detailed exploration of what happened on that pivotal, yet seldom revisited day in t …

For twelve-year-old Sherri, moving is a way of life. Her family has lived in seven different places in as many years, three in the last year alone. But no place has ever been as strange as Gardin, Alberta, a ranching community right out of the Old West and struggling to accommodate new industries.

Sherri makes friends with Jamie, another newcomer, w …

As a young man in the midst of World War II, Jacob fell in love with an older woman and began a rapturous affair, until she seemingly vanished. As strange things start to happen around him, a familiar young woman appears at Jacob's house with a mysterious notebook. The past doesn't stay buried and the mystery of Maddy Heisler is reveled. With secre …

During the Second World War, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished Canadians to "Eat Right" because "Canada Needs You Strong" while cookbooks helped housewives become "housoldiers" through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household …

Newspaper reporter Leo Fabian doesn't think of himself as an opportunist. But when the object of his desire, Stevie Lord, loses the object of her desire to murder, he finds a whole new way to penetrate a woman's heart.

Who would want to kill Michael Rossiter anyway? Scion of an old Winnipeg newspaper family, he may have been rich, but he didn't rea …

Speaking a language we understand, Rona Shaffran's poems tell the story of remarkable things that can happen in a broken relationship. These poems inhabit the sharp edges and rich depths of a union too long untended. Ignite begins in wintry suburbia with a man and woman who have lost emotional and physical connection. A magic-realist plunge into th …

This debut short-story collection showcases Mary Hagey's uncanny ability to capture the essence of being human. These richly satisfying stories, told with wry humour, intelligence, and verve take us into fictional territory that is at once utterly original and as real as the world around us. These are people we know.

Some of them might have fared be …

How do you find a bully who lurks on the Internet and lashes out at helpless victims? Intrepid kid detectives Marty, Remi, and Trina must answer that question if they’re to stop a cyber bully targeting their classmates.

In their toughest case yet, the sleuths must follow the electronic trail to their enemy, but the cyber bully outsmarts them at ev …

Faces masked, dressed in black, and forcefully attacking the symbols of capitalism, Black Blocs have been transformed into an anti-globalization media spectacle. But the popular image of the window-smashing thug hides a complex reality.

Francis Dupuis-Déri outlines the origin of this phenomenon, its dynamics, and its goals, arguing that the use of …

It’s a very short trip from the limousine seat to the curb.? Jim Mann never missed a payroll for the dozen men who worked for his flourishing landscaping business he built from the ground up. Now he lives hand-to-mouth. His pockets are empty long before his next social assistance cheque arrives.

In early 2010 over two hundred civic and faith lead …

Our Friendly Local Terrorist tells the story of the fourteen-year struggle of Suleyman Goven, a Kurd accused by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service of being a terrorist. Mary Jo Leddy was “accidentally” present at Suleyman’?s first interview with CSIS. During that eight-hour ordeal he was propositioned: you work for us as a spy and yo …

Despite being neighbouring provinces with long ranching histories, British Columbia and Alberta saw their ranching techniques develop quite differently. As most ranching styles were based on one of the two dominant styles in use south of the border, BC ranchers tended to adopt the California style whereas Alberta took its lead from Texas. But the d …

In this bestselling timeless classic, Peter Gzowski recounts the 1980-81 season he spent travelling around the NHL circuit with the Edmonton Oilers. These were the days when the young Oilers, led by a teenaged Wayne Gretzky, were poised on the edge of greatness, and about to blaze their way into the record books and the consciousness of a nation. W …

The people of the Nechako region are not unfamiliar with hardship, environmental devastation and protecting what they hold dear. June Wood chronicles the history of the Nechako River and its region, covering the construction of the Kenney Dam, which changed forever the flow of the river and its tributaries; the controversial Kemano Completion Proje …

bpNichol (1944-1988) has attained iconic status in Canadian literature in recent years, particularly through his lifelong poem The Martyrology and his work in visual and sound poetry. Numerous early "fugitive" sequences of Nichol's are often referred to in critical studies, but are long out of print and only available in library special collections …

For centuries, colonial powers searched for a sea passage that would link the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. The route, known as the Northwest Passage, would cut thousands of miles from sea travel and open up commercial trade to and from Asia. There were numerous expeditions to find the passage, though none successful. It was while searching for one of …

The stories of the men and women who dug for gold on Williams Creek are told in this revised and updated edition of a Canadian bestseller.

The legendary town of Barkerville is flourishing today, just as it did more than 150 years ago, but this time under the care of professional and amateur historians. Richard Thomas Wright peels back the pages of h …

Donald Ward’s stories are written in a straight-ahead narrative style that offers conceptual and philosophical underpinnings. Despite this intentional layering, he maintains the kind of economy of description and simplicity of exposition that is perfectly suited to the short story genre. Throughout his stories he likes to explore the human willin …

With the exception of Canada’s relationship with the United States, Canada’s relationship with China will likely be its most significant foreign connection in the twenty-first century. As China’s role in world politics becomes more central, understanding China becomes essential for Canadian policymakers and policy analysts in a variety of are …

In his fifth book about language, Howard Richler moves from A to Z with a specifically chosen word for every letter of the alphabet. What especially intrigues him is how words come to mean what they mean, how they lose some meanings and gain others. Always humorous, Richler invites readers into the intimacy of language and allows us to delight in t …

In Skin Like Mine Garry Gottfriedson offers a suite of poems on what it feels like to be inside the skin of many contemporary native individuals. He pulls no punches as he reflects on the challenges facing native people today. He speaks of minds full of anticipation yet with tongues pointing arrowheads. He tells of how so many native young people a …

This compelling biography of Doug Hepburn, the weightlifter who won gold for Canada in Stockholm in 1953 and at the British Empire Games in Vancouver in 1954, delivers fascinating, first-hand information about an unusual Vancouver athlete and the sporting world of the 1950s and 1960s. In this plain-spoken and moving biography of a strength legend, …

Chaos Inside Thunderstorms draws the audience into the centre of the tumultuous political, socio/economical and historical reality of the First Nations experience in Canada today. It is poetic expression that examines leadership, resilience, honour, shame, and love. It examines the issues implicit in the Idle No More Movement and the Truth and Reco …

Known internationally as an award-winning Québecois novelist, Marie-Claire Blais has remained hidden as a dramatist from Anglophone readers. Nigel Spencer's first-ever translation recreates Blais' disturbing yet lyrical dramas, evoking a world of "winter sleep," while in the new millennium people prepare to put on new costumes, take on new roles.

Sixteen-year-old Dane and his mom have relocated to Nova Scotia hoping to flee an abusive relationship with Dane’s father. In the midst of this, Dane has been getting into trouble with the law. He’s been caught breaking into and vandalizing an elderly woman’s home and is about to be charged with a host of serious offences unless he participat …

In 1846, a group of women came together to form what would become one of Hamilton's most important social welfare institutions. Through the Ladies Benevolent Society and Hamilton Orphan Asylum, they managed and administered a charitable visiting society, orphan asylum, and aged women's home. In Private Women and the Public Good, Carmen J. Nielson e …

User Error explodes the myth of computer technology as juggernaut. Multimedia educator Ellen Rose shows that there is no bandwagon, no out-of-control dynamo, no titanic conspiracy to overwhelm us. Instead, there is our own desire to join the fraternity of users, a fraternity that confers legitimacy and power on those who enter the brave new world. …

Marty Chan is back with a sequel to his award-winning juvenile romp The Mystery Of the Frozen Brains. Nine-year-old Marty and his francophone buddy, Remi Boudreau, stumble upon graffiti on the school’s equipment shack and begin the adventure of tracking down the culprit. Marty spies on his classmates, wears his mom’s dress to go undercover, and …

In our society, cultural activity - or “the arts” - usually refers to the high culture of the elites and popular mass culture. Clarke Mackey argues for a third category that is as old as human society itself but seldom discussed: vernacular culture.

Vernacular culture comprises all those creative, non-instrumental activities that people engage …

Jamie Swift combines sharp-eyed journalism that brings out the nuances of daily life with a penetrating analysis of jobless recovery. He describes the emerging world of work through the eyes and experiences of people in Kingston and Windsor?two Ontario cities with roots in the pre-industrial past, places poised for the post-industrial information a …

There is a special place on the southeastern shores of Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It is a magnificent landscape of rocky cliffs fronting onto the wild Pacific Ocean, sheltered beaches, lakes, mountains and forests. Since the beginning of time, it has been the ancestral home of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation.

Drawing directly …

Employing a sort of leaping or mosaic structure and incorporating e-mails re penis-enlargement, questionable limericks, jokes, graffiti and a photo of a "penis latte," along with personal anecdotes and probes of books and films, Deep Too is a book of non-fiction stories. It is a funny and sometimes biting book about the phenomenon of male strut and …

It is the spring of 1885 and the Northwest Rebellion has broken out. Amid the chaos of the Battle of Batoche, a grisly act leaves Reuben Wake dead. A Metis man is arrested for the crime, but he claims innocence. When Durrant Wallace, sergeant in the North West Mounted Police, begins his own investigation into the man’s possible motives, he learns …

George Littlechild: The Spirit Giggles Within is a stunning retrospective of a career that has spanned nearly four decades. Featuring more than 150 of the Plains Cree artist’s mixed-media works, this sumptuous collection showcases the bold swaths of colour and subtle textures of Littlechild’s work.

Littlechild has never shied away from political …

On July 3, 1961, Ian Parsons reported to RCMP Depot Division in Regina as a raw recruit. It was the beginning of a 33-year adventure that took him from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island and many points between. By the time he retired with the rank of inspector, Parsons had a policeman’s trunk full of colourful stories and insightful observations t …

Virtuosic poems tracking two intertwined themes: the breakdown of an obsessive love affair and the vicissitudes of middle age.

Invisible Dogs, Dempster's fourteenth collection, is a complex but deeply coherent hymn to the difficult business of staying alive. This is a book for when it hurts so bad you hope you'll die and are afraid you won't—not b …

Cut loose at the end of a long and violent hockey career prolonged by steroids and numbed by liquor, ex-enforcer Billy Purdy discovers that the soon-to-be-published novel of a celebrated politician’s son is in fact Billy’s father’s own, taken word for word from the original published, and promptly forgotten, some forty years before. Allowing …

As bass player for the ’80s one hit wonder, Rock Viper, Edgar Martin toured the world, had sex with groupies and made thousands of people deaf. But the band broke up years ago and Edgar’s now middle-aged, out of work and desperate for cash. His luck seems about to change however when his old manager calls and offers him a hot new gig. There’s …

Writer Danny Bayle’s life is in shambles. His true love has left him and his grandfather—the last and most important influence in his life—has just passed away. Danny has spent the last few months languishing, unable to write a single word, but at the urging of a friend ventures out into the world in an attempt to jumpstart a new life, befrie …

Standing at the edge of the ship, contemplating a watery demise, Billy is called back to reality when his dead mentor Sid Diamond appears as a handpuppet. Sid forces Billy to re-enact his life as a puppet show, rekindling the passion Billy once had for puppets, people, and the dream of a life that sparkles. For anyone stuck in the middle—mid-care …

Everyday exposures to common chemicals found in homes, schools, and workplaces are having devastating long-term and inter-generational consequences on human health. At the same time, the risks associated with these exposures (and the burdens of managing them) rest disproportionately on the shoulders of women. Written by leading researchers in scien …

On October 1, 1917, prohibition came into effect in the province of British Columbia. Washington and Oregon had gone dry the previous year. The ban on liquor sales led to deadly conflict and legal chaos in the Pacific Northwest, and the legacy of those “booze battles” continues into the 21st century.

Rich Mole introduced readers to West Coast pr …