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.

In these Red Cross memoirs, thirty women tell their stories of volunteer work with the Canadian Red Cross Corps in overseas postings during World War Two and the Korean War. These dramatic narratives take us across oceans infested with enemy submarines to witness Canadian women on duty in the U.K., in Europe and in Asia. Laced with humour and fille …

This book offers the first complete analysis of the emergence of simultaneous interpretation a the Nuremburg Trail and the individuals who made the process possible. Francesca Gaiba offers new insight into this monumental event based on extensive archival research and interviews with interpreters, who worked at the trial. This work provides an over …

Combining qualitative research, personal experience, and scholarly literature Ross Green looks at the evolution of the Canadian criminal justice system and the values upon which it is based against the Aboriginal concepts of justice. Using his personal experiences as a defence lawyer, case studies of several communities, as well as interviews with …

Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Ottawa from August 18 to 23, 1996. -- Actes du 22e congrès international des sciences généalogique et héraldique à Ottawa du 18 au 23 août 1996.

George Grant's magnificent four-part meditation sums up much that is central to his own thought, including a critique of modern liberalism, an analysis of John Rawls's Theory of Justice, and insights into the larger Western philosophical tradition.

This edition contains an introduction by Grant scholar Dr Robin Lathangue.

Colin Grant challenges the popular use of "myth" as a dismissive designation of the superstitions and falsehoods of "other" cultures. The author maintains that myths occupy a place in our present-day lives that is every bit as important to us as the divinities and heroes of classical antiquity were to the ancients. The myths themselves are in a con …

Naked under a tattered shower curtain, fifteen-year old Tracey Berkowitz has been sitting in the back of a bus for two days, looking for her brother, Sonny, who thinks he is a dog. Tracey's stories begin to twist and intertwine truth with lies, absorbing the reader into the games and delusions she uses to escape her despair.

The Tracey Fragments is …

Vital, funny, moving and assured, La Guerre, Yes Sir! is a surrealist fable set in rural Quebec during WWI and one of the major achievements in Canadian fiction. Canadian Literature greeted its first appearance in these terms: It is the French-Canadian writer Roch Carrier who comes closest to the significance, power and artistry of Faulkner at his …

This collection of essays explores the often antagonistic relationship between women and political life in Canada. While women make up little over half of the total population in Canada, they are in many ways conspicuous by their absence from the Canadian political scene.

Historically, Aboriginal people have had little influence on the development of Native policy from within government; as a result political organizations have been established to lobby government on Native peoples’ issues. Using his experience as director of land claims for the Métis Association of Alberta, Joe Sawchuk explains how these Aborigi …

Acclaimed literary critic Hugh Kenner examines Western culture's insatiable need for stimulation encountered elsewhere - from the eighteenth century's Grand Tour, to the self-imposed exile of modernist writers, to the disembodied global journeys the Internet avails us today. Kenner brings to this fascinating study knowledge of a wide array of disci …

This hilarious sequel to Jeremy and the Aunties will entertain readers as they follow the antics of the aunties -- weird and wonderful old lady mannequins who come to life and take over the air waves of the local television station.

Jeremy is shocked to find that the theatre mannequins of elderly women his mother has put together are not what they seem. They are really adventure-loving characters who come alive, but … only in front of him.

Not satisfied by the established roles assigned to them, Jewish women have begun to uncover their history, religion and culture using tradition and memory to inspire and transform their lives. In From Memory to Transformation, women activists, rabbis, sch

Meet Jane Yeats. She’s a still-grieving widow who smokes and sometimes drinks too much. Jane is also an acclaimed business writer who supports herself exposing corruption among the business elite.

In this first mystery Jane is asked to investigate the murder of a highly unpopular developer. The prime suspect is his estranged gay son. The murderer …

Pipe organs were once a central (and sometimes hotly debated) part of Manitoba's cultural life. The Organ in Manitoba portrays that history—the instruments, builders, players and critics—from the date of the earliest known installations to the 1990s, and includes information on musical organizations such as the Royal Canadian College of Organis …

Susanna Moodie is, of course, best known for her books Roughing It in the Bush and Life in the Clearings, which are largely comprised of short sketches that she had previously published. What is not widely known, however, is that Moodie had a long and prolific literary career in which short sketches and tales were among her favoured genres. This bo …

New Women is an anthology of short fiction written by Canadian women between 1900 and 1920. The carefully selected stories by writers such as L.M. Montgomery, Nellie McClung, and Marjorie Pickthall provide dramatic and imaginative glimpses of Canadian society and of the women who lived during those momentous years.

First-wave feminist, activist, and social reformer, Nellie McClung ranked as one of the most popular Canadian authors and among the liveliest critics of Canada's male-dominated society. Well ahead of her time, McClung was known as a writer who dared to discuss taboo topics, and for her inimitable humour, which rivals that of Stephen Leacock. This s …

The Quebec Anthology: 1830-1990 provides a complete overview of the Quebec short story from its beginnings to the 1990s and offers a unique opportunity for English readers to discover the essence of this fascinating literature. In addition, a detailed biography of each author and an assessment of each story's place in the larger canvas of Quebec li …

The medieval poem Cursor Mundi is a biblical verse account of the history of the world, offering a chronological overview of salvation history from Creation to Doomsday. Originating in northern England around the year 1300, the poem was frequently copied in the north before appearing in a southern version in substantially altered form. Although it …

A leading Polish philosopher of the 20th century, Roman Ingarden is principally renowned in Western culture for his work in aesthetics and the theory of literature. Jeff Mitscherling demonstrates, in this extensive work, how Ingarden's thought constitutes a major contribution to the more fundamental fields of ontology and metaphysics. Unparalleled …

The North has always had, and still has, an irresistible attraction. This fascination is made up of a mixture of perspectives, among these, the various explorations of the Arctic itself and the Inuk cultural heritage found in the elders' and contemporary stories. This book discusses the different generations of explorers and writers and illustrates …

These essays make a single central claim: that human beings can still make sense of their lives and still have a humane morality, even if their worldview is utterly secular and even if they have lost the last vestige of belief in God. "Even in a self-consciously Godless world life can be fully meaningful," Nielsen contends.

Translation and Gender places recent work in translation against the background of the women's movement and its critique of "patriarchal" language. It explains translation practices derived from experimental feminist writing, the development of openly interventionist translation practices, the initiative to retranslate fundamental texts such as the …

Through a unique combination of biography, memoir, and autobiography, Cherie Smith traces four generations of her immigrant family and, in doing so, charts the very course of Russian-Jewish immigration to the Canadian prairies over the last one hundred years.

The story begins in the shtetles of Poland and Latvia in the 1890s and follows an often wil …

In his 1968 CBC Massey Lectures R. D. Laing discusses how and why we value society's notions of family over our own.

Using concepts of schizophrenia, R.D. Laing demonstrates that we tend to invalidate the subjective and experiential and accept the proper societal view of what should occur within the family.

A psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Laing wor …

It is the mid-seventies, and Shaila has returned to Bombay for her father's sixtieth birthday party. In the linked stories that follow, Shree Gatage renders an India that can only be revealed by first leaving, and then returning again -- in the end, for Shaila, for good.

In this highly accomplished first collection, Ghatage reveals a true gift for …

A Toronto Jew named Nathan Abramowitz investigates the Hebron Massacre—in which a Jewish settler murdered 29 Muslims at prayer—as a way of questioning his own responsibility for the oppression of Palestinians.

Winnipeg writer Katherine Martens interviewed 26 women from the Mennonite community in southern Manitoba, ranging in age from 22 to 88 years old. They had many different backgrounds, but they all had one important characteristic: all were mothers.In the course of these interviews, Martens was searching for answers to questions that affected her bot …

In this final book in the series, Sonny, a former client from Hong Kong, arrives in Vancouver and Helen agrees to meet him. He's in trouble and doesn't know who's after him or why. At least that's what Sonny says. Despite some nagging apprehensions, Helen decides to help him out. But a kidnapping attempt quickly ensues, forcing our heroine into the …

The first book-length study of whether cannibalism existed on the Pacific Northwest coast. McDowell shows how a "cannibal complex" among Westerners coloured many early accounts of "man-eating," and how this perception obscured the importance of ritual cannibalism in the secret Hamatsa ceremony—a crucial feature of Native spirituality.

Writer and scholar George Steiner's Massey Lectures are just as cogent today as when he delivered them in 1974 -- perhaps even more so. He argues that Western culture's moral and emotional emptiness stems from the decay of formal religion. He examines the alternate mythologies (Marxism, etc.) and fads of irrationality (astrology, the occult). Stein …

Originally broadcast on CBC Radio's Ideas as a series of interviews, Jacques Ellul's first-person approach here makes his ideas accessible to readers looking for new ways of understanding our society, and also gives unique new insight into Ellul's life, his work, and the origins and development of his beliefs and theories.

Jacques Ellul, historian, …

"What good is the study of literature? Does it help us think more clearly, or feel more sensitively, or live a better life than we could without it?"

Written in the relaxed and frequently humorous style of his public lectures, this remains, of Northrop Frye's many books, perhaps the easiest introduction to his theories of literature and literary edu …

There are two Icelands. One is the island in the North Sea, occupied since before the arrival of the Vikings. The other is "Western Iceland," the communities throughout North America, settled by Icelandic immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, and still maintaining strong ties to their mother country. While the prominent role of women in the de …

The issue of loyalty and betrayal is dramatized through dialogue in the Governor-General's-Award-winning Three in the Back, Two in the Head, which appears to have been based on the assassination of Gerald Bull, the brilliant Canadian scientist who designed the first Star Wars system twenty years before Reagan announced his version. Bull ran afoul o …

Winner of the 1997 Howard O’Hagan Short Fiction Award!

“In the Diamond, at the end of a long green vinyl aisle between two booths of chrome, Naugahyde, and Formica, are two large swinging wooden doors, each with a round hatch of face-sized window. Those kitchen doors can be kicked with such a slap they’re heard all the way up to the soda fount …

Winner of the 2010 Alberta Readers' Choice Award!
Winner of the George Bugnet Award for Fiction at the 2010 Alberta Literary Awards!

My name’s Bacon Sobelowski, and I’m trying to find my someone. Kenny Rogers sings a song that says there’s someone for everyone, and in Bellevue where I live, Kenny Rogers’ word is gold. It’s just too bad my …

The prairies are a focal point for momentous events in Canadian history, a place where two visions of Canada have often clashed: Louis Riel, the Manitoba School Question, French language rights, the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, and the dramatic collapse of the Meech Lake Accord when MLA Elijah Harper voted “No.”Gerald Friesen believes that it …

R. C. Lewontin is a prominent scientist -- a geneticist who teaches at Harvard -- yet he believes that we have placed science on a pedestal, treating it as an objective body of knowledge that transcends all other ways of knowing and all other endeavours.

Lewontin writes in this collection of essays, which began their life as CBC Radio's Massey Lectu …

In Lobsticks and Stone Cairns, over one hundred Arctic stories are told about adventurers, military officers, authors, guides, cultural heroes, police, traders, and even the occasional charlatan. While some of the biographies in the book are of people still active in the North, others tell stories from as far back as the sixteenth century. The subj …

Looking for nutritious, deliciously varied and easy meals? Whether you’re already a vegetarian or just want to introduce more healthful cooking into your meal planning, Nettie’s Vegetarian Kitchen is the perfect book for you. Expert chef and teacher Netti

A groundbreaking meditation on sexual politics, love, and human tenacity from the world-renowned pioneer of feminist writing and prophetic author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.

When it first appeared in 1971, Margaret Atwood’s Power Politics startled readers with its vital dance of woman and man. It still startles today, and is just as …

Poppy, the zany character from A Monster in My Cereal, A Ghost in My Mirror, and Witch’s Brew, is back. But this time, Poppy is miserable. Her grandpa has died, and Poppy is as angry as she is sad. Book 2 in the Poppy series by Marie-Francine Hebert.

Manitoba is more than one of Canada's three prairie provinces. Encompassing 649,950 square kilometres, its territory ranges from Canadian Shield to grassland, parkland, and subarctic tundra. Its physical geography has been shaped by ice-age glaciers, while its human geography reflects the influences of its various inhabitants, from the First Nation …

Baroness Martha von Rosen, a Baltic German aristocrat, and her memories of the last year of the Second World War and the diary of her late husband, Baron Jürgen von Rosen, taken prisoner by the Allied forces during the war, together pay homage to the assertion that history can be a decidedly individual event.

Martha von Rosen has written a moving …

From the author of the award-winning The Sisters Brothers comes a dark, boozy, and hilarious tale from the LA underworld.

A nameless barman tends a decaying bar in Hollywood and takes notes for a book about his clientele. Initially, he is morbidly amused by watching the regulars roll in and fall into their nightly oblivion, pitying them and their lo …

Carmen and Griffin, young and white, are goofy, head-over-heels in love. When Carmen turns into a black woman, Griffin thrills at a love turned exotic. But Carmen's transformation means trouble for Griffin's racist mother, already struggling with a new lover and a husband nicknamed God. The question is, can love be relied on to save the day? Moon H …