Adam's band, Sick on a Snow Day, is challenged by more than just an unusual name. Adam is mistakenly accused of cheating on a test and must maintain a clean record and B-average if he wants to stay in the band. When lead singer Daniela Olafson gets hit with stage fright at the last minute, Adam creates her alter-ego, Olaf Danielson, the Swedish exc …

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature Nominee, 2009On Resource Link's "Best of 2008" ListCLA Children's Book of the Year Award shortlist, 20092009 KIND Children's Honor BookCanadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2009"Starred ChoiceAfter his mother's death, Travis Keating and his father move to Ratchet, Newfoundland, to start a new …

The Green Chain looks at the past, present and future of forestry through interviews with environmentalists, loggers, scientists and others. Raw log exports, environmental devastation, making a living . . . all are discussed in this exploration of the problems facing our forests, and the possible solutions.

It's an emotional topic, especially in Bri …

Most of us take our underwear for granted, but throughout history our undies have revealed a lot about who we are (king or peasant), how we work (in fields or factories) or the shapes we value (manly calves or tiny waists).

The third book in Annick’s 50 Questions series tackles questions such as “What’s that smell?” (Medieval Europeans thoug …

Award-winning photographer Rafal Gerszak spent a year embedded with the American military in Afghanistan, where he used his camera to document everyday life in the war-torn country. While there, he developed a deep affection for the land and its people, and he later returned on his own. Despite the dangers around him, he continued taking photos, ex …

When Toby climbs too high in a tree to rescue a kite, he tumbles to the ground and has to go to hospital. The doctors stick tubes down his throat and bandage him up - with the result that Toby finds he can't laugh any more.

Technically it was a minor league, but for hockey fans west of the Mississippi, the Western Hockey League provided major-league entertainment for over 25 years.

The WHL was a determined and ambitious professional league, with some 22 teams based in major American and Canadian cities. Known as the Pacific Coast Hockey League prior to 1952, the WHL a …

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 …

On January 22, 1906, the passenger ship Valencia lost her way in heavy fog and rain and rammed into the deadly rocks at Pachena Point on the west coast of Vancouver Island. As the wreck was shattered by the pounding waves, the survivors clung desperately to the rigging. Few made it the short distance to shore through the frigid and turbulent waves� …

Remarkable cattle drives, famous ranches and legendary characters are at the heart of Ken Mather's account of the early days of ranching in British Columbia. These are stories about drovers, ranchers, cowboys and "mud pups" (the remittance men of the ranching industry). You'll meet such people as:

• the flamboyant Harper brothers, drovers who went …

Winner of the 2009 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour

The cops wanted to shoot me, my bosses thought I was a Bolshevik, and a local lawyer warned me that some people I was writing about might try to test the strength of my skull with a steel pipe. What more could any young reporter hope for from his first real job?

The night Mark Leiren-Young drove …

Hughina Harold paints a powerful picture of a world that no longer exists in this compelling account of her experiences as a young teacher and nurse on the remote Broughton Archipelago on British Columbia’s coast in the 1930s. Fresh from nursing school in Victoria and eager to start work, Harold could not have imagined the challenges that awaited …

In the early hours of April 22, 1914, American President Woodrow Wilson sent Marines to seize the port of Veracruz in an attempt to alter the course of the Mexican Revolution. As a result, the United States seemed on the brink of war with Mexico. An international uproar ensued. The governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile offered to mediate a pe …

This lively biography of Bishop Edward Cridge and his wife Mary paints a vivid picture of early Victoria as it developed from an isolated Hudson's Bay Company post into the bustling capital of British Columbia. Recruited from England by Governor James Douglas in 1854 to be the Church of England chaplain of Fort Victoria, Edward Cridge became an imp …

Ten-year-old Rosario Ramirez and her family are political refugees from Mexico, trying to make a new life in Canada.

After being teased at school, Rosario vows not to speak English again until she can speak with an accent that's one hundred percent Canadian. Since she and her parents plan to spend the whole summer working on BC fruit farms, she will …

Claire's life is a mess.

She's failing math, her depressed mother won't get off the couch, Eric, the boy of her dreams, is dating her nemesis Lucy. While Claire is wishing her life were better, lightning strikes. Soon afterward, everything changes. With Lucy in the hospital and out of the way, Claire attracts Eric's attention and gets the starring r …

Robin can hardly wait for her cousin April and her Aunty Liz to come to the ranch for Christmas. When a devastating car accident sends Aunty Liz to the hospital for several months, Robin can't help but be overjoyed to learn that April will live with Robin and her family while her mother is recuperating. But April has changed, and Robin must deal wi …

Her hands lay inert and upturned on her lap – probably stunned, she thinks, by the hideousness of the skirt underneath them. Centre seam puckered, zipper mangled, it's handmade in a way that makes people say, 'Did you sew that yourself?' when they mean, 'How can you wear that thing?' But she made it the day after he died, and she talked to him in …

Craig and Tom have been friends since second grade, but that was five years ago and Craig is getting sick of Tom's out-of-bounds behavior.

When Craig begins to realize that he may have more potential in school than he ever thought, he starts to distance himself from Tom, who is both the class clown and the school bully. But severing ties with an old …

The students of the 121 Express are infamous for bad behavior and Lucas knows his role on the bus will determine his social standing at his new school.

Lucas is tired of being one of the nerds. When he attracts the negative attention of the cool troublemakers, he saves himself by teasing another kid. His ploy works and soon Lucas is right in the cen …

The West was a lawless domain when Jerry Potts was born into the Upper Missouri fur trade in 1838. The son of a Scottish father and a Blood mother, he was given the name Bear Child by his Blood tribe for his bravery and tenacity while he was still a teen. In 1874, when the North West Mounted Police first marched west and sat lost and starving near …

Jack Spencer has more to worry about than being kicked off his high school's basketball team. He uncovers suspicious circumstances surrounding the car crash that severely injured his mother and learns of his father's arrest for fraud. Jack's dad is tough on him, but he has learned to live with it. For the most part, he has it pretty good. Jack is a …

Longlisted for a ReLit Award (2007)

Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design

The stories in Sugar Bush & Other Stories deal with gender relations, love, and sex in a frank way. Most of the pieces feature female protagonists who navigate their young adult years in some questionable ways. They make some ill-advised choices, which are driven by …

The Depression has ruined Henry Dafoe's life: his father has left the family farm to look for work, his mother is sick and now she's decided to send Henry to Nova Scotia to work on his uncle's fishboat. But Henry has other ideas. He runs away from home to join his father, which proves more difficult than he imagined. Alone and scared in a strange c …

"Slow and steady," that's how you make a grandfather clock. Grandpa should know. He and Cayley have made nineteen clocks together. Now they are making Cayley's very own, a Lord Nelson. Then, one night, Cayley awakes to the sound of a siren. Grandpa is gone. Cayley is scared by what she sees when she is allowed to visit him in the hospital. But scar …

From sentimental stories about polio to the latest cherub in hospital commercials, sick children tug at the public’s heartstrings. However sick children have not always had adequate medical care or protection. The essays in Children’s Issues in Historical Perspective investigate the identification, prevention, and treatment of childhood disease …

It is 1965, and twelve-year-old Emaline lives on a wheat farm in southern Saskatchewan. Her family has fallen apart. When her beloved dog, Prince, chased a hare into the path of the tractor, she chased after him, and her dad accidentally ran over her leg with the discer, leaving her with a long convalescence and a permanent disability. But perhaps …

The Burning Alphabet confirms and extends Barry Dempster’s reputation as one of Canada’s most respected poets. Underpinning these poems, as in his previous work, there lies an unswerving dedication to emotional and spiritual honesty, clear-eyed recognitions rendered without pomp. In one section, "Sick Days", he focuses on that "other place" of …

On August 22, 1922, near Macroom, County Cork, a single bullet from an unknown gunman killed Michael Collins, the Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army. The day Collins was buried, businesses across Dublin shut down as thousands lined the streets to pay their respects. And on that day, Michael Lyons, a cooper from the Guinness factory tak …

On her seventh birthday, Pauline rode across the lawns on her street followed by her best friend Henry, he on the blue wooden horse, she on the red. On the seventh lawn at the top of the street, she collapsed, becoming a sudden victim of the polio outbreak of the summer of 1954.

Five years later, when In the Clear begins, she has survived, but paid …

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.

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 …