Dorise Nielsen was a pioneering feminist, a radical politician, the first Communist elected to Canadaís House of Commons, and the only woman elected in 1940. But despite her remarkable career, until now little has been known about her.From her youth in London during World War I to her burial in 1980 in a heroís cemetery in China, Nielsen lived th …

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 …

Mennonite Women in Canada traces the complex social history and multiple identities of Canadian Mennonite women over 200 years. Marlene Epp explores women’s roles, as prescribed and as lived, within the contexts of immigration and settlement, household and family, church and organizational life, work and education, and in response to social trend …

Set in Calcutta, Pyaasa tells the story of Chaya, an eleven-year-old untouchable who dreams of nothing more than learning her times tables. When Chaya's mother begs a woman from a higher caste to give Chaya a job at a local tea stall, Chaya's journey from childhood to adulthood begins and ends over ten days. A moving and heartfelt play, Pyaasa illu …

Part lyric, part memoir, Everything, now, Jessica Moore’s heart-rending debut, describes an untimely death and the journey of going on alone. The book stares down loss and struggles to transform that loss into language that can pass through boundaries of intricate sorrow; the act of translation here is not about two different languages—although …

Through Feminist Eyes gathers in one volume the most incisive and insightful essays written to date by the distinguished Canadian historian Joan Sangster. To the original essays, Sangster has added reflective introductory discussions that situate her earlier work in the context of developing theory and debate. Sangster has also supplied an introduc …

The post-war period witnessed dramatic changes in the lives of working-class families. Wages rose, working hours were reduced, pension plans and state social security measures offered greater protection against unemployment, illness, and old age, the standard of living improved, and women and members of immigrant communities entered the labour mark …

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 …

This rich collection of essays illuminates the lives of late-eighteenth-century to mid-twentieth-century Aboriginal women, women who have been overlooked in sweeping narratives of the history of the West.

Some essays focus on individuals—a trader, a performer, a non-human woman. Other essays examine cohorts of women—wives, midwives, seamstresses …

A geographer with extensive research experience in the Canadian North, Jack D. Ives has written a lively and informative account of several expeditions to Baffin Island during the “golden age” of federal research. In the 1960s, scientists from the Geographical Branch of Canada’s Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources travelled to Baffin t …

Manitoba has been at the crossroads of many of the important debates and events in Canadian history. From the early fur trade to the Riel Rebellion to the Winnipeg General Strike, Manitobans have frequently played crucial roles in Canadian and sometimes world history. Until now, there has been no comprehensive, contemporary source for information o …

Nightwood Theatre is the longest-running and most influential feminist theatre company in Canada. Since 1979, the company has produced works by Canadian women, providing new opportunities for women theatre artists. It has also been the “home company” for some of the biggest names in Canadian theatre, such as Ann-Marie MacDonald.In Nightwood The …

Sarah Carter reveals the pioneering efforts of the government, legal, and religious authorities to impose the “one man, one woman”model of marriage upon Mormons and Aboriginal people in Western Canada. This lucidly written, richly researched book revises what we know about marriage and the gendered politics of late 19th century reform, shifts o …

When young Sharon Lacey travels from Canada to England in the spring of 1940 in search of the father she never knew, she finds herself called upon to participate in a much larger and more dangerous mission. For at eighteen, she is a gifted flier in an England desperate for pilots to fend off the impending attack from Hitler’s Luftwaffe. In the mo …

“Our voices scrubbed out and forgotten. There are those who research and write about sex workers who often forget we are human.” —Amy Lebovitch

Shawna Ferris gives a voice to sex workers who are often pushed to the background, even by those who fight for them. In the name of urban safety and orderliness, street sex workers face stigma, racism …

“Despite Canada’s claim to be a gender equitable nation, militarism continues to function in ways that protect inequality.” -- from the Introduction

Little has been done to examine, critique, and challenge the ways ingrained societal ideas of militarism and gender influence lifelong learning patterns and practices of Canadians. Editor Nancy Ta …

Winner of the 2013 Leacock Memorial Medal for Canadian Humour Writing!
Long Listed for Canada Reads 2018!
Nominated for the First Book Award at the 2013 Saskatchewan Book Awards!
Twenty-seven-year-old Frieda Zweig is at an impasse. Behind her is a string of failed relationships and half-forgotten ambitions of being a painter; in front of her lies t …

Shortlisted for the 2016 O’Reilly Insurance and the Co-Operators First Book Award!

As a long, hot Saskatchewan summer dawns, Darby Swank’s life is forever changed when she finds her beloved aunt floating dead in a lake. All at once, her blinders are lifted and she sees the country lifestyle she’s always known in a whole new way, with hidden pa …

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 …

First Nations peoples believe the eagle flies with a female wing and a male wing, showing the importance of balance between the feminine and the masculine in all aspects of individual and community experiences. Centuries of colonization, however, have devalued the traditional roles of First Nations women, causing a great gender imbalance that limit …

Based on hundreds of interviews with Manitoba farm men and women, Making Ends Meet reconstructs the common history shared by modern farm women as well as by their mothers and grandmothers. It explores women's changing roles on the farm, from the early days of the Red River settlement to the twentieth-century farm community. The women's own stories …

Facutly of Nursing on the Move provides a historical analysis of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary in contrast and comparison to the broader evolution of academic nursing in Canada. It addresses how the faculty has responded to important social trends and changes in health care policy and helps the reader to understand contemporar …

In recent years, breastfeeding has been prominently in the public eye in relation to debates on issues ranging from parental leave policies, work−family balance, public decency, the safety of our food supply, and public health concerns such as health care costs and the obesity “epidemic.”

Breastfeeding has officially been considered “the on …

If We Were Birds is a shocking, uncompromising examination of the horrors of war, giving voice to a woman long ago forced into silence, and placing a spotlight on millions of female victims who have been silenced through violence. A deeply affecting and thought-provoking re-imagining of Ovid's masterpiece "Tereus, Procne, and Philomela," Erin Shiel …

"The elders in Those Who Know have devoted their lives to preserving the wisdom and spirituality of their ancestors. Despite insult and oppression, they have maintained sometimes forbidden practices for the betterment of not just their people, but all humankind.

First published in 1991, Dianne Meili’s book remains an essential portrait of men and …

For many Canadians, the state of our health care and medical system is at the top of the public agenda. By following the growth and development of modern medicine in one Canadian province, Manitoba Medicine provides an insight into where our present medical system came from and how it developed.

Beginning with a description of some early Aboriginal …

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 …

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Edith Stoker’s father is building a wall in their backyard. A very, very high wall—a brick bulwark in his obsessive war against their hated neighbour Edward Black.

It is 1969, and far away, preparations are being made for man to walk upon the moon. Meanwhile, in the Stokers’ shabby home in the East Midlands, Edith remains a virtual prisoner, …

Living the Changes explores the nature and extent of women's changing realities. The contributors include writers, artists, academics, street kids and social workers, and range in age from nine to seventy-three. Their topics reflect the diversity and complexity of the concerns of contemporary women – birthing and aging, body image, culture, drugs …

Margaret Laurence's much admired Manawaka fiction—The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners—has achieved remarkable recognition for its compassionate portrayal of the attempt to find meaning and peace in ordinary life. In Writing Grief, Christian Riegel argues that the protagonists in these books a …

This unfamiliar territory is the borderlands of women’s histories traversing the American and Canadian Wests. Specialists in women’s history, settler societies, colonialism, storytelling, education, and native and borderlands studies introduced by Elizabeth Jameson and Sheila McManus pool their distinct contributions toward forging the very fir …

This book of personal essays by over forty women and men who founded women’s studies in Canada and Québec explores feminist activism on campus in the pivotal decade of 1966-76. The essays document the emergence of women’s studies as a new way of understanding women, men, and society, and they challenge some current preconceptions about “seco …

This evocative narrative draws us into the inner life of a young Chinese peasant girl, May-ping, and her first glimmerings of youthful love and idealism under the Maoist regime in China. As she grows into a mature woman, she becomes increasingly aware of the strife around her.

An intelligent girl born into a Poor-Class family in a small village in …

Why does it seem as if everyone is writing memoirs, and particularly women?

The current popularity of memoir verifies the common belief that we each have a story to tell. And we do...especially women. Memoirs are not only representations of women’s personal lives but also of their desire to repossess important parts of our culture, in which women …

This third volume in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale reports her controversial theological essays (only two of which have been previously published) and a great array of correspondence, from such Roman Catholics as Cardinal Manning and the Reverend Mother of the Sisters of Mercy of Bermondsey to the liberal Protestant Benjamin Jowett, e …

In a support group for bereaved parents, Shayla, Lyle, Linee, and Jed each fight their personal demons in the search for life after the death of one's child. Set in the vast and remote landscape of Whitehorse, Yukon, playwright Celia McBride plunges into these characters' painful struggle to find a voice for their grief.

Wider Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry announces a bold revision of the genealogy of Canadian literary modernism by foregrounding the originary and exemplary contribution of women poets, critics, cultural activists, and experimental prose writers Dorothy Livesay, P.K. Page, Miriam Waddington, Phyllis Webb, El …

Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage explores the missteps and the promise of a century and more of child protection efforts by Canadians and their governments. It is the first volume to offer a comprehensive history of what life has meant for North America’s most disadvantaged Aboriginal and newcomer girls and …

Mary Austin was a mayor’s daughter who expected to live an uneventful life in Canada. But when she said “I do” to Jim Endicott she found that she had “married China.”

Thrust into extraordinary circumstances, but undeterred by the political turmoil around her in China, Mary Austin Endicott determined she would achieve the goals she set for …

Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education and Literature, Volume 5 in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, is the main source of Nightingale’s work on the methodology of social science and her views on social reform. Here we see how she took her “call to service” into practice: by first learning how …

Wild Mother Dancing challenges the historical absence of the mother, who, as subject and character, has been repeatedly suppressed and edited out of the literary canon. In her search for sources for telling the new (or old, forbidden story) against a tradition of narrative absence, Brandt turns to Canadian fiction representing a variety of cultural …

Offers an intriguing glimpse into the daily life of an average Toronto woman in the mid-nineteenth century.

Mary Armstrong’s diaries are a window into the daily life of a middle-class woman in a new and changing land, and a revealing account of life in early Toronto just before and after confederation. Her journals are one of very few published b …

Working Memory: Women and Work in World War II speaks to the work women did during the war: the labour of survival, resistance, and collaboration, and the labour of recording, representing, and memorializing these wartime experiences. The contributors follow their subjects’ tracks and deepen our understanding of the experiences from the imprints …

This book is the first major study of Canadian women filmmakers since the groundbreaking Gendering the Nation (1999). The Gendered Screen updates the subject with discussions of important filmmakers such as Deepa Mehta, Anne Wheeler, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Léa Pool, and Patricia Rozema, whose careers have produced major bodies of work. It al …

Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women’s Rights in Canada explores the ways in which several of Canada’s women journalists, broadcasters, and other media workers reached well beyond the glory of their personal bylines to advocate for the most controversial women’s rights of their eras. To do so, some of them adopted conventional feminine ide …

To the very few women who were teaching in Ontario’s universities at the time of the great expansion in the 1960s, Flora Roy is a legendary figure. To many others, academic colleagues and former students, she has continued to be just that through all the years since....Flora Roy is unique among Canadian academics. She shepherded her department …

John Locke is often thought of as one of the founders of the Enlightenment, a movement that sought to do away with the Bible and religion and replace them with scientific realism. But Locke was extremely interested in the Bible, and he was engaged by biblical theology and religion throughout his life. In this new book, K.I. Parker considers Locke� …

How did a privileged Victorian matron, newly widowed and newly impoverished, manage to raise and educate her six young children and restore her family to social prominence?

Mary Baker McQuesten’s personal letters, 155 of which were carefully selected by Mary J. Anderson, tell the story. In her uninhibited style, in letters mostly to her children, …

Cold War Comforts examines Canadian women’s efforts to protect children’s health and safety between the dropping of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1945 and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Amid this global insecurity, many women participated in civil defence or joined the disarmament movement as means to protect their families from th …

Florence Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought has intrigued readers from feminist-philosopher J.S. Mill (who used it in his The Subjection of Women) to the latest generation of women’s activists. Although selections from this long work have been published, Lynn McDonald is the first editor to work through the numerous surviving drafts of Night …