Best of
Canada

1955

John A. MacDonald: The Young Politician. The Old Chieftain


Donald Grant Creighton - 1955
    Macdonald: The Young Lion' (1952) and 'John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain' (1955). Each of the volumes won a Governor General's Literary Award. Creighton's rare combination of rigorous scholarship, magnificent literary style, and romantic and heroic vision gives this work extraordinary power and wide appeal.Sir John A. Macdonald's flamboyant personality dominated Canadian public life from the years preceding Confederation to the end of the nineteenth century, and the political structures and national policies which developed under his leadership continue to shape public issues today. Creighton's first volume takes Macdonald from his childhood and early years as a young lawyer in Kingston, Ontario, through his swift rise in political life to positions of influence, to the great achievement of uniting the colonies of British North America in Confederation. The second volume traces Macdonald's often tumultuous subsequent career in the context of a growing and often recalcitrant nation. He was Prime Minister from 1867 to 1873 and then again from 1878 until his death in June, 1891. The spectacular and evocative epilogues with which Creighton concludes each volume are widely recognized as having a place among the great passages of literary prose.P. B. Waite's introduction to this new one-volume republication provides an illuminating account of the impact that Creighton and his biography of Macdonald had on a whole generation of historians and readers.

Danny Orlis and the Strange Forest Fires


Bernard Palmer - 1955
    As Danny leads them in exploring the islands, they come across a forest fire that is just starting. They are able to get it put out, but there doesn't seem to be a good explanation for why it started in the first place. A strange accident, being followed and another fire's starting add to the mystery. Will they arrive in time to save the man who started the fires and who is now in danger?

Half-Safe: Across the Atlantic by Jeep


Ben Carlin - 1955
    It covers sourcing, building, testing and then setting off in the amphibious jeep from North America across the Atlantic to the western Sahara, before driving it up to England and undertaking a protracted rebuild.

Love Poems Irving Layton


Irving Layton - 1955
    Few poets have written with such sensual intensity, vitality and passion in celebration of women. Here you will discover poems of extraordinary variety - joy, jealousy, sexuality, exultation, lyricism, sarcasm and disappointment.