Best of
Canada

1992

We So Seldom Look on Love


Barbara Gowdy - 1992
    With a particular focus on obsession and the abnormal, We So Seldom Look On Love explores life at its quirky extremes, pushing past limits of convention into lives that are fantastic and heartbreakingly real. Whether writing about the dilemma of a two-headed man who attempts to expunge his own pain, the shock of a woman who discovers she has married a transsexual, the erotic delusions of a woman who repeatedly exposes her body to an unknown voyeur, or the bizarre predilections of a female necrophile (a story made into the acclaimed motion picture, "Kissed"), Gowdy convinces us with incisive detail, only to disarm us with black humor.

Born Naked: The Early Adventures of the Author of Never Cry Wolf


Farley Mowat - 1992
    The author writes of sleeping in haystacks for survival, and other adventures, with equal shares of Booth Tarkington and Jack London. He also brings back Mutt, the famous hero-dog of his classic THE DOG WHO WOULDN'T BE, and his pet owl Wol, hero of OWLS IN THE FAMILY. The tale of an outrageous and clever boy, BORN NAKED takes its place as the foundation of the Farley Mowat canon.

Random Passage


Bernice Morgan - 1992
    To seventeen-year-old Lavinia, uprooted from everything familiar, it seems a fate worse than the one they left behind. Driven by loneliness she begins a journal. Random Passage satisfies the craving for those details that headstones and history books can never give: the real story of our Newfoundland ancestors, of how time and chance brought them to the forbidding shores of a new found land. It is a saga of families and of individuals; of acquisitive Mary Bundle; of charming Ned Andrews, whose thievery has turned his family into exiles; of mad Ida; of Thomas Hutchings, who might be an aristocrat, a holy man, or a murderer; and of Lavinia - who wrote down the truth and lies about them all. Random Passage has been adapted into a CBC miniseries and is now a national bestseller.

A Thousand Shall Fall: The True Story of a Canadian Bomber Pilot in World War Two


Murray Peden - 1992
    Those selected for Bomber Command operations went on to rain devastation upon the Third Reich in the great air battles over Europe, but their losses were high. German fighters and anti-aircraft guns took a terrifying toll. The chances of surviving a tour of duty as a bomber crew were almost nil.Murray Peden's story of his training in Canada and England, and his crew's operations on Stirlings and Flying Fortresses with 214 Squadron, has been hailed as a classic of war literature. It is a fine blend of the excitement, humour, and tragedy of that eventful era.

Niagara: A History of the Falls


Pierre Berton - 1992
    Few natural wonders have inspired the passions and the imaginations of so many as Niagara Falls, whose sublime beauty and awesome power have made it a magnet for statesmen and stuntmen, poets and poseurs, ordinary sightseers and exceptional visionaries. Popular historian Pierre Berton traces the history and allure of one of America's great natural phenomena. As Thurston Clarke noted in his front page "New York Times Book Review," Berton "makes a serious and convincing case for Niagara's pivotal role in North American history.... His Niagara is a lodestar for North American culture and invention: site of the first railway suspension bridge, inspiration for Nikola Tesla's discovery of the principle of alternating current, and the subject of Frederic Church's most celebrated landscape; a natural wonder that has bewitched generations of scientists, authors, and utopians, and stimulated innovations and social movements still casting long shadows."

Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada


Stuart McLean - 1992
    This is truly Canada—a vast stretch of land and a bounty of small towns. In Welcome Home, Stuart McLean takes us on a heartwarming journey from one coast to the other to visit these small yet vibrant places and meet their remarkable citizens.We visit Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, an old-fashioned "cow town"; Dresden, Ontario, once a destination for escaped slaves using the Underground Railroad; St-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec, where the worldÕs strongest man is buried; and Foxwarren, Manitoba, a quintessential hockey town. We wander along Main Street in Sackville, New Brunswick; explore Nakusp, B.C., which may have been the home of an illegitimate child of royalty; and watch the icebergs float by in Ferryland, Newfoundland.Each town Stuart visits tells us a little about Canada's rich and often forgotten history and a lot about who Canadians are today. With a storyteller's eye for detail and an effervescent sense of humour, Stuart McLean introduces us to seven truly wonderful places and dozens of extraordinary people.

Redrum The Innocent: From Wrongful Conviction to Stunning Exoneration


Kirk Makin - 1992
    

Death and Deliverance


Robert Mason Lee - 1992
    

The Future


Leonard Cohen - 1992
    It's his essential film-score album. Almost all its songs appear in Hollywood films. Relatively accessible, it contains everything from gospel-choruses (title track) to synthesizer ballads (Waiting for the Miracle), to pop-country (Closing Time), to marching band rhythms (Democracy). While not his most commercially successful album internationally, it's one of his most musically diverse outings. However, it was one of his biggest chart successes in his native Canada, where Closing Time & The Future were both Top 40. Cohen, whose singing voice is famously an acquired taste, won the '92 Juno Award for Best Male Vocalist. In his acceptance speech, he quipped that "only in Canada could I win a Best Vocalist award". The Future was his last album produced entirely in analog, then digitised after mixdown. Its working titles were Busted (after a line from Closing Time) & Be for Real. His then-girlfriend, actress Rebecca De Mornay, coproduced Anthem. Tacoma Trailer is one of two instrumentals in the Cohen catalog. The other is Improvisation from Live Songs. The album is silver in the UK & double-platinum in Canada. Almost 60 minutes, it was his longest album to date."The Future" – 6:41 "Waiting for the Miracle" (Cohen, Sharon Robinson) – 7:42 "Be for Real" (Frederick Knight) – 4:32 "Closing Time"– 6:00 "Anthem" – 6:09 "Democracy" – 7:13 "Light as the Breeze" – 7:17 "Always" (Irving Berlin) – 8:04 "Tacoma Trailer" – 5:57

O Canada


Ted Harrison - 1992
    In this, the first illustrated edition of "O Canada," acclaimed Canadian painter Ted Harrison takes us on a spectacular journey across Canada, "from east to western sea." Through his joyous eye, Canada is revealed as a land of singular beauty.

A Long and Terrible Shadow: White Values, Native Rights in the Americas Since 1492


Thomas R. Berger - 1992
    . . that I swear . . . there is not in the world a better nation." Yet wave after wave of European arrivals sought to wipe those nations from the earth.By what right did one race seize the land belonging to another and subjugate its people? Distinguished jurist and Native rights advocate Thomas Berger surveys the history of the Americas since their "discovery" by Europeans and examines how the colonizing powers wrestled with the moral issues. Accounts of the slaughter and disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples throughout North, Central, and South America reveal a searing pattern of almost unimaginable duplicity and inhumanity. Five centuries later, Native Americans still embrace ancient values and cultural ways. Berger recounts this tenacious struggle to defy the odds and re-emerge as distinct cultures.

The Story of Canada


Janet Lunn - 1992
    This book is one of the finest tools that young Canadians have ever received to assist them in their quest to reclaim Canada's past for themselves.

Sundogs


Lee Maracle - 1992
    Sundogs is a novel about the struggle of a young First Nations family for love and solidarity in the context of that turbulent year. From urban Vancouver, to a small town in the Okanagan Valley, and across the country on a desperate bid for peace between the Canadian government and the Mohawk Nation, Marianne, Sundog’s heroine, finds a moment of peace from the confusion and dis-unity in her own life. In returning to the beliefs of her ancestry, she comes to chart the course of her life anew.Through Sundogs, Lee Maracle takes the reader on a cultural and spiritual journey into the heart of First Nations country. The agony, the joy and humour of First Nation’s people makes the novel a lively and inspirational piece of work. Sundogs presents the reader an intimate look at the lives of one family during the momentous events surrounding the downfall of Meech Lake and the Oka crisis from a very personal perspective.

An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English


Daniel David Moses - 1992
    The new edition includes fourteen new writers.

Edible And Medicinal Plants: Of the Rocky Mountains and Neighbouring Territories


Terry Willard - 1992
    Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rocky Mountains and Neighbouring Territories includes descriptions of plant uses and preparations with details on how First Nations peoples used the material for herbal healing.

Tapestry of war: A private view of Canadians in the Great War


Sandra Gwyn - 1992
    . . (an) engaging chronicle of Canada & Canadians in the First World War . . . a social history with the sweep of a novel. That the story is factual — an account of a nation forged in blood & fire — adds to its power & allure. . . . (a) marvelous cast of characters . . . . takes history out of its neat categories & puts us into contact with what it must have felt like to be there . . . Partial contents: up at Blue Sea Lake; an Irish Cinderella; the view from Basil Mansions; the Belgian canal boat fund; an odour of genius; the destruction of General Alderson; the education of Grace MacPherson; Ave Atque Vale. Photos. Sources. Index.

Old Scores, New Goals: The Story of the Ottawa Senators


Joan Finnigan - 1992
    

Working Class Experience : Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991


Bryan D. Palmer - 1992
    Beginning with a substantial and provocative introduction that discusses the historiography of the Canadian working class, the book goes on to establish a general framework for analysis of what ultimately is a social history of Canada. Dividing the years into seven periods in the evolution of class struggle, it beings each chapter with an assessment of that period's prevailing economic and social context, followed by an examination of the many factors affecting the working class during that period. Written in a colourful and sometimes irreverent style, Working Class Experience focuses on the processes by which working people moved, and were moved, off the land and into the factories and other workplaces during the Industrial and post-Industrial Revolutions in Canada. Drawing on much recent work on contemporary capitalism, Working Class Experience offers a significant explanation of the malaise in current labour and management relations and speculates on its significance for progressive change in Canadian Life.

The Men in Sheepskin Coats : Canada Moves West


Pierre Berton - 1992
    A series of accessible, fast-paced non-fiction narratives aimed at pre-teen and young teenage readersThese stories of tremendous determination and hardship tell of the railway men and pioneers who opened up the vast and inhospitable West and in a very real way, created the country of Canada.

Tell Me One Good Thing: Bedtime Stories


Richard Thompson - 1992
    All are so rich and engaging that children will want to hear them over and over again.