Best of
Canada

1994

Open Secrets: Stories


Alice Munro - 1994
    She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia. And Munro shows us how one woman's romantic tale of capture and escape in the high Balkans may end up inspiring another woman who is fleeing a husband and lover in present-day Canada.Carried away --A real life --The Albanian virgin --Open secrets --The Jack Randa hotel --A wilderness station --Spaceships have landed --Vandals

Keeper'n Me


Richard Wagamese - 1994
    Having reached his mid-teens, he escapes at the first available opportunity, only to find himself cast adrift on the streets of the big city.Having skirted the urban underbelly once too often by age 20, he finds himself thrown in jail. While there, he gets a surprise letter from his long-forgotten native family.The sudden communication from his past spurs him to return to the reserve following his release from jail. Deciding to stay awhile, his life is changed completely as he comes to discover his sense of place, and of self. While on the reserve, Garnet is initiated into the ways of the Ojibway--both ancient and modern--by Keeper, a friend of his grandfather, and last fount of history about his people's ways.By turns funny, poignant and mystical, Keeper'n Me reflects a positive view of Native life and philosophy--as well as casting fresh light on the redemptive power of one's community and traditions.

Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across North America


Jack Nisbet - 1994
    From 1784 to 1812, Thompson explored western North America, and his field journals provide the earliest written accounts of the natural history and indigenous cultures of the what is now British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Thompson was the first person to chart the entire route of the Columbia river, and his wilderness expeditions have become the stuff of legend. Jack Nisbet tracks the explorer across the content, interweaving his own observations with Thompson’s historical writings. The result is a fascinating story of two men discovering the Northwest territory almost two hundred years apart.

These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places: The Story of the Stoney People


John Snow - 1994
    After consulting archival records and the Stoney oral tradition, Chief John Snow describes with clarity, depth, and understanding the Native perspective on life since the birth of Treaty Seven in 1877. With compassion and detail, Snow describes the stable state of First Nations prior to contact with Europeans and the destruction wrought by the whisky traders. He records the period of treaty-signing and the failure on the government's part to hold to treaty agreements. And most importantly, Snow explains his people's feeling of dispossession that continues to threaten the very survival of Stoney beliefs, values, and lifestyle.In his wisdom, however, Snow is also optimistic: about the hope that was born after the introduction of self-government in 1969, following the granting of citizenship to Indian people across the nation; and about his people's belief in biculturalism as they seek a path that allows them to thrive and benefit from both Native and non-Native cultures, rather than slip between the two.In an epilogue written in 2005, Chief John Snow reflects upon his career since the Treaty Seven commemoration in 1977, describing some of the events that affected First Nations at the end of the twentieth century and, also, discussing more personal, philosophical issues, such as cultural revitalization, Native spirituality, and the beauty of the oral tradition.

Gifts: The Martyrology Book(s) 7 &


bpNichol - 1994
    In The Martyrology different ways of speaking testify to a journey through different ways of being. Language is both the poet’s instructor and, through its various permutations, the dominant 'image’ of the poem. The [nine] books of The Martyrology document a poet’s quest for insight into himself and his writing through scrupulous attention to the messages hidden in the morphology of his own speech.’ – Frank Davey

Jean Beliveau, 2d Edition: My Life in Hockey


Jean Béliveau - 1994
    Retiring from active play in 1971, he went on to a successful twenty-two-year career as the Canadien's senior vice-president of corporate affairs and to life-long service as a goodwill ambassador for the sport. For half a century, he has been universally acknowledged as a prince of our national game and unofficial royalty to four generations of Canadians.

Wilderness Mother


Deanna Kawatski - 1994
    Without electricity or running water, over a hundred miles from the nearest paved road and cut off from most contact with the outside world, Kawatski, her husband, and their two children fashion a life almost unique in the 20th century. The book focuses on motherhood: the anxieties of bearing children in the outback without reliance on medical care, the difficulties - and joys - of coping with infants in a wilderness setting, and the challenges of education, socialization, and safety for the children in the face of almost total isolation. Wilderness Mother is a unique and inspiring story, wonderfully told.

American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War


Thomas Vennum - 1994
    Here Thomas Vennum brings this world to life.

Cordelia Clark


Budge Wilson - 1994
    In "The Charmer," a handsome but manipulative prodigal son creates a family breakdown. In "Cordelia Clark," a new girl moves into town and kindles division and jealousies between friends who must work out their animosities when she suddenly moves away. And in "Joanna and the Dark," a young woman witnesses her role model being a less-than-ideal father, and realizes that adults aren't always what they seem, nor do they have all the answers.

Northern Lights: Masterpieces of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (Art & Architecture)


Joan Murray - 1994
    To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Group of seven, contemporary Canadian art expert Joan Murray has chosen more than 125 works of art for inclusion in this volume, including some paintings never before seen by the public. (1994)

The Moslem Wife and Other Stories


Mavis Gallant - 1994
    These embody the beauty, irony, and compassion of a master writer's fictional universe. Amid the complex perceptions of the past that haunt her characters, Gallant deploys her sharp comic eye to superb effect: in the figures who move through her stories, we catch troubling, fleeting glimpses of our own lives.Selected and with an afterword by Mordecai Richler.From the eBook edition.

The Fifth (and probably last) Morningside Papers


Peter Gzowski - 1994
    

Flying Canucks: Famous Canadian Aviators


Peter Pigott - 1994
    Within a decade, Canadian air aces, like Bishop and Barker, swept the wartime skies over Frances, piloting deadly machines in mortal combat. Through the 20s, that very Canadian breed of adventurer, the bush pilot, ventured over the desolate tundra, delivering medicine and missionaries, mail and Mounties to remote communities as far as Ellesmere Island and Ungava Bay. Members of the Royal Canadian Air Force fought with distinction during the Second world War. Titles such as The Saviour of London and The Angel of Ceylon seem like wartime hype, but the skill and courage that those pilots displayed half a century ago set them apart still. For the six Canadian airmen who won the Victoria Cross, there were thousands who flew into the meat grinder that was the Allies’ strategic air offensive over Europe. This book chronicles the exploits of only a few men and women – but it truly celebrates the spirit and resolve of countless brave Canadians who are proud part of aviation in this country.

Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-63


Frank James Tester - 1994
    The authors have made extensive use of archival documents, many of which have not been available to researchers before. The early chapters cover the first wave of government expansion in the north, the policy debate that resulted in the decision to relocate Inuit, and the actual movement of people and materials. The second half of the book focuses on conditions following relocation and addresses the second wave of state expansion in the late fifties and the emergence of a new dynamic of intervention.

Crazy about Gardening: Humorous Reflections on the Sweet Seductions of a Garden


Des Kennedy - 1994
    An accomplished gardener and award-winning writer, Kennedy leads readers on a bold, original and humorous romp down the paths of North America's contemporary gardens.

Temporary Homelands


Alison Hawthorne Deming - 1994
    The author discusses four locales that have connections with her life: the northeast woods, a Canadian island off the coast of Alaska, southeast Alaska, and the American southwest.

Black Bears


Caroline Greenland - 1994
    Part of Set 2 of the Nature's Children Series of books

A History of Canadian Architecture


Harold Kalman - 1994
    With an expanded final chapter on modern architecture, which includes more than a dozen new buildings, this concise edition of the award-winning two-volume History of Canadian Architecture presents a panorama of Canadian buildings as rich as it is vast, from the dwellings of pre-contact Native peoples and the first European settlers to the revolutionary structures of the Modernist period and the renewed appreciation of the past that marks so much of the architecture created on the eve of the new millennium.