And they are dangerous." In The Truth About Stories, Native novelist and scholar Thomas King explores how stories shape who we are and how we understand and interact with other people. From creation stories to personal experiences, historical anecdotes to social injustices, racist propaganda to works of contemporary Native literature, King probes Native culture's deep ties to storytelling. With wry humor, King deftly weaves events from his own life as a child in California, an academic in Canada, and a Native North American with a wide-ranging discussion of stories told by and about Indians. So many stories have been told about Indians, King comments, that "there is no reason for the Indian to be real. The Indian simply has to exist in our imaginations." That imaginative Indian that North Americans hold dear has been challenged by Native writers - N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louis Owens, Sherman Alexie, and others - who provide alternative narratives of the Native experience that question, create a present, and imagine a future. King reminds the reader, Native and non-Native, that storytelling carries with it social and moral responsibilties. "Don't say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You've heard it now."

    Secure in the love of her beautiful mother, she is unaware that her father, Jack, is caught up in a web of secrets. When a very local murder intersects with global forces, Jack must decide where his loyalties lie, and Madeleine will be forced to learn a lesson about the ambiguity of human morality -- one she will only begin to understand when she carries her quest for the truth, and the killer, into adulthood twenty years later.

    These paintings of the wilderness evoke the same response in viewers today as they did when first exhibited.The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson includes many never -- before reproduced paintings and presents the most complete and extensive collection of these artists' works ever published. The 400 paintings and drawings reveal the remarkable genius of all 10 painters who at some point were part of the movement. Tom Thomson, who died before the Group was established, was always present in the public mind. Included are works by:Frank Carmichael Frank Johnston A.J. Casson Arthur Lismer Le Moine FitzGerald J.E.H. MacDonald Lawren Harris Tom Thomson Edwin Holgate F.H. Varley A.Y. Jackson The artwork is organized by the various regions of Canada, with additional sections on the war years and still-life paintings. Introductory essays provide a context for a greater understanding and appreciation of Canada's most celebrated artists.

    In Munro’s hands, the people she writes about–women of all ages and circumstances, and their friends, lovers, parents, and children–become as vivid as our own neighbors. It is her miraculous gift to make these stories as real and unforgettable as our own. (back cover)RunawayChanceSoonSilencePassionTrespassesTricksPowers

    This history of basketball is presented with amazing photographs and accessible text to tell the whole story, from James Naismith's nailing a peach basket to the wall of a local gym for the first informal game to the incredible feats of basketball's super-size stars of today.

    Caught up in his enthusiasm, she couldn't understand her parents' less-than-enthusiastic reaction. Now that her other brother, Jack, has also enlisted, she yearns for the safe return of both brothers. If only she had a friend that she could talk to about her feelings. . .

    One late October evening in 1958, it "bumped" - its rock floors heaving up and smashing into rock ceilings. A few miners staggered out, most of the 174 on shift did not.Nineteen men were trapped, plunged into darkness, hunger, thirst, and hallucination. As days and nights passed, the survivors began to hope for death by gas rather than from thirst. Above ground, journalists and families stood in despairing vigil, as rescuers brought out scores of the dead. The hope of finding life undergound faded and families made funeral preparations.Then, a miracle: Rescuers stumbled across a broken pipe leading to a cave of survivors, then a second group was discovered.A media circus followed. Ed Sullivan, then the state of Georgia, invited survivors to visit. Publicity, politics, and segregation sorted the men differently than they had ordered themselves. Underground, the one black survivor nursed a dying man; in Atlanta, Governor Marvin Griffin said: "I will not shake hands with a Negro."If every great writer has one tale of peril, heroism, and survival, Last Man Out is Melissa Fay Greene's. Using long-lost stories and interviews with survivors, Greene has reconstructed the drama of their struggle to stay alive

    Whether written to a close friend or an entire nation, a letter speaks volumes about the writer and his or her time.This is history in the making, in the fragile moment before it is rendered into an official version, its heroes and villains into two-dimensional puppets. In their letters, those who have been actors in Canada’s defining junctures, along with those who have lived through and been affected by them, offer us familiar historical moments from exciting new perspectives and in frank, intimate, and often unexpected words.Readers will see themselves in this book -- whether the connection is through a letter they might have written themselves, or a letter dating from their mother’s childhoods. And letters penned in the first decades of the nineteenth century, though written in unfamiliar words, will touch the reader with the immediacy and timelessness of the emotions they express -- loneliness, excitement, determination, and pride.In Canada: A Portrait in Letters, renowned biographer and popular historian Charlotte Gray weaves together more than two hundred letters written by Canadians, both famous and ordinary. These priceless documents are accompanied by a visual narrative of one hundred illustrations, including maps, sketches, and photographs. Adding her own notes and commentary, Gray creates a captivating portrait of a country, rich in diversity and hope, once a backwater of the British Empire, that has matured to take its place among the world’s cultural and economic leaders.Letters from: Norman Bethune • Sir Robert Borden • Emily Carr • Sir Winston Churchill • Robertson Davies • John Diefenbaker • Glenn Gould • Grey Owl • W.L. Mackenzie King • Pierre Laporte • Margaret Laurence • Sir Wilfrid Laurier • Sir John A. MacDonald • Marshall McLuhan • L.M. Montgomery • Susanna Moodie • Farley Mowat • Emily Murphy • Lester B. Pearson • Louis Riel • Tom Thomson • Catharine Parr Traill

    Onge and her older sister Catherine are orphans. When King Louis XVI orders all men in New France to marry, Catherine becomes a fille du roi, one of the many young women sent to the new world as brides. Hélène will accompany her on the long sea voyage and live with her sister’s new family. But Catherine dies during the gruelling journey, and Hélène finds herself alone in strange new country. New France is a far harsher place than she imagined, with bitter winters and the threat of attack from the Iroquois. Will the new friendships she has made on her long voyage enable her to survive?

    On a hot Toronto night in 1933, at an amateur baseball game at Christie Pits field, four Nazi youths flashed a large black swastika, shouting "Heil Hitler!" Within seconds, a group of Jewish youths charged at them, trying to grab the flag. One of the Nazi youths snatches back the banner and breaks free, running with the flag through the park, setting off a four-hour race riot involving 15,000 people, injuring hundreds, and sending scores to the hospital. In this panoramic novel, Karen X. Tulchinsky traces the fortunes of the Lapinskys from the evening of the riots through World War II and into the 1950s. It is then, in a boxing ring at Madison Square Garden, that Sonny Lapinsky must decide whether or not to reconcile with a family torn apart by a violent past — a decision that will affect generations to come, including his son and future biographer, Moses. Set against the Great Depression, race riots, and World War II, this family saga about a Jewish boy-cum-champion boxer is filled with humor, sorrow, bravery, folly, and the stuff of everyday life.

    Included in this edition is the Lament for Confederation by Chief Dan George. Poetic and spiritual, this book has a universal message to all people. Chief Dan George was an accomplished performer, poet, philosopher, champion of Native peoples and loving patriarch of a large family.

    Comparing Mythologies addresses the ways that Canadian culture today is shaped by the mixture of Aboriginal and Western mythologies.

    Designed to emphasize the consistency of his thought and a clarity of concept, they include Global Village, The Medium is the Message and Obsolescence is the Moment of Superabundance.

    Show fame.

    In this book, Patterson turns his camera towards the garden in his own backyard. Hear the whisper of wind through a canopy of trees. Inhale the sweet fragrances of ferns and grasses. Observe the vibrant colors of delphiniums, forget-me-nots, poppies, bachelor buttons and cornflowers. Trace the texture of white snowflakes against brown grasses.On early spring mornings, the daffodils dance and the young fronds of hay-scented ferns push their way up to the light. Summer brings lupins as far as the eye can see and robust hostas advancing on Virginia bluebells. Autumn's gold leaves give way to frost-gilded petals, and winter's first snowfall intensifies the red of high-bush cranberries. The expectant earth stirs again in spring as energy kindles and the garden is reborn.In Patterson's garden, rain is as important as sunshine, colors blend seamlessly with fragrances, and everything that lives and grows also dies, the cycle of life keeps rolling.

    Margaret Elphinstone's magnificent sixth novel gives us Mark Greenhow, a naive and peaceful Quaker who lands on the shores of North America on the eve of the War of 1812, thinking only of finding the missing sister he has always admired for her adventurous spirit.Mark hitches a ride with the voyageurs who have canoed the rivers, transporting the tons of furs that feed the trade that has made the region a battleground of the French and British empires. Though Mark enters this brave new world with his conscience clean and his convictions sound, his encounters test his rigid upbringing. The backwoods of Canada have certainly led his sister astray; she has been excommunicated from the Society of Friends for running off with a non-Quaker. After her child is stillborn she runs again, deep into Indian country.Elphinstone's crisp and effortless prose, coupled with her riveting, organic descriptions, her fully drawn characters, and the history of the region, make this novel an astonishingly authentic and profoundly satisfying work of historical fiction.

    Traveling across the prairies, over the Rockies, and on to the Pacific, Thompson transformed the raw data of his explorations into a map of the Canadian West. Measuring ten feet by seven feet and laid out with astonishing accuracy, the map became essential to the politicians and diplomats who would decide the future of the rich and promising lands of the West. Yet its creator worked without personal glory and died in penniless obscurity.Drawing extensively on Thompson’s personal journals, illustrated with his detailed sketches, intricate notebook pages, and the map itself, Epic Wanderer charts the life of a man who risked everything in the name of scientific advancement and exploration.

    Tilting is author Robert Mellin's personal account of the houses, outbuildings, furniture, tools, fences, docks, and way of life of a fishing village on a small island far off the Canadian coast. Part journal, part sketchbook, part oral history, Tilting is a treasure chest of a book that offers new discoveries with each reading and a reminder of the simpler aspects of life and building.

    Shortly afterwards, her spirit returns to the house, only to find her mother gone and strangers moving in. She also finds the older spirits who dwell there, beginning a powerful battle for control of the house - and trapping its new residents in the middle.Overshadows chronicles the events of this terrifying multiple haunting, but more importantly, it shares the incredible discoveries made during the course of a six-year investigation. This book will challenge and disprove classic theories, and create upheaval in the circle of life-after-death research.

    Children were forcibly taken from their families in order to erase their traditional languages and cultures.As Long as the Rivers Flow is the story of Larry Loyie's last summer before entering residential school. It is a time of learning and adventure. He cares for an abandoned baby owl and watches his grandmother make winter moccasins. He helps the family prepare for a hunting and gathering trip.

    They are sly, demanding and wise--stories about language, desire and love (in a very dark place). The humor veers from the wry and sardonic to the salacious, mordant and playful. And always there are moments of such stark emotional intimacy that the reader slides, almost without noticing, from laughter to lament.

    Bringing together ten incomparable stories from six different collections, No Love Lost confirms her pre-eminent status. Focusing on the many paths of falling in love, each of these stories of ordinary people reveals new truths about people as real – and as extraordinary – as ourselves.In selecting this unique gathering of stories, Jane Urquhart noted the brilliance of Munro’s fiction, suggesting that Munro's genius guides us “through love’s labyrinth, insisting all the while that we keep our eyes wide open to its complicated foliage, its shadows, its piercing blasts of light.”Contents:Bardon Bus (from The Moons of Jupiter)Carried Away (from Open Secrets)Mischief (from Who Do You Think You Are?)The Love of a Good Woman (from The Love of a Good Woman)Simon’s Luck (from Who Do You Think You Are?), Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (from Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage)The Bear Came Over the Mountain (from Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage)The Albanian Virgin (from Open Secrets) Meneseteung (from Friend of My Youth)The Children Stay (from The Love of a Good Woman)Selected and with an afterword by Jane Urquhart.

    Taken together, they create an audacious new architecture of meaning.Nicole Brossard, one of the world’s foremost literary innovators, is known for her experiments with language and her groundbreaking treatment of desire and gender. This dextrous translation by the award-winning poets and translators Erin Moure (Little Theatres) and Robert Majzels (Apikoros Sleuth) brings into English, with great verve and sensitivity, Brossard’s remarkable syntax and sensuality.

    Seldom, however, are the writings first-hand, from the people themselves. This book is a notable exception. It chronicles a lifetime of experiences, observations, and achievements of Tyee Ha'wiih Earl Maquinna George, First Hereditary Chief of Ahousaht and offers a portrait of the issues and challenges facing aboriginal people in Canada. It explains, from a First Nations perspective, their deep attachment to their lands and resources and their long-standing quest for social and environmental justice. It reflects a time and a way of life, as well as a personal story, told with humour, wisdom, and truth.

    In search of the possibility of an aesthetic response to the limits of representations, resisting categories, including that of the book itself, "Apikoros Sleuth" re-examines the practice of writing and the writer's relationship to language. The result is a palimpsest of the most ancient text of the Kabbalah and the final tractate of the Jewish Talmud, which asks the question "How should we act?"

    Uses a question-and-answer format to present a variety of information about cats.

    Wonderfully written biographies and illustrations of Saints Lucy, Monica, Augustine, Benedict, Francis Xavier, Edith Stein, Juan Diego, Katharine Drexel, and many others. Each story highlights a saint or related saints in a short-story format. The stories are organized chronologically and include biographical information and the saints' feast days. Many stories also include wonderful illustrations of the profiled saints. The stories are written in lively, accessible language and each conclude with a summary thought or reflection. Perfect for intermediate readers and school or church libraries. Ages 8-12

    Over uncounted generations the Tlingits and Haidas of Southeast Alaska developed a spoken literature as robust and distinctive as their unique graphic art style, and passed it from the old to the young to ensure the continuity of their culture.  Even today when the people gather, now under lamplight rather than the flickering glow from the central fire pit, the ancient myths and legends are told and retold, and they still reinforce the unity of the lineage, and clan and the culture.  Mary Beck has selected nine of the ancient myths and legends from the oral literature that are authentic for one group or another from this region.

    'Enough to Keep Them Alive' explores the history of the development and administration of social assistance policies on Indian reserves in Canada from confederation to the modern period, demonstrating a continuity of policy with roots in the pre-confederation practices of fur trading companies.Extensive archival evidence from the Indian Affairs record group at the National Archives of Canada is supplemented for the post-World War Two era by interviews with some of the key federal players. More than just an historical narrative, the book presents a critical analysis with a clear theoretical focus drawing on colonial and post-colonial theory, social theory, and critiques of liberalism and liberal democracy.

    The irreducible complexity of the very idea of home is especially at issue in the stories Gallant has written about Montreal, where she was born, although she had lived in Paris for more than half a century.Varieties of Exile, Russell Banks's extensive new selection from Gallant's work, demonstrates anew the remarkable reach of this writer's singular art. Among its contents are three previously uncollected stories, as well as the celebrated semi-autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir—stories that are wise, funny, and full of insight into the perils and promise of growing up and breaking loose.

    On a clear, cold morning in January 1998, six experienced back-country skiers set out across one of its heavily loaded slopes and were caught in a Class 3 avalanche, burying all of them in its path. Vivien Bowers takes us through the tragic series of events, focusing on one of the young women who perished in the slide, and the avalanche's aftermath. Bowers tells of the arduous search-and-retrieval effort, the "big-city" media invasion, and how the victims' family and friends, and the inhabitants of a nearby small town, attempted to bring meaning and resolution to the tragedy.Along the way Bowers illuminates a natural phenomenon that has threatened human endeavors throughout the world. Interwoven with the narrative is the science behind the event, including avalanche triggers and the complex process of avalanche prediction. Her book also raises unsettling questions about acceptable risk, about human fallibility, about living fully and dying young-and about what might entice a group of knowledgeable, experienced skiers to place themselves in the path of an avalanche.

    Asian American Studies. Born in Rajasthan, India, Rita leaves her native country to live with her diplomat father in exotic places abroad. Her innocent, happy, and sheltered childhood is characterized by a deeply reflective nature. That childhood comes to an end with her marriage in Ghana to a fellow Indian she meets in the diplomatic circles of Accra. Shock and horror follow, for the union is violently abusive. The couple move to England, then to Canada, where the outcome is breakup, then the tragedy of a murder-suicide. Rita Nayar has a university degree in psychology and a teaching certificate from the University of Sheffield, England. A senior corporate professional in Toronto, she is also an artist and a poet.

    Yet there exists another, hidden Toronto a place of quiet tree-lined streets, graceful houses and appealing neighborhoods rich in character.Old Toronto Houses is illustrated with brilliant color photographs that explore the signature styles of Toronto's urban architecture. It opens with Henry Scadding's rough-hewn log house built in 1794, then progresses through the city's landmark styles: Georgian, Regency, Gothic, Victorian, Greek Revival, Dutch Colonial and Art Deco. The book then chronicles the houses of 10 distinct Toronto neighborhoods, including laborers' cottages in Cabbagetown, Yorkville's Second Empire terraces, and St. George Street's Romanesque mansions. Many of these older homes have been beautifully restored inside and out, preserving their original character. Each one is an example of a time in Toronto's richly diverse history.A new chapter explores Toronto's ever-expanding boundaries and illustrates the houses located in what is now known as the Greater Toronto Area -- in locations including Etobicoke, Scarborough, Thornhill, Richmond Hill and Oakville.Featuring over 250 houses and over 400 color photographs, this book offers a loving look at how old houses add beauty and grace to a modern city.

    Eleven-year-old Skye O'Shea is homesick and afraid as she sets out for a three-week bicycle adventure camp on British Columbia's Cat Island, but despite a bully, mountains, and other challenges, she has the time of her life.

    Native American Studies. There is a geography in Annharte's poems interweaving anxious attentive movements through the cultural confusions marking our times-a geography inhering in the incomparable voice that lifts the language of the page right into our ears-Roy Miki.

    Robert and Danny Sand were two young brothers who had grown to hate authority. Laurie Bell was a struggling junkie with a fatal attraction to Robert Sand. Together, the trio embarked on a ruthless cross—country crime spree, leaving behind a trail of victims in their violent wake. In Nowhere to Run, crime reporter Mike McIntyre takes you to the scene of the chilling crime, into the hearts of the victim’s family and into the minds of the perpetrators, capturing every twist and turn of the case from the cold—blooded murder to the sensational trial.

    Salmon returning to their natal rivers and streams always come in on the full moon tide, so this is the best time for fishing. And since the full moon ebb tide retreats farther than usual, it's also the best time to gather shellfish. Bill Proctor has lived and worked by the full moon flood tides for all his life. A natural storyteller, he points the way to hidden waterfalls and abandoned Native village sites, knows the best coves for shelter in a sou'easter and shares the compelling and often funny stories of the Natives and settlers who loved this place. People like Fritz Salem, who made the best moonshine on the coast; Joe Jack, who knew the secrets of fishing for spring salmon in winter; and Dad McKay, who lived on eggs and bannock in a hollow cedar stump. Some of Proctor's stories will raise goosebumps around a campfire--like the sad fate of the "Maid of Orleans," a former slave ship, or strange encounters with a giant sleeper shark and the ghost of Kingcome Inlet. "Full Moon, Flood Tide" is no conventional cruising guide, but an indispensable companion for travellers around northern Vancouver Island, Fife Sound, Wells Passage, Blackfish Sound and Tribune Channel. Maps illustrate the places Proctor describes, in an order suitable for visiting by boat. Brimming with coastal lore and sprinkled liberally with Yvonne Maximchuk's line drawings, this fascinating volume pays tribute to pioneers who wrested a livelihood from forest and sea even as it makes a passionate plea to preserve the wilderness.

    In 1977, the parents of 11-year-old Kirsten Koza sent their pigtailed, sass-talking offspring on a summer trip to the Soviet Union--with only fifty dollars in her pocket. Lost in Moscow tells the story of Kirsten's summer camp hijinks: evading the Soviet Red Army in a foot race through and around Red Square, receiving extended radiation treatments for a minor case of tonsillitis, and making a gut-churning, unauthorized parachute jump--without being totally certain whether her parachute would open or even stay on.

    It is the place where she was born and raised, where she lived with her four late husbands, and where she plans to live out her remaining years.It is also the home to a community whose love for the island is immense. But when the Nova Scotia government decides to shut down the ferry service that is the lifeblood of Ragged Island, the residents see their world beginning to disappear.Sea of Tranquility is the lyrical and moving story of an island struggling to survive. Lesley Choyce's seventh novel, it contains the elements for which the author is known: engaging characters, page-turning storyline, and uproarious humour. Choyce is in top form.

    Write for bosses. Think hyper. Think branding. Tell your visitor where to go. Poetry and ‘plain language’ collide in the writing machine that is Human Resources. Here at the intersection of creation and repackaging, we experience the visceral and psychic cost of selling things with depleted words. Pilfered rhetorics fed into the machine are spit out as bungled associations among money, shit, culture, work and communication. With the help of online engines that numericize language, Human Resources explores writing as a process of encryption.Deeply inflected by the polyvocality and encoded rhetorics of the screen, Human Resources is perched at the limits of language, irreverently making and breaking meaning. Navigating the crumbling boundaries among page, screen, reader, engine, writer and database, Human Resources investigates wasting words and words as waste – and the creative potential of salvage.

    But unlike Franklin, Back lived to tell his tales in journals, drawings, watercolors, and maps. Noted writer Peter Steele drew on these sources, along with contemporary accounts, to craft this gripping tale of resilience in the face of incredible odds.The book thrillingly recounts the near-impossible circumstances of these expeditions — the fights with the Hudson Bay Company, rations that failed to get through, even cannibalism. Back survived these horrors to lead an exploration of the Great Fish River, now named Back River in his honor. His return upstream, hauling his handmade boat up 83 sets of rapids, is one of the greatest-ever feats of heroism and endurance.A gifted artist and mapmaker, Back was a brave explorer forgotten by history. Steele does him belated justice with this fascinating account.

    Most of us have sat on one of the ubiquitous moulded plywood chairs that furnish every church basement and Legion, or bought a chromed dome kettle, or marvelled at how a garbage can was elevated to the status of a champagne bucket. For the first time, we can look at these products through the eyes of the designers who created them, and celebrate their achievements.Design in Canada showcases designs that were destined for mass production, and covers everything from popular plastic dishes to refined high-style furniture. The book also features textiles, small appliances and lighting fixtures that have rarely been seen, or, in areas like consumer electronics and ceramics, that have not been as thoroughly documented.The book also explores the movements and influences that have shaped design in Canada through time: from personal artistic challenges to the global juggernaut of modernism and beyond. Whether exploring post-war materials like plastic or aluminum, or finding ways to capture and tame new technology, Canadian designers have worked with imagination, style and an eye to the global market.Magnificently illustrated, with extensive appendices providing a“who’s who” in the world of Canadian design, Design in Canada will be welcomed by everyone who shares an interest in design. Whether you are decorating your home, or are a professional or student involved in industrial, interior or architectural design, you will appreciate this comprehensive reference to more than a half-century of Canada’s rich design heritage.

    Inspired by a recent poll that ranked Canadians among the sexiest peoples on Earth, Chris Gudgeon set out to investigate the truth about sex and sexuality in Canada. Based on original research and interviews with historians, sexperts, and social commentators, his book covers everything from homosexuality (officially illegal in Canada until 1969) to scandals (like the Munsinger Affair, where a woman actually had sex with members of the Diefenbaker cabinet) to censorship, to Canada's version of the sexual revolution (which saw men in Toronto freely engaging in intercourse with their spouses).Bracketed by visits to two of Canada's nude beaches, in Vancouver and Halifax, Gudgeon's explorations take him to a pei swing club, a Montreal strip club, a Toronto gay bar, and an Edmonton porn movie theatre, as well as other adventures. Finally, Gudgeon talks to sociologists, police officers, and futurists about the future of sex in Canada and how technology will change the way we love each other. Will we slip from our standing as the world's seventh best lover? Or will we rise to new virtual sexual heights?

    He liked street fighting and felt more comfortable in a pool hall than the classroom. He was the eighteenth of 19 children in a small Quebec town where a job at the paper mill was the height of ambition. And he was also the most successful Liberal vote-getter in Canadian history. Jean Chrétien was an unlikely prime minister who clawed his way to the top and behaved like an insecure, power-hungry autocrat once there, writes journalist Lawrence Martin in Iron Man. Chrétien constantly measured himself against his arch-enemy, Finance Minister Paul Martin (no relation to the author). When the two worked at Power Corp. in Montreal, Chrétien liked to play golf against Martin because he could beat him. When Chrétien ran for the Liberal leadership against Martin, he boasted to an assistant, "My suit is more expensive than Paul Martin's." In 2000, he ran for a third term in office largely to spite Martin. Chrétien's petty rivalry with Martin is at the heart of Iron Man, the book that completes Lawrence Martin's two-volume biography of the "Little Guy from Shawinigan." The Globe and Mail columnist went directly to Chrétien, Martin, and over a 100 other officials for their accounts and came up with an engrossing story about the prime minister's 10-year reign. The book does a great job showing what a head-strong oddball Chrétien really is. As a young lad, he "loved to be outside the rules" and was expelled from seminary college. When he first ran for election as an MP, he lined up a friend to run as an opposing candidate to split the vote on the right. The book chronicles many of the memorable episodes of Chrétien's time in office, including the "Shawinigate" scandal that threatened to destroy his government and the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum (in which Chrétien was apparently prepared to repudiate a "yes" vote and send in the army). The book's strength is also, however, its weakness. Based largely on the views of Ottawa insiders, it often comes off as gossipy and navel-gazing. Some key issues--like Chrétien's cuts to unemployment insurance--go virtually unmentioned. But overall, it's an absorbing read, especially for those fascinated by tales of Parliament Hill intrigue. --Alex Roslin

    The encyclopedia explores the many facets of Canada - the land, its people, their history, and their achievements. A wealth of fascinating facts, figures, stories, and legends is contained in this book, making it an excellent source of information for anyone interested in learning more about Canada.