Eating Dirt


Charlotte Gill - 2011
    During her million-tree career, she encountered hundreds of clearcuts, each one a collision site between human civilization and the natural world, a complicated landscape presenting geographic evidence of our appetites. Charged with sowing the new forest in these clearcuts, tree planters are a tribe caught between the stumps and the virgin timber, between environmentalists and loggers.In Eating Dirt, Gill offers up a slice of tree planting life in all of its soggy, gritty exuberance, while questioning the ability of conifer plantations to replace original forests that evolved over millennia into complex ecosystems. She looks at logging's environmental impact and its boom-and-bust history, and touches on the versatility of wood, from which we have devised countless creations as diverse as textiles and airplane parts.Eating Dirt also eloquently evokes the wonder of trees, which grow from tiny seeds into one of the world's largest organisms, our slowest-growing ""renewable"" resource. Most of all, the book joyously celebrates the priceless value of forests and the ancient, ever-changing relationship between humans and trees. Also available in hardcover.Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation.

Extraordinary Canadians: L.M. Montgomery


Jane Urquhart - 2009
    While her fictional characters inhabited a world where love and close community bonds overcame all tribulations, Montgomery's real life was marked by grief and loneliness. Married to a clergyman who suffered from a debilitating mental illness, Montgomery struggled to keep up appearances in a Victorian society that valued propriety at all costs. As she aged, depression engulfed her; nonetheless, throughout her life, she maintained her prolific output of fiction, attracting ever-increasing numbers of fans. Acclaimed novelist Jane Urquhart has written several novels centring on the role of the artist. Here, she explores the life of a woman whose successful literary career broke the boundaries set for women of her time, but who could not escape the societal strictures of Victorian Canada or her own demons.

Building the Orange Wave: The Inside Story Behind the Historic Rise of Jack Layton and the NDP


Brad Lavigne - 2013
    He was also a key architect of Layton’s overnight success that was ten years in the making. In Building the Orange Wave, Lavigne recounts the dramatic story of how Layton and his inner circle developed and executed a plan that turned a struggling political party into a major contender for government, defying the odds and the critics every step of the way. The ultimate insider’s account of one of the greatest political accomplishments in modern Canadian history, Building the Orange Wave takes readers behind the scenes, letting them eavesdrop on strategy sessions, crisis-management meetings, private chats with political opponents, and internal battles, revealing new details of some of the most important political events of the last decade.

The Life Of Margaret Laurence


James King - 1997
    The magnificent and long-awaited biography of the beloved writer who gave us the Manawaka novels, including The Diviners and The Stone Angel.

A Life in the Bush


Roy MacGregor - 1999
    When he got there, he was home for the rest of his life.From the true nature of fishing to the harsh realities of raising a family in the woods, from the role of fear in the bush to the small nuances of family relationships, A Life in the Bush is painted on a canvas both vast and richly detailed. A story that captures the tough physical demands, the rich life of the senses, and the unselfconscious freedom that comes from living apart from town and city.In this beautifully crafted memoir of his father, Roy MacGregor paints an intimate portrait of an unusual man and spins a spellbinding tale of a boy’s complex relationship with his father. He also evokes, perhaps for the first time in Canadian literature, the bush the way bush people see it, an insider's view of life in the totemic Canadian wilderness.

Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion


Tyler LeBlanc - 2020
    LeBlanc's discovery that he could trace his family all the way to the time of the Acadian Expulsion and beyond forms the basis of this compelling account of Le Grand D?rangement.Piecing together his family history through archival documents, Tyler LeBlanc tells the story of Joseph LeBlanc (his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather), Joseph's ten siblings, and their families. With descendants scattered across modern-day Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the LeBlancs provide a window into the diverse fates that awaited the Acadians when they were expelled from their homeland. Some escaped the deportation and were able to retreat into the wilderness. Others found their way back to Acadie. But many were exiled to Britain, France, or the future United States, where they faced suspicion and prejudice and struggled to settle into new lives.A unique biographical approach to the history of the Expulsion, Acadian Driftwood is a vivid insight into one family's experience of this traumatic event.

Wenjack


Joseph Boyden - 2016
    Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and ultimately offering him a type of comfort on his difficult journey back to the place he was so brutally removed from.Written by Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author Joseph Boyden and beautifully illustrated by acclaimed artist Kent Monkman, Wenjack is a powerful and poignant look into the world of a residential school runaway trying to find his way home.

Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada


Chelsea Vowel - 2016
    Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace…Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories – Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community.Indigenous Writes is one title in The Debwe Series.

The Tent


Margaret Atwood - 2006
    Chilling and witty, prescient and personal, delectable and tart, these highly imaginative, vintage Atwoodian mini-fictions speak on a broad range of subjects, reflecting the times we live in with deadly accuracy and knife-edge precision.In pieces ranging in length from a mere paragraph to several pages, Atwood gives a sly pep talk to the ambitious young; writes about the disconcerting experience of looking at old photos of ourselves; gives us Horatio's real views on Hamlet; and examines the boons and banes of orphanhood. Bring Back Mom: An Invocation; explores what life was really like for the "perfect" homemakers of days gone by, and in The Animals Reject Their Names she runs history backward, with surprising results.Chilling and witty, prescient and personal, delectable and tart, The Tent is vintage Atwood, enhanced by the author's delightful drawings.

I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism


Lee Maracle - 1988
    A revised edition of Lee Maracle's visionary book which links teaching of her First Nations heritage with feminism.

Always Fresh


Ron Joyce - 2006
    Many know that it was hockey legend Tim Horton who opened the first restaurant, but few know the inside story of Ron Joyce, who, after the death of Horton, grew the company into a colossal North American enterprise. Always Fresh is Joyce’s own story about the much-loved business that has become a cultural tradition, from 1964 and the first almost-failed Tim Hortons to Joyce’s decision to sell the company to Dave Thomas of Wendy’s.Along the way, Joyce provides an account of the strategy behind the chain’s phenomenal expansion, the Tim Hortons philosophy of freshness and quality, and the company’s successful launch of such products as Timbits. This is a candid look at the successes and failures of a business empire and the determined passion of a man who changed our morning routines forever.

Kanata


Don Gillmor - 2009
     was inspired by the life of David Thompson, a Welshman who came to the New World at the age of fifteen, and went on to become its greatest cartographer. He walked or paddled 80,000 miles and mapped 1.9 million square miles, cataloguing flora and fauna as well as the language and customs of the Natives. But though he has been described as the greatest land geographer who ever lived, he died impoverished and unknown. KanataFollowing the lives of Thompson's illegitimate son and his descendants, Kanata takes readers on a fictionalized, multi-generational journey through millennia and across a continent to examine the stories, myths, and legends of those who formed the country and who were formed by it.Kanata is the story of the invention of a nation.

A Roll of the Bones (Cupids Trilogy, #1)


Trudy J. Morgan-Cole - 2020
    Two years later, he brought a shipment of supplies to his all-male settlement: 70 goats, 10 heifers, 2 bulls, and 16 women. A Roll of the Bones tells the story of some of these nameless women by tracing the journeys of three young people--Ned Perry, Nancy Ellis, and Kathryn Gale--who leave Bristol, England, for a life in the struggling community. Ned dreams of altering his fate with the promise of a New World. Kathryn only wishes to follow her husband--little dreaming she might find romance outside her marriage. And Nancy, the servant girl, has no desire to leave Bristol, but her fealty will ultimately test her ability to survive. A vivid reimagining of settler life in the early seventeenth century, A Roll of the Bones is the first in a trilogy of novels wrestling with the realities of colonization. Here, Trudy J. Morgan-Cole presents an array of unforgettable characters inhabiting the space where two worlds will collide, where the limits of love and loyalty will be tried in a harsh and unforgiving landscape.

Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life


James Daschuk - 2013
    Macdonald’s “National Dream.”It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between First Nations and non-Native populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day.

Is This Live?: Inside the Wild Early Years of MuchMusic: The Nation's Music Station


Christopher Ward - 2016
    This is the story of the first 10 years of the Nation's Music Station. When MuchMusic launched in 1984, it was truly the Wild (Canadian) West of television--live, gloriously unpredictable, seat-of-the-pants TV, delivered fresh daily. Much was the dream child of TV visionary Moses Znaimer, and John Martin, the maverick creator of The New Music. An entire generation of Canadians lived and breathed TV's new kid in town and because it was live and largely improvised, viewers and VJs both shared the experience and grew up together, embracing the new music that became the video soundtrack of our lives. The careers of Canadian legends like Glass Tiger, Colin James, the Parachute Club, Honeymoon Suite, Blue Rodeo, Corey Hart, Jane Siberry and Platinum Blonde were launched when Much brought them closer to their fans. Much also brought us international acts, and events like the Bon Jovi BBQ and Iggfest, with Iggy Pop improvising songs in the midst of his fans on the sidewalk on Queen Street. This was also an era in which music found its conscience with events like Live Aid and the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! tour. And Much covered them all. With stories of the bands, the VJs, the music, the videos, the style and the improvisational approach to daily broadcast life at Much, and told by the people who were there--the colourful cast of on-air VJs, the artists who found their way into the living rooms of the nation as never before, and the people behind the camera--"Is This Live?" delivers a full-on dose of pop culture from the 1980s and '90s, when the music scene in Canada changed forever."