The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami


Linden MacIntyre - 2019
    Giant waves up to three storeys high hit the coast at a hundred kilometres per hour, flooding dozens of communities and washing entire houses out to sea. The most destructive earthquake-related event in Newfoundland’s history, the disaster killed twenty-eight people and left hundreds more homeless or destitute. It took days for the outside world to find out about the death and damage caused by the tsunami, which forever changed the lives of the inhabitants of the fishing outports along the Burin Peninsula.Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning writer Linden MacIntyre was born near St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, one of the villages virtually destroyed by the tsunami. By the time of his birth, the cod-fishing industry lay in ruins and the village had become a mining town. MacIntyre’s father, lured from Cape Breton to Newfoundland by a steady salary, worked in St. Lawrence in an underground mine that was later found to be radioactive. Hundreds of miners would die; hundreds more would struggle through shortened lives profoundly compromised by lung diseases ranging from silicosis and bronchitis to cancer. As MacIntyre says, though the tsunami killed twenty-eight people in 1929, it would claim hundreds if not thousands more in the decades to follow. And by the time the village returned to its roots and set up as a cod fishery once again, the stocks in the Grand Banks had plummeted and St. Lawrence found itself once again on the brink of disaster.Written in MacIntyre’s trademark style, The Wake is a major new work by one of this country’s top writers.

Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy


Richmond P. Hobson Jr. - 1979
    It is a story of hardship and endurance--of cattle drives, frozen faces, and marauding wolf packs. It is the story of the cowboy way of life--the starry nights and mountain air. And it is the story and mystery of the author's recurring vision of the blonde dream woman who broke into his solitary existence. Rich Hobson and his business partner, Panhandle "Pan" Phillips, have established themselves in British Columbia's wild interior as successful cattle ranchers. But their skills are about to be put to the ultimate test as a harsh winter arrives--and so does the Great White North's entrance into the Second World War. With intolerable weather conditions and a shortage of supplies, Rich and Pan will have to pull out all the stops in order to ensure the survival of themselves and their livelihood. From the celebrated author of Grass Beyond the Mountains comes a true adventure story, told by a natural rancher, pioneer, and storyteller.

Butterbox Babies: Baby Sales, Baby Deaths. The Scandalous Story of the Ideal Maternity Home


Bette Cahill - 1992
    Now, after three years of research and scores of interviews from coast to coast, author Bette Cahill reveals the truth about the Home, its owners, the babies who were born there, and those who died there.It is a truth that will horrify and enrage, for in these pages Cahill charges that the children of unwed mothers born in the Ideal Maternity Home were offered for adoption in a manner that amounted to little more than baby farming for profit. We also learn that most of the natural parents had no knowledge of these practices. The babies placed in new homes were the lucky ones. Was the high infant mortality rate at the Home coincidence, neglect, accident, or economics?Butterbox Babies is a story of greed, hypocrisy, and justice. It is also the moving story of children who survived the Ideal Maternity Home and their search for a past. Bette Cahill traces their lives today as their search leads them from disappointment to rejection and in some cases the joy of reunion with the parents they never knew.

Deep Waters: Courage, Character and the Lake Timiskaming Canoeing Tragedy


James Raffan - 2003
    James Raffan is that rare author, proving with Deep Waters that he is a masterful storyteller who has not only penned a story that is by turns harrowing and poignant, but is also a powerful investigative work that sensitively explores the nature of courage, risk and loss. On the morning of June 11, 1978, 27 boys and four leaders from St. John’s School in Ontario set out on a canoeing expedition on Lake Timiskaming. By the end of the day, 12 boys and one leader were dead, with all four canoes overturned and floating aimlessly in the wind. This tragedy, which was first deemed to be an “accident,” was actually, as James Raffan explains, a shocking tale of a school’s survival philosophy gone terribly wrong, unsafe canoes and equipment, and a total lack of emergency preparedness training. Deep Waters is a remarkable story of endurance, courage and unspeakable pain, a book that also explores the nature of risk-taking and the resilience of the human spirit.

The Danger Tree: Memory, War, And The Search For A Family's Past


David MacFarlane - 1991
    He brings to life a multi-generational cast of characters who are as colourful as only Newfoundlanders can be. With humour, insight, and genuine love for those heroes and charlatans, pirates and dreamers, he explores the meaning of family and the consequences of forgotten history.

Rick Mercer Final Report


Rick Mercer - 2018
    In a rant posted on social media, the great Canadian satirist announced loud and clear that the current, 15th season of the Rick Mercer Report—the nation's best-watched and best-loved comedy show—would be the last. After more than 250 episodes, 250 rants and countless miles spent travelling the length and breadth of Canada to do everything from bungee jumping with Rick Hansen to whale watching with Measha Brueggergosman, it was time to move on. What he will do next is still unknown, and Canada eagerly awaits future developments. But meanwhile, we have this book to keep us going.This volume brings together never-before-published rants from the last five seasons of the show, plus a selection of the very best rants from earlier years. And throughout the book, in a series of brilliant new essays, Rick shares his hilarious, moving and at times hair-raising memories from the past fifteen years. Remember when he and Jann Arden travelled by helicopter to a terrifying bat cave in a mountain? No—because that trip went so horribly wrong it never made it to the screen. Pierre Berton—what was really in that joint he rolled? (It wasn't oregano.) What catastrophe took place in Norman Jewison's bathroom? And can the show still go on when your director in charge is delirious from an allergic reaction? (Yes.) All this and more is revealed by Rick in some of his sharpest and funniest writing yet.

"Indian" in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power


Jody Wilson-Raybould - 2021
    Inspired by the example of her grandmother, who persevered throughout her life to keep alive the governing traditions of her people, and raised as the daughter of a hereditary chief and Indigenous leader, Wilson-Raybould always knew she would take on leadership roles and responsibilities. She never anticipated, however, that those roles would lead to a journey from her home community of We Wai Kai in British Columbia to Ottawa as Canada's first Indigenous Minister of Justice and Attorney General in the Cabinet of then newly elected prime minister, Justin Trudeau.Wilson-Raybould's experience in Trudeau's Cabinet reveals important lessons about how we must continue to strengthen our political institutions and culture, and the changes we must make to meet challenges such as racial justice and climate change. As her initial optimism about the possibilities of enacting change while in Cabinet shifted to struggles over inclusivity, deficiencies of political will, and concerns about adherence to core principles of our democracy, Wilson-Raybould stood on principle and, ultimately, resigned. In standing her personal and professional ground and telling the truth in front of the nation, Wilson-Raybould demonstrated the need for greater independence and less partisanship in how we govern."Indian" in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power is the story of why Wilson-Raybould got into federal politics, her experience as an Indigenous leader sitting around the Cabinet table, her proudest achievements, the very public SNC-Lavalin affair, and how she got out and moved forward. Now sitting as an Independent Member in Parliament, Wilson-Raybould believes there is a better way to govern and a better way for politics--one that will make a better country for all.

Mordecai: The Life & Times


Charles Foran - 2010
    It is also an extraordinary love story that lasted half a century.The first major biography with access to family letters and archives. Mordecai Richler was an outsized and outrageous novelist whose life reads like fiction.Mordecai Richler won multiple Governor General's Literary Awards, the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, among others, as well as many awards for his children's books. He also wrote Oscar-nominated screenplays. His influence was larger than life in Canada and abroad. In Mordecai, award-winning novelist and journalist Charlie Foran brings to the page the richness of Mordecai's life as young bohemian, irreverent writer, passionate and controversial Canadian, loyal friend and deeply romantic lover. He explores Mordecai's distraught childhood, and gives us the "portrait of a marriage" — the lifelong love affair with Florence, with Mordecai as beloved father of five. The portrait is alive and intimate — warts and all.

Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax


Gregory Ahlgren - 1993
    Seventy-two days later, the body was found in the woods next to a roadway, a short distance from Lindbergh's house, near Hopewell, New Jersey. In 1927, Lindbergh was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic in his Spirit of St. Loius. By 1932, he was perhaps the most famous man alive. A great American hero, he was allowed to be the chief architect of the investigation into his son's kidnapping. He demanded that the body be cremated without an autopsy. This book traces the 2 and a half year investigation by the New Jersey State Police, headed by Colonel H Norman Schwarzkopf, and which led to the arrest, trial, conviction and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. It challenges the effectiveness of the investigation, and the evidence advanced by the prosecution, which convicted Hauptmann.

The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed


John Vaillant - 2005
    Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.

The Klondike Stampede


Tappan Adney - 1900
     When news of the discovery arrived in Seattle and San Francisco the following year it triggered one of the largest gold rushes in the history of North America. Tappan Adney, a young writer and photographer who worked for Harper’s Weekly, set out on a journey to uncover and record what it was like in the Klondike stampede. This book is a fascinating portrayal of adventurers and prospectors who descended on the Yukon during this extraordinary event in the late nineteenth century. Adney explains in vivid detail the treacherous route that these gold-hunters were forced to make in order to make it to the Yukon. The White and Chilkoot Passes were fatal for many who attempted to get through them with poor equipment. He stayed in Dawson, where the gold rush was centered, from October 2nd through to September 16th the following year. While there he interviewed men and women who hoped to make their fortune, observed the community that had seemingly sprung up overnight and records in detail how the prospectors searched for gold. “Of hundreds of gold rush accounts, his stands out as one of the best” The British Columbian Quarterly Tappan Adney was an artist, writer and photographer. He recorded the Klondike Gold Rush in his book The Klondike Stampede which was first published in 1900. He passed away in 1950.

One Game at a Time: My Journey from Small-Town Alberta to Hockey's Biggest Stage


Harnarayan Singh - 2020
    There was only one small difference--he didn't look like any of the other kids. And when he sat down on Saturday nights to tune in to Hockey Night in Canada with the rest of the nation, he couldn't ignore the fact that the broadcasters or analysts didn't look like him either. Undeterred, Harnarayan worked his way from calling imaginary hockey games with his plastic toy microphone as a child, to funding secret flights from Calgary to Toronto every weekend in the early days of Hockey Night in Punjabi, to making history as the first Sikh to broadcast an NHL game in English.Full of heart, humour, and bursting with personality (and maybe a few family prayers for Wayne Gretzky), One Game at a Time is the incredible and inspiring story of how Harnarayan Singh broke through the longstanding barriers and biases of the sport he loves. But more than that, Harnarayan blends his unabashed love of hockey with a refreshing and necessary positive message about what it means to be a Canadian in the world, making him one of the most influential ambassadors of the game today.

What's Happened to Politics?


Bob Rae - 2015
    Endless repetition of sound bites and vanity videos with little substance. Billions of dollars spent on lobbying. It’s clear that Canadian politics is in a bad state. Through increasingly low voter turnouts and a general lack of engagement in the political process, Canadians have shown that they are dissatisfied and fed up with present-day politics. In What’s Happened to Politics?, Canadians finally get an definitive account of the problems plaguing their national politics. Touching on everything from polling to issues of social justice to the way in which political parties package their candidates, Rae identifies the shortcomings of the current Canadian political framework, and what we, as citizens, can do to remedy that. With remarkable insight and startling accuracy, Rae speaks as the voice of reason as he imagines a political forum where citizens are inspired to participate instead of feeling disenfranchised. Filled with real-world examples and told from the point of view of an experienced statesman, What’s Happened to Politics? is necessary reading for every Canadian, regardless of their political affiliation. Erudite, engaged, and keenly attuned to the frustrations expressed by Canadians across the political spectrum, Rae shows why he is the leading voice on Canadian politics.

Love as Always, Mum xxx


Mae West - 2018
    Police arrive on the doorstep of your house, 25 Cromwell Street, with a warrant to search the garden for the remains of your older sister you didn't know was dead. Bones are found and they are from more than one body. And so the nightmare begins. You are the daughter of Fred and Rose West.'Mae, I mean this ... I'm not a good person and I let all you children down ...' Rose West, HM PRISON DURHAMIt has taken over 20 years for Mae West to find the perspective and strength to tell her remarkable story: one of an abusive, violent childhood, of her serial killer parents and how she has rebuilt her life in the shadow of their terrible crimes.Through her own memories, research and the letters her mother wrote to her from prison, Mae shares her emotionally powerful account of her life as a West. From a toddler locked in the deathly basement to a teen fighting off the sexual advances of her father, Mae's story is one of survival. It also answers the questions: how do you come to terms with knowing your childhood bedroom was a graveyard? How do you accept the fact your parents sexually tortured, murdered and dismembered young women? How do you become a mother yourself when you're haunted by the knowledge that your own mother was a monster? Why were you spared and how do you escape the nightmare?

Finding Murph: From First Overall to Living Homeless in the Bush - The Tragic True Story of Joe Murphy


Rick Westhead - 2020
    In 1986, he became the first college-educated hockey player ever selected first overall in the NHL entry draft. He won a Stanley Cup in Edmonton alongside Mark Messier. But since then, his life has taken a tragic turn as a result of mental illness, substance abuse and the untreated head injuries he suffered as a player.Murphy’s life didn’t begin on a track that would take him to poverty, addiction and illness. He was smart, dedicated and put his hockey life on hold to complete his education before joining the NHL. He once scored eighty-two points in a season and was a key player for the Oilers, Red Wings and Blackhawks, among other teams. But one vicious bodycheck during a game started him down a road to ruin. Murphy was clearly shaken by the hit, but he was never treated and he never missed a game. His entire life was about to change.Murphy became a journeyman, moving from team to team, and all along the way, other NHLers said they witnessed a change. Murphy was becoming more different by the day. He took to drugs and alcohol and soon found himself out of the NHL entirely. He and his wife divorced. Murphy eventually became homeless and, in the spring of 2019, he made his way to Kenora, Ontario, where he lived in the bush, spending his days outside a local convenience store, muttering to himself. The player who had once set the NHL aflame slept by the side of the road in the unforgiving North.In the vein of Playing with Fire and Boy on Ice, Finding Murph tells the tragic story of Joe Murphy and examines the role of the NHL in the downward spiral of one of the league’s most promising players.