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This richly detailed biography illustrates how a determined Canadian seeking justice created an enduring legacy. Through vigorous battles, Jim McRuer’s passion for justice was translated into laws that daily touch and protect the lives of millions today.James Chalmers McRuer was not easy to get along with or even much liked by many lawyers who dubbed him ’Vinegar Jim.’ Yet countless others saw him as heroic, inspirational, a man above and apart from his times.His resolute focus on justice changed the lives of married women with no property rights, children without legal protection, aboriginals caught in the whipsaw of traditional hunting practices and imposed game laws, and prisoners locked away and forgotten. Environmental degradation and those causing it, murderers, stock fraud artists and Cold War spies all came within the ambit of J. C. McRuer’s sharp legal mind and passion for justice. Upon turning 75, McRuer embarked on his most important work of all, becoming Canada’s greatest law reformer and remaining active into his 90s.

Celtic Woman explores with open honesty and engaging irony how cycles of personal discovery have connected international performing artist Treasa O’Driscoll to heaven and earthbut not the way you’d expect.This surprising memoir of an Irish woman attuned to poetic updrafts and spiritual downloads in the lives of real people, many of them celebrities in Ireland and North America she counts as personal friends, exudes her Celtic heritage on every page.Her encounters in life have been testing, tragic, romantic, and highly comic. O’Driscoll’s life entwines with musicians, poets, teachers, artists, actors, farmers, unexpected strangers and familiar drunkards. Their lives all become a single interwoven tapestry of common meaning connected at the level of the soul.

George Parkin was born the thirteenth child of an immigrant New Brunswick farmer and died a knight of the realm and perhaps the most famous Canadian in the world.Charismatic, charming, eloquent and dedicated, Parkin devoted his immense energy to two causes. As an orator and journalist, he worked to strengthen the bonds between the English-speaking peoples; as Principal of Upper Canada College and Founding Secretary of the Rhodes Scholarships he promoted a vision of education primarily as the formation of character, not the training of the intellect.This beautifully written and witty biography is a story of ideas lived through Parkin and those in his wide circle of influence with leaders of many countries. He was one of the first Canadians to see the development of globalization, and produced that famous map to demonstrate his vision, the British Empire all in red, Canada huge and dominating in the centre. His passionate opposition to free trade and eventual annexation by the United States mark him as an eloquent and prophetic visionary of Canada’s fate under NAFTA.Author William Christian’s own life in Parkin’s footsteps and rich sensitivity to Parkin’s story is on full display in this masterful biography. Political science professor at University of Guelph, well-known journalist and political commentator, Christian is an acknowledged authority on the intersection of philosophy, political life, communication theory and public purpose.

Solitary Courage is the story of a mother’s tough-love determination, her severely disabled daughter’s astonishing triumphs, and a documentary record of the political battles, organizational conflicts, and human struggles that citizens with disabilities face and fight every day of their lives.Mona Winberg became a pioneer of independent living, and emerged a leading advocate for citizens with mental and physical disabilities. Her courageous causes erupted from her deep reservoir of compassion and concern. Her unflinching challenges to the status quo expressed both optimism and realism about life and society. Her life is testament to the power of Solitary Courage.Between 1986 and 1999 she was the only newspaper columnist in North America regularly writing about disability issues. Through her award-winning column "Disabled Today" in Toronto’s Sunday Sun, Mona Winberg painstakingly built up a body of work of more than 600 articles chronicling front-line battles for equality. She was a realist, a wise person with a no-nonsense approach, kindly, but clear-eyed.Solitary Courage begins with the story of Mona Winberg’s life, followed by a representative selection of 156 of her columns organized into 20 thematic chapters, the best of Mona in her own words. The last part of the book reflects upon Mona Winberg’s legacy of lessons that still connect to programs and policies touching the lives of Canadians with disabilities today.The subjects are wide-ranging and engaging because Mona used personal examples of individuals with disabilities and news-making issues raised by their plight. She also reported on the street-level outcomes of government policies. This variety and approach to disability issues provides real education and genuine human interest, whatever a reader’s background or experience.

Three to a Loaf is the First World War story of Rory Ferrall, a young Canadian officer of Anglo-German descent who, after being wounded and disfigured at Ypres, comes to the attention of British military intelligence. Ferrall’s German background is valuable to the war’s planners. Hundreds of German-Americans had returned to the Fatherland to fight for the Kaiser at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and the British captured one. Cleverly trained to impersonate the captured German-American officer, Ferrall is smuggled into wartime Germany to infiltrate the German General Staff and discover their top-secret plan to break the stalemate on the Western Front.A page-turning novel of war and espionage, Three to a Loaf is also a portrait of societies and individuals pushed to the breaking point, and in some cases, beyond. Michael Goodspeed artfully blends the tension of a thriller with period detail, the detached commentary of a nitty-gritty travelogue, and psychological understanding of a harried man facing soul-destroying ethical decisions.

People cannot readily be categorized, nor some books. Second Rising is one of them. In her publishing debut, Canadian fiction writer Catherine Wiebe is as refreshing as she is startling with this fictional memoir of birthing and memory, a chronicle of food prepared, bread baked, and human skin bringing first experience of the world. Who knew that a grandmother kneaded sorrow into each loaf of bread she baked, or that her memories were preserved along with the pickles she and her granddaughter made? Wiebe instinctively knows that preparing food for someone we love is the most intimate act of all, making something that will not only be taken into the mouth and be transformed into flesh, but will linger in memory as well.Wiebe writes prose as if it were poetry, sharp and clear, touching the mind and stirring the heart while awakening long-forgotten truths. Second Rising is the afterlife of food, the memory of what was, once its reality has gone.Catherine M.A. Wiebe, a recent graduate in arts and science from McMaster University, and her husband Tim live in Hamilton, Ontario. She has worked as an editor, graphic designer, construction site supervisor, teaching assistant, and bookkeeper.Wiebe’s enthusiasm for wholesome food and new recipes parallels her freshness in creative writing - the mixture that is never the same, worked with artistic knowledge of how to combine ingredients in ways that startle freedom to life.

Magic Carpet Flying traces psychologist Pamela Ryan’s journey through her life’s adventures, from the rapture of achievement to the personal anguish of loss.Drawing on childhood lessons in rural Australia and later work in the Australian outback, Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world where she travelled to help others tackle the darkness of mental illness, suicide, and large-scale tragedy arising from terrorist attacks and natural disasters, Ryan reveals how she not only survived trauma but turned her journey into a "magic carpet ride."Exploring what it is to "live truth," to "make ourselves up as we go along," to aim for the stars, and to become the "pilot in command" of our own destiny, Pamela Ryan’s unforgettable journey in Magic Carpet Flying reveals what it means to be fully alive.

Winner of the 2002 Anna Pidruchney Award For New Writers On a visit to Ukraine to retrieve a family heirloom secretly buried by his grandfather during the Second World War, Yaroslaw, a Ukrainian-Canadian university student, stumbles into a world full of spies and secret organizations, peril and political intrigue.His discovery of the hidden cache yields clues to the location of a fabled lost treasure-the greatest in all Europe. Working against time, Yaroslaw and a small band of accomplices struggle to uncover and save a nation’s heritage, operating in secret to prevent the corrupt leaders of the government and the Russians-from stealing it.Yaroslaw’s Treasure is a thrilling suspense story set against the gripping drama of the Orange Revolution, the 2004 popular uprising that saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in Ukraine to overthrow a corrupt government and reinforce democracy in a land long occupied by repressive and foreign regimes.Rich with history, romance, politics, and danger, Yaroslaw’s Treasure superbly captures the wonders and horrors of Ukraine’s past, swirls through the treacherous currents of its present politics, all the while providing entertainment as a first-rate thriller.

How much money is too much? And how fast is too fast in life?Investment star Paris Smith steps onto the top rungs of the corporate ladder, only to discover he is caught between his need for fulfillment and his need for understanding, between his drive for power and his inability to cope with his growing emptiness where there was once love. When his wife disappears from the core of his life, Smith’s loneliness and sense of disconnection threaten to overwhelm him. When he tries to compensate by losing himself in his work, he stumbles off the treadmill of his own success, and is entangled in the web of a fraudulent bond deal that threatens to derail his career and his life.Forced to put his personal life on hold while he travels non-stop between Toronto, Singapore, and Bangkok to salvage his career, the embattled financier is deprived of the time and space he needs to mourn the absence of his wife and to objectively assess his future options.In the heat, turmoil and fast money of Southeast Asia half a world from home and half a life from his last remembered smile Paris Smith finds duplicity, comradeship, and power. He also finds a special woman who might heal his heart.The gripping tale is told by a talented new author, F.W. vom Scheidt, who has confidently crafted a fast-paced, highly readable novel. His details are fascinating. His characters are real and not easily forgotten.

Francis Pegahmagabow was a remarkable aboriginal leader who served his nation in time of war and his people in time of peace. In wartime he volunteered to be a warrior. In peacetime he had no option. His life reveals how uncaring Canada was about those to whom this land had always been home.A member of the Parry Island band (now Wasauksing First Nation) near Parry Sound, Ontario, Francis served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Belgium and France for almost the entire duration of the First World War, primarily as a scout and sniper. Through the horrific battles and inhumane conditions of trench warfare, his actions earned him three decorations for bravery — the most ever received by a Canadian aboriginal soldier. More recently, they inspired the central fictional character in Joseph Boyden’s highly acclaimed novel Three Day Road.Physically and emotionally scarred by his wartime ordeals, Francis returned to Parry Island to try to rebuild his life. He had been treated as an equal in the army, but quickly discovered things hadn’t changed back in Canada. As a status Indian his life was regulated by the infamous Indian Act and by local Indian agents who seemed bent on thwarting his every effort to improve his lot.So, Francis became a warrior once more — this time in the even longer battle to achieve the right of aboriginal Canadians to control their own destiny. In compiling this account of Francis Pegahmagabow’s remarkable life, Adrian Hayes conducted extensive research in newspapers, archives, and military records, and spoke with members of Pegahmagabow’s family and others who remembered the plight and the perseverance of this warrior.

A surprise attack on the nation’s military bases and power stations sends the Armed Forces scrambling. When impoverished, disheartened, poorly educated, but well-armed aboriginal young people find a modern revolutionary leader, they rally with a battle cry of "Take Back the Land!" Theirs is a fight to right the wrongs inflicted on them by "the white settlers." They know they are too small to take on the entire country, but they don’t need to. Over a few tension-filled days as the battles rages over abundant energy resources, the frantic prime minister can only watch as the insurrection paralyzes the country. But when energy-dependent Americans discover the southward flow of Canadian hydroelectricity, oil, and natural gas is halted, they do not remain passive. Although none of the country’s leaders see it coming, the shattering consequences unfold with the same plausible harmony by which quiet aboriginal protests decades ago became the eerie premonitions of today’s stand-offs and "days of action."

Clickety Clack is Joy McDiarmid’s self- portrait of bipolar mental illness and one of the most ambiguous sexual identities imaginable for a woman coming of age in the 1950s. Amidst gender and sexuality confusion, this Winnipeg woman began to look for romantic love and sexual fulfillment: sometimes wanting to dress as a man, sometimes as a woman, sometimes attracted to men, sometimes to women.In candid accounts of this paralysing complexity, which McDiarmid tried valiantly to understand and express despite oppressive social stigmas and parental strictures, her insights about human sexuality and "living the lie" are startling even in this age of open commentary about sex.Along primitive frontiers of treatment for bipolar disorders and dramas of shock therapy in psychiatric wards, entire years of McDiarmid’s life would slip by even as earlier years were being erased from her memory. Yet there came triumphant accomplishments in her competitive and stimulating world of advertising, university work, private enterprise, photography, travel, touring in her MG sports car, skilful tennis, and love.Such juxtaposed experiences of despair and defiant courage, supplemented at the end of each chapter with medical commentary by Joy’s psychiatrist Dr. Frances Edye, make Clickety Clack a rare road map to life.

Canadians took politics seriously in the years following Confederation and Gordon Aiken’s novel about pioneer Muskoka and the fledgling nation’s capital shows why.Unique events in the Dominion’s second election, in 1872, inspired Aiken to write about Muskoka’s returning officer, Richard Bell, who refused to declare Liberal candidate A.P. Cockburn elected, even though he got the most votes. Consequent ground-breaking events included Bell’s summons to give an accounting of himself to the House of Commons, the first and only time an MP would be elected to parliament by members of the Commons itself, and reforms in Canadian election law including introduction of the secret ballot.Privately published as Returning Officer in 1982, and long since out of print, this Blue Butterfly edition is re-titled No Return. Completely reset and redesigned, with added maps and period photographs, this new edition also features J. Patrick Boyer’s afterword, "Gordon Aiken’s Quest and the Genesis of No Return."The political intrigues woven into Gordon Aiken’s rich tale of local and national affairs from 140 years ago will resonate with readers today, if its essential plots and human ambitions were simply updated by new technology and a fresh cast of characters to re-enact timeless dramas of mismatched lovers, a local judge fighting the newspaper editor, lumber barons playing both sides to keep their timber licences, and contractors changing political sides to win road jobs (or what today are termed "infrastructure projects").Aiken, Member of Parliament for the same district a century later, wrote with deep understanding about Muskoka and its people and acute knowledge of parliamentary politics. No Return tells of one man’s struggle to support his chosen party, maintain his independence, confound his enemies, and hold his family together under duress.

Set in the desperate days at the outset of the Second World War, Our Only Shield brings back Rory Ferrall, the resourceful Canadian spy from Michael J. Goodspeed’s debut novel, Three to a Loaf.Hastily recalled from a successful career in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Rory arrives in Britain only to find a war that is being prosecuted with political indecision and wishful thinking. The skills he displayed as a spy in the Great War are once again sorely needed by a small group of far-sighted but frustrated military planners. Our Only Shield is a fascinating journey that takes us from an early wartime Britain still reeling from a string of catastrophic defeats into the once-peaceful Netherlands.In 1940, Holland was a prosperous country where an industrious and innocent population simply yearned for peace and the chance to lead tranquil lives. Believing they could escape the havoc and violence of a world gone berserk, they awoke to find themselves governed by a new, terrifyingly brutal regime. Inserted into this shocked and traumatized community, Rory Ferrall soon finds himself caught up with two unforgettable characters: Annika Hammerstein, a gifted musician who refuses to watch passively as atrocities are inflicted on her family and her country, and Reinhold Neumann, a dangerously anxious but clever and ambitious Nazi policeman whose aspirations are unrestrained by conscience.Our Only Shield is a meticulously researched story of how ordinary people marshal their talents to fight against ruthlessly efficient evil. Rich in historical detail, peopled with enduring characters, this powerful narrative gains steadily in momentum and tension and moves to a gripping conclusion. It’s an enthralling and satisfying story as well as a meditation on the timeless nature of organized violence.

Desperately fleeing for his life, Brad Evans escapes Manhattan and hides in a trailer in the country. There he writes an expos of Phasmatia, the world’s first great Internet religion, and its megalomaniacal unholy messiah, Sky Fisher.As one of the trio of ad men who schemed to concoct Phasmatia, Evans certainly knows where all the skeletons are buried, and is ready to tellprovided he manages to live long enough. His close friend and co-conspirator, Stan Shiu, whose technical genius helped spark the religion’s rapid rise, is already dead.The whistle-blower recounts the religion’s genesis and its growth from a get-rich-quick Dot-Com scheme to the Next Big Thing, spreading like wildfire over the web and the planet. He also exposes the corruption and power lust that festers at the top, even while his hope for a potential new era of spirituality and faith burns brightly.The events in this gripping digital-age novel could easily happen tomorrow. Our wired age of social networks, virtual worlds, and media manipulation is examined in the context of humankind’s timeless need for spiritual sustenance and divine hope.

In Come Looking for Me, a mysterious young English woman named Emily risks a crossing of the Atlantic during the War of 1812 for the promise of a new adventure in Canada. But she never arrives. Captured by Captain Trevelyan, a man as cold-blooded as his frigate is menacing, Emily is held prisoner aboard the USS Serendipity. Seeking to save herself, she makes a desperate escape overboard in the midst of a raging sea battle and is rescued by the British crew of HMS Isabelle. Yet Emily has only exchanged one form of captivity for another, and remains in peril as England escalates its fight against the United States on the Atlantic. On board the Isabelle, Emily encounters a crew of fascinating seamen and strikes up unexpected friendships, but life on a man-of-war is full of deprivations and dangers to which she is unaccustomed. Amidst heartache and tragedy at sea, she struggles to find her place among the men until a turn of events reveals her true identity. And when Trevelyan’s ship once again looms on the horizon, Emily fears losing the only man she has ever loved and falling into the hands of the only man she has ever loathed. Come Looking for Me is a rich and compelling story of love and courage, friendship and treachery, triumph and loss. With humour and poignancy, author Cheryl Cooper captures all the colour, detail, and excitement of the great ships from the golden age of sail, while bringing to life those who fought upon them. She tells a story of the bravery of the men locked in the epic, brutal struggle that was the War of 1812, and the courage of a woman who, with extraordinary determination, labours to make her own way in life and in love.

Thomas Osborne delivers a gripping account of 1870s Ontario pioneer life. The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

Gerald Augustus Archambeau was born in Jamaica in 1933. Raised in Kingston by his three aunts, he was sent to Canada in 1947 to join his mother and stepfather in Montreal. He trained in the plumbing and steam-fitting trade, but at age eighteen decided to join the railway as a passenger car porter. He worked for Canadian Pacific and Canadian National until the 1960s, when declining passenger rail traffic and the ascendence of air travel caused him to switch to a career with a major Canadian airline in Toronto. After his retirement from the airline, Gerald and his wife, Marion, settled in St. Catharines, Ontario.