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Books : Biographies & Memoirs : Regional Canada : Prairie Provinces
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In 1930 two novice paddlers--Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port--launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay--with winter freeze-up on their heels. First published in 1935, Canoeing with the Cree is Sevareid's classic account of this youthful odyssey. The newspaper stories that Sevareid wrote on this trip launched his distinguished journalism career, which included more than a decade as a television correspondent and commentator on the CBS Evening News. Now with a new foreword by Arctic explorer, Ann Bancroft.
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Martyr or Madman? The Passionate Rebel History Can't Close The Book On.
Is this the future of comics? Respectably penning the dowdy pages of history? Don't be fooled. This is one of the hippest comics going and will be a controversial must-have in 2003. Legendary cartoonist Chester Brown reveals in the dusty closet of Canadian history there are some skeletons that won't stop rattling. To some Louis Riel was one of the founding fathers of a nation but to others he was a murderer who nearly tore a country apart. A man so charismatic he was elected to government twice while in exile with a prize on his head--but so impassioned his dramatic behavior cast serious doubts on his sanity. Riel took on the army, the government, the Queen, and even the Church in the name of freedom. Will Riel's visionary democracy ever be enough to defend him from the verdict of history?
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Over the past decade, Toronto-based chef Susur Lee has built an international reputation with his groundbreaking cuisine, winning raves such as "culinary genius" from critics and chefs alike. Borrowing heavily from French and Chinese traditions, Susur defies the ubiquitous "fusion" label with his wholly original and decidedly bold style of cooking, dubbed nouvelle Chinois. SUSUR: A CULINARY LIFE offers readers an intimate look at the evolution of this master chef. Toronto food writer Jacob Richler takes us on an enthralling culinary odyssey that begins with Susur’s apprenticeship at Hong Kong’s legendary Peninsula Hotel and follows the chef ’s major Successes at his award-winning restaurants Lotus and Susur. This in-depth study also chronicles Susur’s ambitious plan to modernize the ancient repertoire of classical Chinese cooking —a 5,000-year journey that ends in the creation of his vibrant new cuisine. A remarkable subject deserves a remarkable book, and SUSUR is as innovative as the chef it celebrates. Two colorful, gorgeously illustrated volumes — one describing Susur ’s development as a chef, the other featuring his most sought-after recipes —are bound together in an intricate and innovative presentation that resembles a Chinese puzzle box. A sensuous treat for foodies and chefs alike, SUSUR is the definitive word on this cutting-edge chef.
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With No Man's River, Farley Mowat has penned his best Arctic tale in years. This book chronicles his life among Metis trappers and native people as they struggle to eke out a living in a brutal environment. In the spring of 1947, putting the death and devastation of WWII behind him, Mowat joined a scientific expedition. In the remote reaches of Manitoba, he witnessed an Eskimo population ravaged by starvation and disease brought about by the white man. In his efforts to provide the natives with some of the assistance that the government failed to provide, Mowat set out on an arduous journey that collided with one of nature's most arresting phenomena—the migration of the Arctic's caribou herds. Mowat was based at Windy Post with a Metis trapper and two Ihalmiut children. A young girl, known as Rita, is painted with special vividness—checking the trap lines with the men, riding atop a sled, smoking a tiny pipe. Farley returns to the North two decades later and discovers the tragic fate that befell her. Combining his exquisite portraits with awe-inspiring passages on the power of nature, No Man's River is another riveting memoir from one of North America's most beloved writers.
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The Story of One of the Most Beloved Novelists of Our TimeWritten by her daughter, Laurel Oke Logan, this book offers intimate glimpses into the life and heritage of author Janette Oke. An ordinary woman with extraordinary gifts, Janette grew up on the Canadian prairie to eventually become the wife of a pastor and educator, the mother of four grown children, a grandmother who delights in her grandchildren—and one of the best known and love Christian novelists of our time. You'll discover how the strength of family connections and spiritual values have shaped her life and permeate her novels from the first, Love Comes Softly, to her most recent.
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Set in the 1960s, Judy Fong Bates’s much-talked-about debut novel is the story of a young girl, the daughter of a small Ontario town’s solitary Chinese family, whose life is changed over the course of one summer when she learns the burden of secrets. Through Su-Jen’s eyes, the hard life behind the scenes at the Dragon Café unfolds. As Su-Jen’s father works continually for a better future, her mother, a beautiful but embittered woman, settles uneasily into their new life. Su-Jen feels the weight of her mother’s unhappiness as Su-Jen’s life takes her outside the restaurant and far from the customs of the traditional past. When Su-Jen’s half-brother arrives, smouldering under the responsibilities he must bear as the dutiful Chinese son, he forms an alliance with Su-Jen’s mother, one that will have devastating consequences. Written in spare, intimate prose, Midnight at the Dragon Café is a vivid portrait of a childhood divided by two cultures and touched by unfulfilled longings and unspoken secrets.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Starting in the 1800s and continuing into the 20th century, First Nations children were forcibly taken to government-sponsored residential schools to erase their traditional languages and cultures. This moving book tells of one such child, author Larry Loyie, and his last summer with his Cree tribe. It is a time of learning and adventure. He cares for an abandoned baby owl, watches his grandmother make winter moccasins, and sees her kill a huge grizzly with one shot. The sensitive text and Heather Holmlund's expressive illustrations beautifully capture the joy and drama of a First Nations family's last summer together.
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Rudy Wiebe has written award-winning fiction for decades. He is recognized as one of Canada's finest literary treasures. Twice he has received Canada's most prestigious prize for fiction writing: The Governor-General's Award (equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize for fiction).
Now comes new recognition for Wiebe's nonfiction writing. His recently released childhood memoir, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, has won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction (considered to be the country's most prestigious literary nonfiction prize).
The book holds Rudy's memoirs of growing up through age 12. His immigrant family cut a farm out of stony bushland in remote Saskatchewan. They hand-dug their well, climbed a ladder to their beds under the rafters, farmed with horses, and traveled by sleigh on the frontier.
Stories and singing and food from their native Ukraine and Poland held them and filled their bodies and souls.
Of This Earth is written with "spare and eloquent prose," say the jurors who chose the book for the Charles Taylor Prize.
Wiebe "conveys the riches of a hardscrabble inheritance; a love of words, reading and music, a sustaining yet unsentimental faith, and a bond with the natural world, all of which have provided a compass for his writing life."
One of the Taylor-Prize jurors reflected, "Rudy's book haunts you; it stays with you."
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Walter Stadnick is not an imposing man. At five-foot-four, his face and arms scarred by fire in a motorcycle accident, he would not spring to mind as a leader of Canada's most notorious biker gang, the Hells Angels. yet through sheer guts and determination, intelligence and luck, this Hamilton-born youth who had the nickname of "Nurget" rose in the Hells Angels ranks to become national president. Not only did he lead the Angels through the violent war with their rivals the rock machine in Montreal in the Nineties, Stadnick saw opportunity to grow the Hells Angels into a national criminal gang. he was a visionary--and a highly successful one.
Bikers are not known for their fondness for rival gangs. Stadnick and the Angels fought and defeated rival gangs, or used power of persuasion to patch them over. As Stadnick's influence spread, law enforcement took notice of the growing presence of the Angels in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. However, Stadnick's success did not come without a price. Arrested and charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder, stadnick beat the murder charges but was convicted of gangsterism and is currently serving time.
Fallen Angel details one man's improbable rise to power in one of the world's most violent organizations, while shedding light on how this enigmatic and dangerous biker gang operated and why it remains so powerful.
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When you cross an Oxford graduate with a young man seeking gold and adventure in the remote wilderness, the result is Nahanni Journals. In this fascinating account of Raymond Patterson, a Londoner who finds his destiny in the Nahanni and Flat Rivers region of the Northwest Territories, Richard C. Davis reveals to us an extraordinary life. Patterson’s adventures are as swift and unpredictable as the river he canoes. Outdoor enthusiasts, historians, lovers of travel, and anyone interested in captivating stories will enjoy accompanying Patterson for the ride.
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Billy Bishop was the allies top Ace in World War I with 72 Victories. The highest number in the British Empire and second only to the Red Baron. William A. Bishop was from Ontario Canada this is his autobiography.
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Here is the incredible true story of one woman’s fight for survival in the Arctic wilderness.When she was nine years old, Olive Fredrickson witnessed her mother’s death in the Arctic wilderness. At nineteen, she married a trapper who led her into a perilous life far removed from the comforts of civilization. Told from a harrowing first-person perspective, Fredrickson recounts the hair-raising experiences of her first years in the frozen wasteland that was her husband’s hunting ground. When her attempt to run a farm single-handedly, after her husband’s death, threatened to end in ruin, Fredrickson walked 40 miles alone to the nearest village, in a desperate attempt to obtain food for her starving family by bartering against future crops. It was a life-or-death journey filled with bears, wolves, and unparalleled danger.
THE SILENCE OF THE NORTH is a story of extraordinary adventure, courage, and human determination in the face of impossible odds.
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Louis Riel believed that on 8 December 1875 he received a divine commission authorizing him to save the mTtis and reform the Catholic Church. He was a prophet, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the mTtis were the new chosen people. A new branch of the Catholic Church would be founded in North America, with its first Holy See in Montreal, and its second in Riel's birthplace of St. Vital.
When Riel expressed these views in 1876, he was committed to a lunatic asylum. After his release, he suppressed his ideas for several years, only to reveal them again to his mTtis followers during the North-West Rebellion. The Rebellion thus became as much a religious as a political movement; Riel believed himself a prophet to the end of his life, and he went to his death thinking that he, like Christ, would be resurrected on the third day.
Earlier writers about Louis Riel have noted his religious beliefs but have not taken them seriously. They have usually dismissed Riel's attempt to found a new religion as the symptom of a deranged mind. Thomas Flanagan takes Riel's religion seriously and analyses it using categories developed in the literature about millenarian movements. He shows that Riel's religion, far from being simply individual madness, is typical of the nativistic and millenarian movements described by one author as the 'religions of the oppressed.'
This is also a biography, tracing Riel's thinking on religious subjects from his childhood to the end of his life and paying particular attention to events in his life that influenced his thinking. This developmental approach is necessary because Riel's ideas changed frequently; he never arrived at a fixed 'system.'
The research is based on primary sources throughout. Much new documentation has become available over the past thirty years and in the sixteen years since this volume was initially published. In particular, new information is presented about Riel's youth in Montreal, his time in insane asylums, his years in Montana, and the North-West Rebellion. Flanagan also re-interprets well-known documents. While this revised edition does not alter the fundamentals of his interpretation, it improves the historical backdrop against which it is presented through use of a wealth of new primary sources. Flanagan has updated his citings of Riel's manuscripts to current sources.
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Dorise Nielsen was a pioneering feminist, a radical politician, the first Communist elected to Canadaís House of Commons, and the only woman elected in 1940. But despite her remarkable career, until now little has been known about her.
From her youth in London during World War I to her burial in 1980 in a heroís cemetery in China, Nielsen lived through tumultuous times. Struggling through the Great Depression as a homesteaderís wife in rural Saskatchewan, Nielsen rebelled against the poverty and injustice that surrounded her, and found like-minded activists in the CCF and the Communist Party of Canada. In 1940 when leaders of the Communist Party were either interned or underground, Nielsen became their voice in Parliament. But her activism came at a high price. As a single mother in Ottawa, she sacrificed a close relationship with her family for her career. As a woman in an emerging political organisation, her authority was increasingly usurped by younger male party members. As a committed communist, she moved to Mao's China in 1957 and dedicated her lifeís work to a cause that went seriously awry.
Faith Johnston illuminates the life of a woman who paved the way for a generation of women in politics, who tried to be both a good mother and a good revolutionary, and who refused to give up on either.
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For many years, the CPR offered free return passage each summer for the employees of its magnificent hotels. The "Dominion" and the "Canadian", Canada's famous trains travelled west to the Banff Springs Hotel and to Chateau Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. In 1957, captivated by stories of lofty mountain peaks and clear blue lakes, eighteen-year old Roger Patillo from Belle River, Ontario, signed up and set out to experience the West for himself. One summer turned into seven and changed his life.
The stories of his adventures while at the world famous Chateau are both humorous and poignant. He draws from many friendships, among which are the Feuz brothers, the legendary Swiss guides, John Lynn the much loved pianist who presented nightly concerts in the lobby, Beef Woodworth, the Park Warden and Lawrence Grassi, the "keeper of O'Hara". The book recounts the author's time skiing, flyfishing, mountaineering and canoeing down the Bow River. While these stories are entertaining enough, it is in the sharing of the sometimes hilarious pranks and misadventures of the staff that keeps us smiling throughout. The steak roasts, the dances, the parties at Gables (the Bellhop's residence) and his special friends all come alive again as Patillo recalls in tale after tale, a more gentle time when maybe Lake Louise really was the best.
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In 1944, the people of Saskatchewan elected the first socialist government in North America. Dream No Little Dreams is the biography of that government, led by the great Tommy Douglas of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF, later the New Democratic Party). It is a history of the life of the CCF and a case study in the art and practice of governing; partly a study in the policy decisions of the government, and partly an insider's view. A.W. Johnson ? a senior public servant in Saskatchewan during most of the Douglas years ? begins by introducing the government's central mission ? the transformation of the role of the state ? and describes how it achieved this goal over some seventeen years.
Johnson analyses the roots of the CCF in Saskatchewan history and prairie politics, and its philosophy as it prepared to govern. He describes the policies and programs introduced by the Douglas government, the changes to the machinery of government and the processes of governing, and the creation of a professional public service.
Medicare is viewed by many as the greatest achievement of the Douglas government. Dream No Little Dreams offers rich insight into the initial planning stages of Medicare and details the protracted struggle with the medical profession that followed as Douglas fought to implement it. Johnson also addresses the question of how socialists were going to pay for all their ambitions, and situates the answer in the context of developments in national policy and in federal-provincial fiscal arrangements from the war years through to the 1960s.
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A fresh and fascinating look at the Evelyn Dick murder trial and the intriguing mystery of her disappearance.
The "torso" murder trial of young attractive Evelyn Dick grabbed headlines in 1946 and 1947. Her husband John's head and limbs had been sawed from his body and burned up in her furnace. After she was sentenced to hang, up-and-coming lawyer J.J. Robinette appealed her case, won her a new trial and then an acquittal. But, when police found the decayed remains of Evelyn's newborn baby encased in cement in a suitcase in her attic, the best Robinette could do for her was a manslaughter conviction and eleven years in prison.
Evelyn Dick was released with a new identity in 1958. Since then, rumors, stories and sightings have abounded. Where did she go and what happened to her? Writer producer Brian Vallée, after crisscrossing the country, conducting several dozen interviews and tirelessly researching old newspaper files and thousands of pages of transcripts and police reports, answers many of the questions that surround this mysterious case. The result is a lively, spine-tingling account of the case itself and Evelyn Dick's surprising new life. With much of the material never before published, The Torso Murder is a captivating, chilling true story.
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Just when Solange De Santis had achieved success and security in the white-collar world of journalism, she decided to leave it all to work on the line during the final year and a half of a General Motors van plant in Scarborough, Ontario.
In Life on the Line, De Santis recounts in vivid detail just how and why she undertook this path of seemingly reverse ambition. What she found at the moribund GM plant was at turns surprising, monotonous, humorous, and grim. She encountered competent hard workers, raging alcoholics, mindless bureaucrats, and good friends.
Life on the Line is a penetrating look into a world that many of us shy from acknowledging, even as we accept the keys to our new cars. Completely candid, and as unexpectedly poignant as it is funny, this book will change the way you view blue-collar industry and the people who fuel its engine with their labour.
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When Roughing It in the Bush was published in 1852, it created an international sensation, not only for Susanna Moodie’s “glowing narrative of personal incident,” but also for her firm determination to puncture the illusions European land-agents were circulating about life in Canada. This frank and fascinating chronicle details her harsh – and humorous – experiences in homesteading with her family in the woods of Upper Canada.
Part documentary, part psychological parable, Roughing It in the Bush is, above all, an honest account of how one woman coped not only in a new world, but, more importantly, with herself.
The New Canadian Library edition is an unabridged reprint of the complete original text.