Bøger udgivet af McClelland & Stewart

From the founder of Black Girl Hockey Club, a collection of deeply insightful and piercing essays shedding light on the history of Black excellence in hockey, the future of Black joy within the sport, and the ways we can all do better when it comes to recognizing--and upheaving--systemic and institutionalized racism. Growing up, R. Renee Hess didn't care about hockey. In fact, she was barely aware of it. She was born and raised in Southern California, hardly a hotbed for the game, despite the state having three NHL teams. But, as Hess puts it, she is "a fan of being a fan," and when she found herself stuck in traffic after a Pittsburgh Penguins game, the streets filled with cheers, something sparked within her. Ever since Hess made that discovery, she has been actively trying to bust the myth that "Black folks don't like hockey." In this collection, Hess shares her hockey origin story and how she came to recognize hockey culture's lack of authentic engagement with Black communities, tracing her journey to becoming a true game changer. But, as an academic, Hess knows that her singular viewpoint can't tell the full story, so she reached out to former hockey players, league executives, activists, fans, media, and to the parents and youth shaping the future of the game. We hear directly from players such as Sarah Nurse and Saroya Tinker; from trailblazers like Bernice Carnegie and Kim Davis; and from the collective of Black Girl Hockey Club scholarship awardees and their families, emphasizing the importance of community and support for marginalized players. The result is a hockey book truly unlike any other. With essays that touch on representation and harmful stereotypes, the many nuanced aspects of biracial identity, being the only person of colour in the room, and the virtues of a lively group chat, Blackness Is a Gift I Can Give Her is a love letter to Black women everywhere, as well as a scathing ode to a game that Hess loves, even if it doesn't always love her back.

"For readers of Fatimah Asghar's If They Come for Us, here is a searing, multidimensional debut about the search for language and self, which is life itself. I knew it was time to build what could carry, what could find the high point to name what I knew to be the world and carry it with me At the heart of The Knot of My Tongue is Zehra Naqvi's storying of language itself and the self-re-visioning that follows devastating personal rupture. Employing a variety of poetic forms, these intimate, searching poems address generations, continents, and dominions to examine loss of expression in the aftermath of collisions with powerful forces, ranging from histories to intimacies. Naqvi follows a cast of characters from personal memory, family history, and Quranic traditions, at instances where they have either been rendered silent or found ways to attempt the inexpressible--a father struggling to speak as an immigrant in Canada; a grandmother as she loses her children and her home after the 1947 Partition; the Islamic story of Hajar, abandoned in the desert without water; the myth of Philomela who finds language even after her husband cuts off her tongue. Brilliantly blending the personal and the communal, memory and myth, theology and tradition, the poems in this collection train our attention--slow and immediate, public and private--on our primal ability to communicate, recover, and survive. This example is striking for the power of its speaking through loss and a singular, radiant vision."--

Shortlisted for the 2024 City of Victoria Butler Book PrizeA vivid, expansive vision of intergenerational witness and repair.The village is tilting on its axis. It is turning. All its organs are spilling into the bay.shima is a mosaic of the emotional, psychic, and generational toll that exile from a pillaged culture impresses on a poet and his community. Come to haunt yamagushiku’s practice of ancestor veneration are photographs and a narrative that spans his own life and a mythic parallel filled with a voice as spare as it is present, yearning as it is precise. The poet says, I am taking the sharpest stick and poking the root ancestor. I am insisting that if he awakens I will have something useful to say.Speaking through a cultural amnesia collected between a sunken past and a sensed, ghostly-dreamed future, shima anchors this interrogation of the relationship between father and son in the fragile connective tissue of memory where the poet’s homeland is an impossible destination.

"A hallucinatory literary horror novel set deeply in the consciousness of a woman exploring a changed and frightening world. Our protagonist wakes up in a basement, tied to a chair, with a man looming over her. But someone has a knife. We follow her as she emerges from captivity into an unnamed, nightmarish city, seeking some meaning to her new reality. As figures emerge from the night, some offer sanctuary, and others judgement, but she keeps moving, making her way through this fever dream of a narrative."--Provided by publisher.

"There are few love stories in the holy books. Love is what ruins. Love is what costs. Love is a flaming sword at our backs, a garden left to ruin and to wild. In Dayspring, Anthony Oliveira brings to vibrant, glorious life the gospel according to the disciple Christ loved -- his companion in the days before the crucifixion, the only instrument that remembers with fidelity his sound. Sacred, profane, and rich with explicit desire and a poetic attention to form, Dayspring weaves electric and heart-wrenching stories of passion, grief, destruction, and survival into a narrative unmoored in space and time, one that re-examines and re-frames great and doomed figures from scripture and history, even as it casts its keen eye on the trials of modern life."--

"A harrowing but ultimately uplifting literary memoir about living with borderline personality disorder--the most stigmatized diagnosis in mental health. 'I didn't know whether to take you to a psychologist or an exorcist.' This is how Miranda Newman's mother described the experience of trying to find an explanation for her daughter's behaviour. It would be years before Miranda was able to find a diagnosis that explained the complicated way she moved through the world. She would have to advocate for herself in the mental health system while dealing with abuse, homelessness, survival sex, suicide attempts and hospitalizations. Through it all, Miranda has found strength in her diagnosis. Her recollections are visceral and confessional, but also self-aware, irreverent and funny. She tells readers how she has found strength and joy in what others might see as tragic, while bolstering her personal recollections with deeply researched observations on Canada's mental healthcare system, and the history of diagnostics and disorder, using research supported by her work at Yale University."-- Provided by publisher.

"An ambitious and wholly original poetry collection that examines how state violence is ever-present and often operates invisibly. In 2021, a year into the pandemic, the City of Toronto started demolishing plywood structures for houseless people at a time when COVID rates were exploding in homeless shelters. The media reporting on the incident didn't delve into the broader societal and historical contexts that give rise to houselessness. This real-life set of circumstances prompted Anna Lee-Popham to consider how AI technology might act as a tool to understand the news. What content would such an AI translator be fed? What form would the communication take? What would be the relationship between the AI translator and the human? In response to these questions, Empire of the Everyday examines (over two acts and five episodes) how state violence is ever-present and often operates invisibly. The "I" of the poems is the piece of AI machine technology that translates life in the city into a less linear language. The poems often address multiple individuals of various subjectivities ("you") to examine ways that life is confined and at times defined by the city. Powerful, thought-provoking, and devastating, Empire of the Everyday offers a new understanding of the current social and political moment."--

CBC Poetry Prize finalist and National Magazine Award honoree Faith Arkorful’s breathtaking, surpassingly thoughtful debut collection of poems.Hauntings form the canopy of The Seventh Town of Ghosts. These titular towns, centred in yesterdays, tomorrows, and the ongoing, lead to a special kind of singing: songs to the reader who wrestles with existence, the unsure peace within family, and the often-tense interdependence of life.Here, discernment is ever-present, guided by Faith Arkorful’s insights on not only the ravages of the state and the police upon the Black family and life at large, but also on a kaleidoscope of connections—sisterhood, daughterhood, kinship, solitude, death, romance—and how tenderness, chosen and repeated, can shield against life’s blows. These towns also enchant, shape-lifting through humour, irony, and the small refractions of language where Arkorful guides us through the fault lines and the undertow, in the form of fruit, island volcanoes, Formula 1, and the expansive hum of life.This poet-as-sojourner bears careful, caring witness, her attention reserved not only for her living and her dead but hyphenated two-fold by the fragile things and the lasting things. These poems remind us of what contours our mysterious and fleeting presence on Earth.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom global art superstar Kent Monkman and his long-time collaborator Gisèle Gordon, a transformational work of true stories and imagined history that will remake readers’ understanding of the land called North America.For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman have featured a recurring character—an alter ego of sorts, a shape-shifting, time-travelling elemental being named Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. Though we have glimpsed her across the years in films and on countless canvases, it is finally time to hear her story, in her own words. And, in doing so, to hear the whole history of Turtle Island anew. The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island is a genre-demolishing work of genius, the imagined history of a legendary figure through which profound truths emerge—a deeply Cree and gloriously queer understanding of our shared world, its past, its present, and its possibilities.Volume One, which covers the period from the creation of the universe to the confederation of Canada, follows Miss Chief as she moves through time, from a complex lived experience of Cree cosmology to the arrival of European settlers, many of whom will be familiar to students of history. An open-hearted being, she tries to live among those settlers, and guide them to a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of all beings and the world itself. As their numbers grow, though, so does conflict, and Miss Chief begins to understand that the challenges posed by the hordes of newly arrived Europeans will mean ever greater danger for her, her people, and, by extension, all of the world she cherishes.Blending history, fiction, and memoir in bold new ways, The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle are unlike anything published before. And in their power to reshape our shared understanding, they promise to change the way we see everything that lies ahead.

"A pulse-pounding new thriller from the bestselling author of Wherever She Goes and Every Step She Takes. If someone were threatening your home, how far would you go to protect it? A stranger is trespassing in Celeste Turner's backyard, moving through the shadows around her shed. It could be a harmless backpacker seeking temporary refuge, but experience has taught Celeste to be extra wary. Not wishing to draw unwanted attention, she cannot turn to the police. Celeste is an outsider to this region of rural Florida, and all the locals see is a "city girl" who swooped in to secure her inheritance. But Celeste needs her new life to work, so she must confront her intruder. To her surprise, she finds out that her unwanted guest is a young backpacker named Daisy. She is polite and friendly, just taking advantage of some shelter as she makes her way through the area. Swiftly, they begin an unlikely and beneficial friendship--Celeste can't help herself, and besides, Daisy will be moving on soon. Why not take advantage of the extra help? Both women have secrets they want to keep buried, and when a body is discovered near Celeste's house, they must move quickly to prove their innocence and protect the lives they've built for themselves."--

"The poems in Lorna Crozier's nineteenth collection, After That, present raw, intensely moving snapshots of life after a staggering loss. As ever, Crozier has an acute attentiveness to the everyday, which lifts the poems and offers readers a glimpse at sustaining, life-affirming, tender moments of acceptance and deep appreciation."--

A career-spanning volume that brings together new and selected works by an iconic voice in Canadian literature.From the Lost and Found Department, by the trailblazing Joy Kogawa, is a profound work of spare, trenchant, and haunting poems that lets us stay with the quietest qualities of beauty and the sublime.This essential volume brings together thrilling new work with selected poems from The Splintered Moon (1967), A Choice of Dreams (1974), Jericho Road (1977), Woman In the Woods (1985), and A Garden of Anchors: Selected Poems (2003).Kogawa’s poems here are evidence that our every vulnerability can open into vast channels of grace.

The debut memoir from award-winning journalist Morgan Campbell: an incredible history of a family’s battles across generations, a hilarious and emotional coming-of-age story, and a powerful reckoning with what it means to be Black in Canada—particularly when you have strong American roots.Morgan Campbell comes from “a fighting family,” a connection and clash that reaches back to the south side of Chicago in the 1930s. His father’s and mother’s families were both part of the Great Migration from the U.S. rural south to the industrial north, but a history of perceived slights and social-class differences solidified a great feud that only intensified over the course of the century after the families came together in marriage and split up across the border.Morgan’s maternal grandfather, Claude Jones—a legendary grudge-holder, as well was an accomplished musician, peer of Oscar Peterson, and fixture of the Chicago jazz scene—was recruited to play some shows in Toronto, fell in love with the city, and eventually settled in Canada in the mid-1960s, paving the way for Morgan’s parents to join him amid the tumult of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. Morgan’s paternal grandmother, Granny Mary, however, remained stateside, a distance her schemes and resentments would only grow to fill. That fighting spirit wasn’t limited to the family’s own squabbles, though—it animated the way every generation moved through the world. From battling back as a group against white supremacist newcomers who violently resisted Black neighbours, to Morgan’s pre-teen mother burnishing her own legend by cold-cocking some racist loudmouth bullies, the lesson was clear: sometimes words weren’t enough.In Canada, the Campbells started a family of their own, but the tensions between in-laws never ceased, even as divorce and disease threatened the very foundations of the life they’d built. Bearing witness to all of this was young Morgan, an aspiring writer, budding star athlete, and slow-jam scholar, whose deep American roots landed him an outsider status that led to its own schoolyard scraps and exposed the profound gap between Canada’s utopian multicultural reputation and the very different reality. Having grown up bouncing between these disparate identities and nationalities, real or imagined—Black and Canadian, Canadian and American, Campbell and Jones—My Fighting Family is a witty, wise, rich, and soulful illumination of the journey to find clarity in all that conflict.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Shortlisted for the 2024 Speaker’s Book AwardFrom bestselling author Ken Dryden, a riveting new book.On Tuesday, September 6, 1960, the day after Labour Day, class 9G at Etobicoke Collegiate Institute in a suburb of Toronto assembled for the first time. Its thirty-five students, having written special exams, came to be known as the “Selected Class.”They would stay together through high school, with few exceptions. They would spend more than two hundred days a year together. Few had known each other before. Few have been in other than accidental contact in all the decades since.Their ancestors were almost all from working-class backgrounds. Their parents had lived their formative years through depression and war. They themselves were born into a postwar world of new homes, new schools, new churches. New suburbs. Of new classes like this one. Of boundless possibilities.When almost anything seems within reach, what do we reach for?Ken Dryden was one of these thirty-five. In his varied, improbable life, he had wondered often how he had gotten from there to here. How any of us do. He decided to try and find his classmates, to see how they are, what they are doing, how life has been for them. They talked many long hours, in a way they had never talked before. Most had married, some divorced, most have kids, many have grandkids.This is the story of a place, a time, and so much more.

"A tragic plane crash that leaves two women stranded and fighting for their lives kicks off this sweeping and hilarious novel from award-winning writer Drew Hayden Taylor that blends thriller, murder mystery, and horror with humour and spectacle. Elmore Trent is a professor of Indigenous studies who finds himself entangled in an affair that's ruining his marriage; Paul North plays in the IHL (Indigenous Hockey League), struggling to keep up with the game that's passing him by; Detective Ruby Birch is chasing a string of gruesome murders, with clues that conspicuously lead her to both Elmore and Paul. And then there's Fabiola Halan, former journalist-turned-author and famed survivor of a plane crash that sparked a nationwide tour promoting her book. What starts off as a series of subtle connections between isolated characters quickly takes a menacing turn, as it becomes increasingly clear that someone--or something--is hunting them all. Taking tropes from murder mystery, police procedural, thriller, and horror, Drew Hayden Taylor weaves a pulse-pounding and propulsive narrative with an intricate cast of characters, while never losing the ability to make you laugh. Cold takes Indigenous myth and folklore and thrusts it into the modern streets of Toronto, exploring themes of displacement and trauma, as well as offering playful satirical critiques of the current landscape of Indigenous literature."--

"An enchanting collection of stories from the life of philanthropist, art collector and former president of Cineplex Media, Salah Bachir--who through his sheer joy of life, art, and human interaction has captivated some of the most famous people in modern history, including the likes of Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, and Katherine Hepburn. Salah Bachir, who immigrated to Canada from Lebanon in the 1960s, has been in the movie business for four decades, first as the originator of syndicated in-theatre magazines, and most recently as the president of Cineplex. While this has given him undeniable front-row access to Hollywood's biggest stars, it's Salah's personal charm and kindness, his philanthropy, his overall style (think capes, sashes, pearls, diamonds, etc.), and involvement in the art world that has made him a friend, companion, lover, and/or confidante to everyone from Katherine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Joan Rivers, Mary Tyler Moore, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to Andy Warhol, Edward Albee, Orson Wells, Aretha Franklin, and Elizabeth Taylor. Collected here in this wonderful book are personal stories of them all, some short, some long, some surprising, others juicy, and all fascinating. Through them we get to know Salah, a larger-than-life character that embodied the worlds he lived in and shaped--the kind of person it would be hard to make up if he didn't already exist."--

"Following an accident resulting in the tragic loss of his mother on their family property in Douglas Harbour, New Brunswick, photojournalist Darren Calabrese--a new father himself--knew it was time to move back to Atlantic Canada, the place both he and his wife called home. Living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, his tremendous sense of loss led him to reflect on the meaning of home and his appreciation for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador: their geographies, histories, and traditions, turning his lens to explore the tension between the perseverance of tradition and the inevitability of change. Darren's photography led him from province to province, into cities, towns, homes, and Indigenous communities, who welcomed him to document the inextricable relationship between people, their stories, and the landscapes--equally beautiful and harsh--where they live and work. Personal essays on loss, family, and coming home, as well as Darren's experiences traveling to the regions he photographs, are woven throughout this evocative collection of carefully curated photographs and narrative captions, accompanied by archival photographs from Darren's deep family history. Elegant, spare, and revelatory at every turn, Leaving Good Things Behind: Photographs of Atlantic Canada brings to light both the challenges and joys of the places we live."--

"To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon. For five years, the Indigenous Voices Awards have nurtured the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. Established in 2017 initially through a crowd-funded campaign by lawyer Robin Parker and author Silvia Moreno-Garcia that set an initial fundraising goal of $10,000, the initiative raised over $116,000 in just four months. Through generous support from organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, CELA, and others, the award has grown and have helped usher in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVA recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. The IVAs also help promote the works of unpublished writers, helping launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird. For the first time, a selection of standout works over the past five years of the Indigenous Voices Award will be collected in an anthology that will highlight some of the most groundbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and in an Indigenous language. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Carleigh Baker, Jordan Abel, and Indigenous scholar Madeleine Reddon, this anthology will be a true celebration of Indigenous storytelling that will both introduce readers to emerging luminaries as well as return them to treasured favourites."--

"With honesty, love, and humour, in this moving memoir, Kelly S. Thompson explores her relationship with her older sister, Meghan. Tested by addiction, abuse, and illness, the sisters' relationship crumbles, only to be rebuilt into an everlasting bond. Kelly Thompson, and her older sister, Meghan, are proof that sisterhood doesn't always equate to friendship. While they were mostly temperamental opposites, growing up in a military family forged their connection--Kelly, an anxious child, looked to her big sister for protection, and Meghan, who was being treated for kidney cancer, adored her younger sister. But when, as a teenager, Meghan becomes addicted to cocaine and opioids, putting the family under new strain, Kelly is forced to reevaluate her family role as her relationship with Meghan is torn apart. As time passes, the distance between the sisters only increases as Meghan slips deeper into addiction and chooses a series of abusive partners. Meanwhile, Kelly sets her own course, enrolling in the military at eighteen, moving across the country and marrying the love of her life, while pursuing her dream of becoming a writer. It's only when Meghan becomes a mother that she and Kelly tentatively begin to face past hurts and reexamine what sisterhood really means. Just as they reunite, Meghan is diagnosed with terminal cancer the day after the birth of her second child. Now, as the family reels at the prospect of the biggest loss, Kelly and Meghan will draw on their mutual dark sense of humour and deep understanding of each other, to share all they can in the time that they have. At once funny, inspiring, and heartbreaking, Still, I Cannot Save You is a story about addiction, abuse, tragedy, and illness, but above all, it is a powerful portrait of an enduring love between two sisters."--

"A great painter lies on his deathbed, synapses firing, writhing and reveling in pleasure and pain as a lifetime of chaotic and grotesque sense memories wash over and envelop him. In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind. Writing as painting rather than about painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life. The result is more than a biography: The Death of Francis Bacon is a physical, emotional, historical, sexual, and political bombardment--the measure of a man creative and compromised, erotic and masochistic, inexplicable and inspired."--

From the distinct and vibrant voice behind Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi comes the story of pursuing a dream and defying the odds, reminding us all of hockey's power to unite.BoninoBoninoBonino!Ask a hockey fan if they have heard the wonderfully electric call of Nick Bonino's overtime-winning goal from the 2016 Stanley Cup Final and they will almost surely answer with a resounding yes! That's because video clips of the Hockey Night in Punjabi broadcast immediately went viral, amplifying the profile of Harnarayan Singh, the voice behind the call. Growing up in small-town Alberta, Harnarayan was like many other kids who dreamed about a life within the sanctum of the game they idolized. 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.

An original, inventive--and visually stunning--exploration of place, identity, language, and experience from the acclaimed poet, novelist, and sound performer.GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE FINALISTQWF A.M. KLEIN PRIZE FOR POETRY FINALISTThe poems in Kaie Kellough's third collection drift between South and North America. They seek their ancestry in Georgetown, Guyana, in the Amazon Rainforest, and in the Atlantic Ocean. They haunt the Canadian Prairie. They recall the 1980s in the suburbs of Calgary, and they reflect on the snowed-in, bricked-in boroughs of post-referendum Montréal. They puzzle their language together from the natural world and from the works of Caribbean and Canadian writers. They reassemble passages about seed catalogues, about origins, about finding a way in the world, about black ships sailing across to land. They struggle to explain a state of being hemisphered, of being present here while carrying a heartbeat from elsewhere, and they map the distances travelled.

Luke Gray is happy with the way things are. He's finally settled into married life with pragmatic, level-headed Julia, free from his family's absurdities and the chaos of his childhood. Even his mobile-bird factory seems less like a curse he can't shake. But things change when Julia decides they should have a baby... and nothing happens. A trip to the fertility clinic leads to loosened boxers, hormone injections, and some time alone with a plastic vial and a stack of dirty magazines. How could things sink so far, so fast?His male pride in shreds, Luke finds himself fending off intrusive questions about his sperm from his mother, and avoiding further involvement in his philandering father's affairs. And with Julia more and more a stranger determined to succeed, it's no wonder Luke begins to fantasize about a single, young employee's bee-stung lips. But when complications put Julia in the hospital, Luke is forced to confront his tangled feelings about family, children, and commitment, and decide what he will, or won't, do for love. The Bird Factory is a high-energy, darkly humorous novel about surviving your family and starting a new one, about the stupid things good men do, and why women put up with them. It introduces David Layton as a sharp observer of human fallibility and a striking new fictional voice.

The eighteen pieces collected in Mrs. Golightly and Other Stories bring together the many and subtle voices of Ethel Wilson, demonstrating her extraordinary range as a writer. From the gentle mockery of the title story to the absurdist reportage of "Mr. Sleepwalker,” Wilson exerts unerring narrative control. Revealing what is "simple and complicated and timeless” in everyday life, these stories also venture into irrational realms of experience where chance encounters assume a malevolent form and coincidence transmuted into nightmare.First published in 1961, Mrs. Golightly and Other Stories is a diverse and rewarding collection, unified by Ethel Wilson's distinct and engaging wit.

The only book written by Jack Layton (1950-2011) on his political life and vision, this is the former NDP leader's passionate call to action and will inspire all Canadians to embrace a better future. On August 22, 2011, Jack Layton, Official Opposition Leader, died as he lived, with dignity, bestowing to his country a message of hope. Canada was in mourning and within hours of his death, tens of thousands of Canadians -- from NDP supporters to political opponents -- paid tribute to the man and his legacy through public vigils, memorials, and expressions of grief. Originally published in 2006, Speaking Out Louder represents Layton's "blueprint for Canada" Highly acclaimed and powerfully written, this book captures Jack Layton's political vision and exemplifies the optimism that marked his life's work. In it he shares personal stories and fascinating, behind-the-scenes details of his career in national politics and talks about the big issues (poverty, AIDS and healthcare, childcare, housing, education) and the ideas that work for Canadians.

The award-winning author of River in a Dry Land explores the Nature that we - and our religions - sprang fromThe Genesis story of Jacob, the patriarch of the Judeo-Christian tradition, wrestling with a spirit has been interpreted in a multitude of ways, but never more persuasively than by Trevor Herriot in Jacob's Wound. He sees it as a struggle between Jacob and his wilder twin brother, Esau, whose birthright Jacob has swindled. The central idea of Herriot's brilliantly written, observant, and groundbreaking book is the wound that Jacob, the farmer, the civilized man, suffered in vanquishing Esau, the hunter, the primitive man. And the central question posed is whether we, as Jacob did with Esau, can eventually reconcile with the wildness we conquered and have been estranged from for so long.As if ambling through the author's beloved Qu'Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan, Jacob's Wound takes readers on an untrodden path through history, memoir, science, and theology. Along the way, Herriot tells us stories of the past and present that illuminate what we once were and what we have become. It's a measured journey motivated by curiosity rather than by destination, and at every turn there is insight and beautiful writing.

In this beguiling collection of short stories and memoirs, first published in 1969, Mordecai Richler looks back on his childhood in Montreal, recapturing the lively panorama of St. Urbain Street: the refugees from Europe with their unexpected sophistication and snobbery; the catastrophic day when there was an article about St. Urbain Street in Time; Tansky's Cigar and Soda with its "beat-up brown phonebooth” used for "private calls”; and tips on sex from Duddy Kravitz.Overflowing with humour, nostalgia, and wisdom, The Street is a brilliant introduction to Richler's lifelong love-affair with St. Urbain Street and its inhabitants.

A literary syncopation on the theme of food, Comfort Me With Apples earned Joe Fiorito rave reviews and enthusiastic fans when it was first published in 1994. One writer declared it was "a small miracle of prose.” A rich buffet of diverse short essays, Comfort Me With Apples is about the appetites of the soul as well as the body.Fiorito's range is wide: from the ingredients for the best chili dog in the world to the recipe for chicken soup for the courting soul; from the sharp portrait of a young boy's real hunger to the olfactory pleasures of a proper barbecue. His guests include an Inuk whom he takes to a sushi bar, an old man in pajamas, Julia Child, several daddies, a woman with a seductive appetite, and Hercules. You are invited to join them. B.Y.O.B.