The Modern Chinese Folklore Movement coalesced at National Peking University between 1918 and 1926. A group of academics, inspired by Western thought, turned to the study of folklore – popular songs, beliefs, and customs – to rally people around the flag. Saving the Nation through Culture opens a new chapter in the history of the Folklore Movem …

As the cost of real estate rises across Canada, more and more homeowners are looking to become landlords. “Secondary suites” are becoming an increasingly common way for homeowners to subsidize their mortgages and supplement their incomes. This book is unique in that it places emphasis on the rental of secondary suites, and how to avoid a potent …

Common wisdom suggests that the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed everything about the character of refugee law in the United States and in neighbouring Canada. But did they? If so, how do the responses of the two countries compare in terms of their negative impacts on refugee rights? Refugee Law after 9/11 undertakes a systematic examination of avail …

Going to university or college is supposed to be great. But if it’s “all good” why is it sometimes hard just to get out of bed and go to class?

Research shows that mental health issues – such as anxiety and depression – are increasing among undergraduate students, but few access help when they need it.

It’s All Good (Unless It’s Not) …

Caroline Kearney faced a heartbreaking dilemma. In 1865 she was newly widowed, thirty-one years old, and the mother of six children. She had hoped her husband would leave his sheep station in Victoria, Australia to her sons. Instead, his will required that the family move to Ireland and live in a house chosen by her brothers-in-law. Pieced together …

In 1975, Indonesian forces overran East Timor, which had just declared independence from Portugal. The occupation lasted twenty-four years. Challenge the Strong Wind recounts the evolution of Canadian government policy toward East Timor during that period. Canada initially followed key allies in endorsing Indonesian rule, but Canadian civil society …

The growing presence in Western society of non-mainstream faiths and spiritual practices poses a dilemma for the law. Building on a thorough history of the legal regulation of fortune-telling laws in four countries, Faith or Fraud examines the impact of people who identify as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) on the future legal understandin …

When Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government won a massive majority in British Columbia in 2001, the premier immediately fulfilled his pledge to cut personal income taxes. Big Promises, Small Government reveals the consequences of dramatic tax policy changes on social programs. Campbell expected lower taxes to spur investment and growth. Instead, cu …

Since the late nineteenth century, Niagara Falls has been heavily engineered to generate energy behind a flowing façade designed to appeal to tourists. Fixing Niagara Falls reveals the technological feats and cross-border politics that facilitated the transformation of one of the most important natural sites in North America. Daniel Macfarlane det …

Lambda Literary Award winner

A bold and breathtaking anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed.

This exciting and groundbreaking fiction collection showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indi …

Searing and lyrical, Marie-Sissi Labrèche's auto-fictional novel, Borderline, describes a young girl's experience growing up in Montreal's working-class neighbourhood of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Raised by her "two mothers" - a stern grandmother and a mother struggling with schizophrenia, the story's protagonist, Sissi, is artistic, feral, fragile, i …

In her debut poetry collection, Shannon McConnell explores the fraught history of New Westminster's Woodlands School, a former "lunatic asylum" opened in 1878 which later became a custodial training school for children with disabilities before its closure in 1996. Partially set in the 1960s and 70s, The Burden of Gravity uses personas to imagine re …

Spanning centuries, The Hammer of Witches reaches from present-day urban dystopias and the unlikely enchantments that they harbour, to medieval Norway, where the first Christian king waged war on the country's gender-nonconforming wizards. Macabre imagery, speculative themes, and everyday mysticism blur the distinction between the real and the unre …

Josephine Caplin (Jo) was born into a world marred by maternal abandonment, alcoholism and traumatic epileptic seizures. In grade three, she was apprehended by child services and separated from her protective brother and her early caregivers, her father and uncle, who were kind men with drinking problems. Placed into many alienating and lonely fost …

Civilians play crucial roles in building empires. Constructing Empire shows how Japanese urban planners, architects, and other civilians contributed – often enthusiastically – to constructing a modern colonial enclave in northeast China, their visions shifting over time. Japanese imperialism in Manchuria before 1932 developed in a manner simila …

The Canadian federal system was never designed to recognize Indigenous governance, and it has resisted change. But Indigenous communities have successfully negotiated the creation of self-governing regions. Most of these are situated within existing units of the Canadian federation, creating forms of nested federalism. This governance model is tran …

Trustees at Work explores the role bankruptcy trustees play in determining who qualifies as a deserving debtor under Canadian personal bankruptcy law. The idea of a deserving debtor is woven throughout bankruptcy law, with debt relief being reserved for those debtors deemed deserving. The legislation and case law invite trustees to assess debtors b …

Co-management boards, established under comprehensive land claims agreements, have become key players in land-use planning, wildlife management, and environmental regulation across Canada’s North. This book provides a detailed account of the operation and effectiveness of these boards while addressing a central question: Have they been successful …

With isolationism and protectionism strengthening in response to the forces of globalization, the interrelationship of the national and supranational in shaping good governance norms has become increasingly relevant. Good Governance in Economic Development critically examines the transparency and accountability mechanisms underpinning international …

Medical professionals are expected to act in the interest of patients, the public, and the pursuit of medical knowledge. But what happens when doctors’ supposed impartiality comes under fire? Helen Kang examines three moments in the history of the medical profession in Canada, spanning more than 150 years, when doctors’ moral and scientific aut …

A tenth-anniversary edition of Vivek Shraya's first book: a YA story collection that celebrates racial, gender, and religious diversity.

In 2010, Vivek Shraya self-published God Loves Hair, her first book; since then, Vivek has published six more titles, including a novel, poetry collection, graphic novel, and children's picture book, while also wor …

A vision shared. A manifesto. This remarkable work draws on Ojibway-, Ota’wa-, and Ishkodawatomi-Anishinabe world views, history, and lived experience to develop a wholly Ojibway-Anishinabe interpretation of the role of leadership and governance today.

Arguing that Anishinabeg need to reconnect with non-colonized modes of thinking, social organiz …

The latest from Vivek Shraya's VS. Books: a poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation.

In this incendiary debut collection, activist and poet Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar spaces in geography, in the arts, and in personal history to expose the legacy of colo …

Governor General's Literary Award finalist

Searing, intimate poems that render a history of trauma, addiction, and recovery through dreams and waking experience.

Render (v.tr.): to submit, as for consideration; to give or make available; to give what is due or owed; to give in return, or retribution; to surrender; to yield. To represent; to perform a …

Canada’s Mechanized Infantry explores the largely ignored development of the infantry in the Canadian Army after the First World War. Although many modern studies of technology and war focus on tanks and armour, soldiers from the Second World War onward have discovered that success really depends on a combination of infantry, armour, and artiller …

Political representation requires participation: voting, joining political parties, running as candidates, acting as politicians. Yet the election of openly LGBTQ people is a relatively recent phenomenon in the West. Queering Representation explores long-ignored issues relating to LGBTQ voters and politicians in Canada. What are the LGBTQ electorat …

Vancouver is heralded around the world as a model for sustainable development. In Planning on the Edge, nationally and internationally renowned planning scholars, activists, and Indigenous leaders assess whether the city’s reputation is warranted.

While recognizing the many successes of the “Vancouverism” model, the contributors acknowledge t …

How do Indigenous communities in Canada balance the development needs of a growing population with cultural commitments and responsibilities as stewards of their lands and waters? Caring for Eeyou Istchee recounts the extraordinary experience of the James Bay Cree community of Wemindji, Quebec, who partnered with a multi-disciplinary research team …

How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations – much of it wrong. Cataloguing Culture examines how …

The influx of over 20,000 European and Chinese miners to the Fraser River in the spring of 1858, all of them hungry for gold, compelled the British government to declare the mainland, known then as New Caledonia, the Colony of British Columbia. In an attempt to capture the excitement of this period and the challenges faced by the colonial governmen …

In 1867, Canada’s federal government became responsible for the education of Indigenous peoples: Status Indians and some Métis would attend schools on reserves; non-Status Indians and some Métis would attend provincial schools. The system set the stage for decades of broken promises and misguided experiments that are only now being rectified in …

With compelling insight, Canada 1919 examines the concerns of Canadians in the year following the Great War: the treatment of veterans, including nurses and Indigenous soldiers; the rising farm lobby; the role of labour; the place of children; the influenza pandemic; the country’s international standing; and commemoration of the fallen. Even as t …

British Columbia is often overlooked in the national story of women’s struggle for political equality. This book rights that wrong. A Great Revolutionary Wave follows the propaganda campaigns undertaken by suffrage organizations and traces the role of working-class women in the fight for political equality. It demonstrates the connections between …

We think of Métis as having Prairie roots. Quebec doesn’t recognize a historical Métis community, and the Métis National Council contests the existence of any Métis east of Ontario. Quebec residents who seek recognition as Métis under the Canadian Constitution therefore face an uphill legal and political battle. Who is right? Bois-Brûlés e …

“Did you ever go to bed and wonder if your child was getting enough to eat?” For food insecure mothers, the worry is constant, and babies are at risk of going hungry. Through compelling interviews, Lesley Frank answers the breastfeeding paradox: why women who can least afford to buy infant formula are less likely to breastfeed. She exposes the …

In 2004, Amnesty International characterized Canadian society as “indifferent” to high rates of violence against Indigenous women and girls. When the Canadian government took another twelve years to launch a national inquiry, that indictment seemed true.

Invested Indifference offers a divergent perspective by examining practices during three d …

The German word zugunruhe translates as the “stirring before moving.” It’s used to describe birds and herds of animals, like wildebeests, before the great migration. Though Jules Torti is neither German nor a wildebeest, she understands this marrow-deep anxiousness all too well; she is just someone looking for a home.

Free to a Good Home is ev …

Wild Fierce Life is a heart-stopping collection of true stories from the Pacific Coast that build a vivid portrait of life on the continental edge and one woman’s evolving place within it.

Author Joanna Streetly arrived on the west coast of Vancouver Island when she was nineteen, and soon adapted to the challenges of working on boats of all sorts, …

When Melanie Farrell visits the neurologist she is told her multiple sclerosis is progressing. She isn’t surprised by the diagnosis, but what does shock her is the related prognosis. It seems, based on a new study, that she only has six orgasms left. Six! Fortyish and single, Mel must decide how best to spend, save or at least not waste those pre …

Until 1967, the Northwest Territories was governed from Ottawa by appointees who rarely visited the land or peoples they controlled. As part of his drive to integrate and modernize the country, Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson ordered Stuart Hodgson, a feisty British Columbia labour leader and founding member of the NDP, to move a fledglin …