In December 1941, Japan attacked multiple targets in the Far East and the Pacific, including Canadian battalions in Hong Kong. This intriguing account of Canadian intelligence gathering and strategic planning on the eve of the crisis dispels the assumption that the Allies were totally unprepared for war. Canadians worked closely with their US and A …

The cancellation of the CF-105 Arrow in 1959 holds such a grip on the imagination of Canadians that earlier developments in defence procurement remain in the shadows.

Randall Wakelam corrects this oversight – and offers fresh insight into the AVRO saga and contemporary procurement issues – by detailing the complexities Canada’s air force face …

During the Second World War, the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Canada grew from a handful of members to more than a quarter-million. What was it about the “good war” that brought about this phenomenal growth? Labour Goes to War argues that both economic and cultural forces were at work. Labour shortages gave workers greater economic p …

"This account emphasizes the human dimension of the struggle and features clean, realistic color art with ample text blocks as well as dialog. Intended for both adults and young adults, this should be useful in history classes throughout North America in addition to appealing to WWII buffs and aficionados of war comics." -- Library Journal

A beautif …

Drama and humour combine in Goodbye Buffalo Bay by award-winning Cree author Larry Loyie. The sequel to the award-winning book As Long as the Rivers Flow and the award-finalist When the Spirits Dance, Goodbye Buffalo Bay is set during the author's teenaged years. In his last year in residential school, Lawrence learns the power of friendship and fi …

Feisty icon; passionate Canadian; unrelenting foe of all pretension; energetic provocateur-at-large and most importantly, superb and dedicated writer, there cannot be a Canadian alive who is unaware of the legacy that is Farley Mowat. And No Bird Sang and A Whale for the Killing are the first books in a new Douglas & McIntyre library of handsomely …

In late 1942, Britain was desperate to win the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. German U-boats had sunk hundreds of Allied ships containing millions of tons of cargo that was needed to continue the war effort. Prime Minister Churchill had to find a solution to the carnage or the Nazis would be victorious. With the support of Churchill and Lord Louis …

How could you and your family survive a nuclear war? From 1945 onwards, the Canadian government developed civil defence plans and encouraged citizens to join local survival corps. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil defence program was widely mocked, and the public was still vastly unprepared for nuclear war. An exposé of the challe …

Amateur and professional gardeners alike will find Krucheberg’s book an entertaining and eminently sensible resource for realizing their aesthetic, practical, and ecological gardening aspirations. Available again, this second edition of Gardening with Native Plants of the Northwest includes information on native grasses, grasslike plants, trees a …

"To see the peacekeeper myth ably demolished...one must pick up Lewis MacKenzie's own memoir, Soldiers Made Me Look Good. Loaded with anecdotes, and delivered in MacKenzie's suffer-fools-badly style, it's easily the speed-read of the bunch." -- Calgary Herald

A riveting follow-up to the best-selling Peacekeeper, including MacKenzie's provocative vie …

"A soldier's story told from the inside, passionate, riveting and extremely necessary." -- David Adams Richards, Giller Prize-winning novelist

"Gut-wrenching, wryly humorous and well-written." -- Atlantic Books Today

When Canadian soldier Fred Doucette was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a UN peacekeeper in 1995, he had a premonition that this tour …

The Cold War space race between the United States and the Soviet Union is well documented, but few are aware of Canada’s early activities in this important arena of global power. Defence and Discovery represents the first comprehensive investigation into the origins, development, and impact of Canada’s space program from 1945 to 1974. Meticulou …

Corps Commanders examines how five strikingly dissimilar British and Canadian generals fought battles and fit into the British Empire armies of the Second World War. The three Canadians controlled British formations and served under British army commanders, and the two Britons worked for and led Canadians as well. Such inter-army adjustments were f …

In January 1944, Vice Admiral Percy Walker Nelles was fired from his position as head of the Royal Canadian Navy. Betrayed reveals the true story behind the dismissal: a divisive power struggle between two elite groups within the RCN pitted the navy's regular officers against a small group of self-appointed spokesmen for the voluntary naval reserve …

The Halifax Explosion of 1917 is a defining event in the Canadian consciousness, yet it has never been the subject of a sustained analytical history. Astonishingly, until now no one has consulted the large federal government archives that contain first-hand accounts of the disaster and the response of national authorities. Canada's recently establi …

In the middle of the most destructive conflict in human history, the Second World War, almost 40,000 Germans civilians and prisoners of war were detained in internment and work camps across Canada. Prisoners of the Home Front details the organization and day-to-day affairs of these internment camps and reveals the experience of their inmates. Auger …

Base closures, use of airspace for weapons testing and low-level flying, environmental awareness, and Aboriginal land claims have focused attention in recent years on the use of Native lands for military training. But is the military's interest in Aboriginal lands new? Battle Grounds analyzes a century of government-Aboriginal interaction and negot …

Grant Dawson’s analysis of political, diplomatic, and military decision making avoids a narrow focus on the shocking offences of a few Canadian soldiers, deftly investigating the broader context of the deployment in Somalia. He shows how media pressure, government optimism about the United Nations, and the Canadian traditions of multilateralism a …

Fifteen thousand Canadians were captured during Canada’s twientieth-century wars. They experienced the bewilderment that accompanied the moment of capture, the humiliation of being completely in the captor’s power, and the sense of stagnating in a backwater while the rest of the world moved forward. Jonathan Vance provides the first comprehensi …

During the Second World War, almost one hundred Canadians served the Allied forces by passing as locals in occupied countries. At the behest of two British secret services, these men made language and custom their costumes. They risked their lives assisting resistance groups in sabotage and ambush missions or in smuggling Allied airmen out of occup …

In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. Responding to a United Nations' call, Canada deployed an 8000-man brigade to the peninsula to fight as part of an American-led UN force. This comprehensive account of the Canadian campaign in Korea provides the first detailed study of the training, leadership, operations, and tactics of the brigade und …

This book examines Canada’s collective memory of the First World War through the 1920s and 1930s. It is a cultural history, considering art, music, and literature. Thematically organized into such subjects as the symbolism of the soldier, the implications of war memory for Canadian nationalism, and the idea of a just war, the book draws on milita …

Clio’s Warriors examines how the Canadian world war experience has been constructed and reconstructed over time. Tim Cook elucidates the role of historians in codifying the sacrifice and struggle of a generation as he discusses historical memory and writing, the creation of archives, and the war of reputations that followed each of the world wars …

In Verdun, English and French speakers lived side by side. Through their home-front activities as much as through enlistment, they proved themselves partners in the prosecution of Canada’s war. Shared experiences and class similarities shaped responses based first and foremost in a sense of local identity. Fighting from Home paints a comprehensiv …

Commander A.F.C. Layard, RN, wrote almost daily in his diary, in bold, neat script, from the time he entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1913 until his retirement in 1947. The pivotal 1943-45 years of this edited volume offer an extraordinarily full and honest chronicle, revealing Layard’s preoccupations, both with the daily details and with the …

Historians of the First World War have often dismissed the important role of poison gas in the battles of the Western Front. Tim Cook shows that the serious threat of gas did not disappear with the introduction of gas masks. By 1918, gas shells were used by all armies to deluge the battlefield, and those not instructed with a sound anti-gas doctrin …

The first comprehensive study of naval operations involving North American squadrons in Nova Scotia waters, Frigates and Foremasts offers a masterful analysis of the motives behind the deployment of Royal Navy vessels between 1745 and 1815, and the navy’s role on the Western Atlantic. Interweaving historical analysis with vivid descriptions of pi …

"a fast-paced, highly readable account of one of Canada's major Second World War campaigns." -- Chronicle Herald

"Zuehlke eloquently narrates the intensity of each battle from a Canadian perspective..." -- Toronto Quarterly

"...a story of heroism, endurance and sacrifice by Canada's volunteer army." -- Globe and Mail

The ninth book in the Canadian Bat …

BOOK EIGHT in the Canadian Battle Series.

On to Victory is the little-told story of the tense final days of World War II, remembered in the Netherlands as "the sweetest of springs," which saw the country's liberation from German occupation. The Liberation Campaign, a series of fierce, desperate battles during the last three months of the war, was b …

Wartime secrets and the men charged with manipulating Canadian public opinion are unveiled for the first time in this riveting account of media censorship by the government during World War II.

The Canadian government censored the news during World War II for two main reasons: to keep military and economic secrets out of enemy hands and to prevent c …

In wartime, capturing the hearts and minds of the citizenry is arguably as important as victory on the battlefield. The Information Front explores the Canadian military’s use of public relations units to manage news during the Second World War. These specialized units were responsible for providing sufficient and positive news coverage to Canadia …

An impassioned insider's view of the Canadian soldier's war in Afghanistan and why it matters.

A Line in the Sand takes up where the bestselling Fob Doc left off-this time, with a focus on the Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. What Captain Ray Wiss saw in Afghanistan during his first tour there in 2007-08 convinced him that this conflict was a rare …

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham is one of the pivotal events in North American and global history. This clash between British general James Wolfe and French general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on September 13, 1759, led to the British victory in the Seven Years’ War in North America, which in turn led to the creation of Canada and the United Sta …

This cultural history of the amateur military tradition traces the origins of the citizen soldier ideal from long before Canadians donned khaki and boarded troopships for the Western Front. Before the Great War, Canada’s military culture was in transition as the country navigated an uncertain relationship with the United States and fought an impe …

As the last guns sounded on the Western Front, 4,200 Canadian soldiers, some of them conscripts, travelled from Victoria to Vladivostok to open a new theatre of war in Siberia. Part of the Allied intervention in Russia’s civil war, the force sought to defeat Bolshevism, but grim conditions, conflict among the Allies, and local opposition eventual …

"This volume, and indeed the entire [Canadian Battle] series, can only cement Zuehlke's position as among our foremost chroniclers of Canada at war." -- Globe and Mail

"Zuehlke's signature achievement has been to offer Canadians that missing story. He writes brilliantly...With On to Victory, Zuehlke continues building a canon all his own." -- Quill …

In 1993, Canada’s Liberal Party cancelled an order to replace the navy’s Sea King helicopter. It claimed that the Tory plan was too expensive, but the cancellation itself actually cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Aaron Plamondon connects this incident to the larger evolution of defence procurement in Canada, revealing that partis …

A passion for gardening

First released in 1982, Gardening Under the Arch has long been hailed as the gardening bible for the challenging chinook region of southwestern Alberta. Now, for the first time since its original publication, this hugely successful book has been revised and updated into a full-colour edition by some of its original contributo …