Early depictions of the West Coast were no more than cartographers’ fanciful guesses. Not until the discovery of “soft gold”—sea otter pelts—and the quest to find a Northwest Passage did explorations, such as the epic voyage of George Vancouver, lead to a better understanding of the region’s geography. Even so, until the gold rush of 18 …

The characters of Moccasin Square Gardens inhabit Denendeh, the land of the people north of the sixtieth parallel. These stories are filled with in-laws, outlaws and common-laws. Get ready for illegal wrestling moves (“The Camel Clutch”), pinky promises, a doctored casino, extraterrestrials or “Sky People,” love, lust and prayers for peace. …

Lieutenant Lena Stillman has been left, nearly alone, on her code-breaking mission in remote Alaska. World War II has been over for a month, but due to crimes committed a lifetime ago, Lena is still under the control of the powerful Miss Maggie, her spymaster in Washington, DC.

Shaken by her role in the disappearance of Corporal Link Hughes, Lena ye …

Although Emily Carr is now considered a Canadian legend, the most enduring image is that of her pushing a beat-up old pram into downtown Victoria, loaded with dogs, cats, birds—and a monkey. Woo, a Javanese macaque whom Carr adopted in 1923, has become inextricably linked with Carr in the popular imagination. But more than that, in her short life …

After the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885—construction of the western stretch was largely built by Chinese workers—the Canadian government imposed a punitive head tax to deter Chinese citizens from coming to Canada. The exorbitant tax strongly discouraged those who had already emigrated from sending for wives and children left in …

In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included—her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she …

Science has made huge leaps in prolonging life through disease prevention and treatment, but microbiologist Brett Finlay and gerontologist Jessica Finlay offer a different—and truly revolutionary—approach to the quest for the fountain of youth.

Microbes are the oldest and smallest forms of life on earth, and encompass bacteria, viruses, protozoa …

Wolves were once common throughout North America and Eurasia. But by the early twentieth century, bounties and organized hunts had drastically reduced their numbers. Today, the wolf is returning to its ancestral territories, and the “coywolf”—a smaller, bolder wolf-coyote hybrid—is becoming more common. In Return of the Wolf, author Paula W …

In late 2013, Canadians were intrigued to learn the NHL chose Rogers as its exclusive national broadcaster over both CBC and Rogers’s bitter rival, Bell Canada. The decision was met with equal parts fascination, shock and anger. When CBC rank-and-file employees came to believe their leaders missed a chance to hold on to at least a part of Hockey …

Growing up in the tiny village of Smith, Alberta, Darrel J. McLeod was surrounded by his Cree family’s history. In shifting and unpredictable stories, his mother, Bertha, shared narratives of their culture, their family and the cruelty that she and her sisters endured in residential school. McLeod was comforted by her presence and that of his man …

The NHL is a young man’s league. How young? Connor McDavid was twenty years old when he won the scoring title and MVP in 2017. Auston Matthews was still a nineteen-year-old rookie when he tied for second in the Rocket Richard Trophy race with forty goals. By the end of the NHL’s hundredth season, eight of the top thirty scorers—including four …

In the 1840s, a young cowkeeper and his wife arrive in London, England, having walked from coastal Wales with their cattle. They hope to escape poverty, but instead they plunge deeper into it, and the family, ensconced in one of London’s “black holes,” remains mired there for generations. The Cowkeeper’s Wish follows the couple’s descenda …

How often do you hear a doctor saying doctors need to be more accountable, Medicare needs more support and family medicine deserves more respect? Dissident Doctor bristles with refreshingly frank criticisms from inside the health sector, and its author is not just any doctor but a distinguished scientific researcher, veteran medical administrator, …

Ever since the accident, ex-cop Tom Parsons’s life has been crumbling around him: his marriage and career have fallen apart, his grown children barely speak to him, and he can’t escape the dark thoughts plaguing his mind. Leaving the urban misery of Winnipeg, he tries to remake himself in the small lakeside town of Valhalla, with its picturesqu …

This frank and authoritative biography explores the life and often controversial work of W.P. Kinsella, the author who penned iconic lines such as “If you build it, he will come.” Kinsella’s work was thrust into the limelight when, in the spring of 1989, his novel Shoeless Joe was turned into the international blockbuster Field of Dreams.

With …

Never before have individuals faced so much conflicting information about how to be healthy: a constant rotation of fad diets, extreme workout regimens and celebrity-endorsed supplements are regularly hyped as the latest cure for all modern ills. We also maintain a massive health care system that absorbs a steadily growing share of public spending. …

G is for #gluten, which Mom says is bad.

H is for #hipster, just look at your Dad.

With twenty-six Instagram-style photos accompanied by sharp and witty rhyming couplets, this sturdy abecedarian board book is baby’s first glimpse at the world they will one day grow up to inhabit—a world of hashtags, memes, manbuns, quinoa and organically sourced …

Just over fifty years ago, China’s Cultural Revolution began. The movement was intended to bring about a return to revolutionary Maoist beliefs and resulted in attacks on intellectuals and those believed to be counter-revolutionaries, capitalists and rightists; a large-scale purge in government posts; the appearance of a personality cult around M …

Alok Mukherjee was the civilian overseer of the Toronto police between 2005 and 2015, during the most tumultuous decade the force had ever faced. In this provocative and highly readable collaboration with Tim Harper, former Toronto Star national affairs columnist, Mukherjee reveals how Police Chief Bill Blair changed the channel after the police-ki …

Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he’s a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he’s sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find it only through telling his story. With him, readers embark on a journey back …

Growing your own food continues to gain popularity, but planting and tending vegetables every year certainly requires more effort than the ease of maintaining a backyard full of well-established hardy perennials. Now, with the help of this volume, gardeners can have the best of both worlds by planning a garden full of edible perennials that are bot …

Norval Morrisseau (1932–2007), Ojibway shaman-artist, drew his first sketches at age six in the sand on the shores of Lake Nipigon, and his first paintings were in cheap watercolour on birch bark and moose hide. By the end of his tumultuous life, the prolific self-taught artist was sought by collectors, imitated by forgers and received the Order …

Of the many resources available to the First Nations of the Northwest Coast, the most vital was fish. The people devised ingenious ways of catching the different species of fish, creating a technology vastly different from that of today’s industrial world. With attention to clarity and detail, Hilary Stewart illustrates their hooks, lines, sinker …

Frank Palmer is a legend in the Canadian advertising world. He not only developed Palmer Jarvis, one of the country’s most acclaimed marketing communications agencies (and then became chairman and CEO of DDB Canada after selling Palmer Jarvis to the multinational ad giant), he is also credited with changing the face of Canadian advertising.

“He� …

Bravo for tomatoes, beans and kale. But what’s next for the ardent home gardener? Wheats, including farro, spelt and kamut, are surprisingly easy and very rewarding backyard crops. They can be planted as early as the ground can be worked in spring and harvested mid-summer to make room for fall crops. These ancient food sources can be milled for f …

Found in public spaces and parks, art galleries and university buildings, along riverbanks as well as in city squares, private gardens and even underwater, Canadian sculpture encompasses a range of materials and styles from traditional bone and bronze to postmodern multimedia installations. As this book demonstrates, artistic intentions among the n …

They thought of themselves as the "Cinderella Army," and international correspondents agreed. This was because First Canadian Army had been relegated to the left flank of the Allied advance toward Germany from the Normandy beaches and given the tough, thankless task of opening the Channel ports from Le Havre to Ostend in Belgium. Then suddenly in e …

The Great Northern Expedition was the most ambitious and well-financed scientific expedition in history. Lasting nearly ten years and spanning three continents, its geographical, cartographical and natural history accomplishments are on par with James Cook's famous voyages, the scientific circumnavigations of Alessandro Malaspina and Louis Antoine …

"This is the account of twenty-three years of wilderness wandering, sea voyages and overland treks to survey the earth, with no home or possessions other than what fit in my trusty backpack. There was no specific destination in mind except to visit countries, not the airports and luxury hotels but the country itself, to experience local culture and …

Tabatha Southey is possessed of the wisdom of the ages. She understands the psychological struggles of shadowy Russian pee traffickers. She recognizes the PR benefits of puppy-throwing. She has deeply considered the moral quandaries presented by sea-slug penises. She even knows her own bra size (really, please stop asking).

Collected Tarts and Othe …

Vancouver is in an uproar over the death by gunshot of a Scottish nanny, Janet Stewart. An almost deliberately ham-handed police investigation has Constable Hook suspecting a cover-up. The powerful United Council of Scottish Societies is demanding an inquiry. The killing has become a political issue with an election not far away.

The city is buzzing …

In a sense the very earliest railways were simply ruts caused by the passage of carts on softer ground. Railways of this nature may have been in use as early as 2200 BCE. But railways became a worldwide economic force only in the middle of the nineteenth century, some forty or fifty years after the first demonstration of a mechanically powered trai …

"In this new collection Gaston's range is so wide, his technique so masterful, his tenderness, humour and intelligence so finely measured that he stops my heart."

--Barbara Gowdy

A Mariner's Guide to Self Sabotage is populated by the lonely and alienated, holders of secrets, members (or would-be members) of shadowy organizations, screw-ups, joyrider …

Author and playwright Dan Needles has long delighted readers and audiences alike with his insightful and laugh-out-loud perspective on small-town life, published in such bestselling books as Wingfield's World (Random House, 2011), Wingfield's Hope (Key Porter, 2005), With Axe and Flask (McFarlane, Walter and Ross, 2002) and Letters From Wingfield F …

Given that Canada has the longest coastline in the world and its motto is "From Sea unto Sea," it is not surprising that virtually every Canadian writer has been inspired to write about some aspect of the sea at some point in their work. As this book shows, those watery passages are some of the very best writing the nation has produced. Journeying …

At first, Canadians showed little interest in marking the centennial. The announcement of a federal program to plan the celebration was met with initial indifference. After all, the event to be celebrated was spectacularly uninteresting—the nation was founded not in blood and revolution, but by discussion and negotiation, bewhiskered men in ninet …

For years, the prospect of parliamentary reform has been a hot-button issue in Canada. More and more Canadians find themselves frustrated with how Parliament works (or doesn't) and end up increasingly checked out from politics as a whole, feeling like their voices don't matter to those in power.

When he introduced the "Reform Act" bill in 2013, Cons …

Dirty Windshields is the long-awaited memoir from CBC host and award-winning author Grant Lawrence, baring all the salacious and hilarious details from his touring days as the lead singer of Vancouver-based rock and roll band The Smugglers.

Formed when most of the members were still in high school, The Smugglers came of age during the height of the …

Health issues have long occupied top headlines in Canadian media, and no journalist has written on public health with more authority or for as many years as André Picard. Matters of Life and Death collects Picard's most compelling columns, covering a broad range of topics including Canada's right-to-die law, the true risks of the Zika virus, the f …

Within forty-eight hours in the fall of 2014, buyers in the Sotheby’s and Christie’s New York auction houses spent $1.7 billion on contemporary art. Non-taxed freeport warehouses around the globe are stacked with art held for speculation. One of Jeff Koons’ five chromium-plated stainless steel balloon dogs sold for 50 percent more at auction …

A former undetected outlaw who ran with Bill Bagley’s notorious gang during the Depression, Lena Stillman is now an elite codebreaker in a position to know the nation’s strategic secrets. Good under pressure, good at keeping her mouth shut, Lena never had trouble keeping her double lives compartmentalized—at least not until Bill is sentenced …

The key to a carefree garden is to know which plants will thrive under local conditions and which ones are better left at the nursery. With watering restrictions becoming increasingly common, and rising concerns about exotic invasive species, gardeners have to be savvy about plant selection, making native plants both a practical and ecological choi …

When Corin and Brian Mullins started their company, HapiFoods, in 2009 with just $129, they had no idea that in less than a decade they would be shipping millions of bags of cereals around the world. They just wanted to make a nourishing product that would both taste good and be compatible with Brian's food allergies—and perhaps sell it locally f …

"Life sometimes is hard. There are challenges. There are difficulties. There is pain. As a younger man I sought to avoid them and only ever caused myself more of the same. These days I choose to face life head on--and I have become a comet. I arc across the sky of my life and the harder times are the friction that lets the worn and tired bits drop …

Inspired by artists such as Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who wrote that great photographs come about in the decisive moment when the head, heart and eye find perfect alignment in an axis of the spirit, celebrated anthropologist and photographer Wade Davis has travelled the world in pursuit of the wonder of the human imag …

"Based on extensive interviewing, this is what used to be called a cracking good read, and Bashow, a Canadian Forces fighter pilot himself, can understand the emotions and reactions of his forebears."

--Quill & Quire

During the six years of the Second World War, Canadian fighter pilots flew and fought with great distinction in every theatre of war to …

A forgotten Haudenosaunee social song beams into the cosmos like a homing beacon for interstellar visitors. A computer learns to feel sadness and grief from the history of atrocities committed against First Nations. A young Native man discovers the secret to time travel in ancient petroglyphs. Drawing inspiration from science fiction legends like A …

Naive and talented, Hana Knight is a young classical pianist who has been gifted with a musical upbringing, a magnificent Steinway piano, a place at Juilliard and a patron who arranges everything, from her Manhattan apartment to her first European tour.

In the midst of her meteoric career, Hana becomes increasingly aware of an unusual follower, a h …

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and the subsequent capitulation of Quebec set the stage for an equally significant French-British engagement in the struggle for northeastern North America, the Battle of Sainte-Foy.

In the spring of 1760, after having suffered a brutal winter, Quebec garrison commander James Murray's troops were vulnerab …

From the early days of exploration and settlement through the building of a nation to Canada’s contribution to the two world wars, this illustrated history of Canada conveys the drama and scope of the nation’s past. Through accessible commentary and a wealth of images, readers discover well-known and lesser-known facets of Canadian history, inc …