National Network for Equitable Library Service

Nonfiction author Myrna Kostash merges the past and the present in The Frog Lake Reader, which offers a multi-layered perspective on the tragic events surrounding the Frog Lake Massacre of 1885. By bringing together eyewitness accounts and journal excerpts, memoirs and contemporary fiction, and excerpts from interivews with historians, Kostash provides a panoramic view of a tragedy often overshadowed by Louis Riel's rebellion of the same year.

To understand Canada one must understand racism, for Canada was born and grew as a racist state. Race riots, segregated schools, racially-based union membership, mass deportations of innocent people, the state sanctioned kidnapping of children, a conscious attempt at cultural genocide and much more have shaped Canada’s history. Last Steps to Freedom: The Evolution of Canadian Racism encourages Canadians to look truthfully at their past, admit mistakes, atone for crimes and applaud progress. The book is organized chronologically, by region, and by ethnic group.

In this memoir, Lamees Al Ethari traces her transition from an idyllic childhood in a large extended Iraqi family to the relative stability of family exilic life in Canada. Through memory fragments, clips of poetry, diary entries, and her own art, the author reveals the trauma of three senseless wars, a decade of dehumanizing sanctions on an innocent population, the blindness of a dictatorship to the suffering of its own people, and finally their resilience and the humanity they manage to preserve.

The first book to tell the story of Toronto's massive influence on popular music. Part civic history and part memoir from this veteran scene-builder and founder of the acclaimed Wavelength concert series, From the Top charts the evolution of Toronto's diverse independent music scene in the latter half of the 20th century.

An archaeological dig uncovers the secret history of Toronto's long-forgotten first immigrant neighbourhood. In early 2015, a team of archaeologists began digging test trenches on a non-descript parking lot next to Toronto City Hall--a site designated to become a major new court house. What they discovered was the rich buried history of an enclave that was part of The Ward-- that dense, poor, but vibrant 'arrival city' that took shape between the 1840s and the 1950s.

A new and expanded version of Gord Hill's seminal illustrated history of Indigenous struggles in the Americas. When it was first published in 2010, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book was heralded as a groundbreaking illustrated history of Indigenous activism and resistance in the Americas over the previous 500 years, from contact to present day. Eleven years later, author and artist Gord Hill has revised and expanded the book, which is now available in colour for the first time.

The shocking images of neo-Nazis parading in Charlottesville, North Carolina in the summer of 2017 linger in the mind, but so do those of the passionate protestors who risked their lives to do the right thing. In this stirring graphic non-fiction book by the acclaimed author of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, Gord Hill looks at the history of fascism over the last 100 years, and the concurrent antifa movements that work fastidiously to topple it.

In Search of Pure Lust documents an important chapter in lesbian history that is already being distorted and erased, a time when lesbians were reinventing everything from the ground up. Along with violence against women around the globe, lesbians of the 1970s and '80s were motivated by growing militarism, rampant development, species loss, and living systems in decline. For many, this was the logical conclusion to a state of law/mind/rule that had prevailed for thousands of years - patriarchy. This is a long overdue and unvarnished insider's account of those times.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the contributions of the CCF/NDP in Canadian politics. Surveying the field of political history in Canada, one might assume that the politics of the nation have been shaped solely by the Liberal and Conservative parties. This collection remedies this imbalance and critically examines the place of social democracy in Canadian history and politics.

It is not wise to waste the life / Against a stubborn will. / Yet would we die as some have done. / Beating a way for the rising sun wrote Arna Bontemps. In The Day-Breakers, poet Michael Fraser imagines the swords raised and lives lost by the thousands of Black soldiers who fought for the Union during the American Civil War--of whom hundreds were Canadian, fighting for the freedom of their African Brethren.