National Network for Equitable Library Service

The incredible story of the “King of the Pirates,” who burst from the waters of early Canada to become a terror of the seas. He was tall, dark, and handsome, he wore fine velvets and lace, and in four tumultuous years he tore the guts out of the Atlantic. Bartholomew Roberts took over four hundred ships and rarely lost a fight at sea in his short, spectacular reign. Black Flag of the North tells the story of Roberts’s dramatic life, from his boyhood in rural South Wales through his days at sea in the slave trade.

When Sean Mallen finally landed his dream job, it fell on him like a ton of bricks.Not unlike the plaster in his crappy, overpriced London flat. The veteran journalist was ecstatic when he unexpectedly got the chance he’d always craved: to be a London-based foreign correspondent. It meant living in a great city and covering great events, starting with the Royal Wedding of William and Kate. Except: his tearful wife and six-year-old daughter hated the idea of uprooting their lives and moving to another country.

Her family broken apart and her identity taken away, she had to forget her past in order to face her future. But forgetting isn’t forever. Taken from their mother’s care and deported from England to the colonies, ten-year-old Marjorie Arnison and her nine-year-old brother, Kenny, were sent to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School on Vancouver Island in September 1937. Their eight-year-old sister, Audrey, followed the next August.

Bird-Bent Grass chronicles an extraordinary mother–daughter relationship that spans distance, time, and, eventually, debilitating illness. Personal, familial, and political narratives unfold through the letters that Geeske Venema-de Jong and her daughter Kathleen exchanged during the late 1980s and through their weekly conversations, which started after Geeske was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease twenty years later. In 1986, Kathleen accepted a three-year teaching assignment in Uganda, after a devastating civil war, and Geeske promised to be her daughter’s most faithful correspondent.

Thomas Chapais is one of the great French-Canadian political and intellectual figures of the beginning of the 20th century. Appointed to the Legislative Council of Quebec in 1892, then to the Senate of Canada in 1919, he played a leading role in the debates on educational reform in Quebec as well as in the Manitoba and Ontario school crises.  Notwithstanding, he is mainly remembered today as a historian and not as a politician.

David Culver, figure clé tant du milieu des affaires que du milieu culturel canadien, raconte son enfance à Montréal, ses études aux universités McGill et Harvard et son service militaire pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Il décrit surtout sa spectaculaire ascension au sein d’Alcan, jusqu’à accéder au poste de président-directeur général, devenant du coup le chef d’une des plus grandes sociétés multinationales du Canada, dont le siège social était à Montréal.  Ces mémoires lèvent le voile sur la gestion d’une multinationale bien enracinée en sol québécois.

Major General Sir Isaac Brock is remembered as the Hero of Upper Canada for his defence of what is now Ontario during the War of 1812, and also for his noble death at the Battle of Queenston Heights. In the more than two centuries since then, Brock’s likeness has been lost in a confusing array of portraits-most of which are misidentified or conceptual. The 1824 monument constructed to honour Brock’s sacrifice was destroyed in 1840 by Benjamin Lett, a disgruntled disciple of William Lyon Mackenzie and critic of the Upper Canadian elite.

The Writing on the Wall tells the story of artist, curator, writer and activist Dr. Joane Cardinal-Schubert, RCA. Although never claiming to be political and rejecting a feminist label, Cardinal-Schubert's work recognizes that the personal lived life of an Indigenous Canadian woman has social and political ramifications. During her time in the physical realm, Cardinal-Schubert supported and mentored those who struggled with the legacies of colonial histories and educated those who were unaware of how this system affected them.

In Whose Man in Havana? the author offers an unconventional, often dark, but more often hilarious view of diplomacy in settings as varied as Haiti, London, the Dominican Republic, the Balkans, Palestine, Paraguay, Guyana, and Kyrgyzstan, including covert monitoring of Soviet military operations in Cuba on behalf of the CIA with the blessing of President Kennedy and Prime Minister Pearson. In a career that spans the Canadian foreign service and international organizations, he was fortunate to be in the right place at interesting, if turbulent, times.

Architectural practice in post-World War II Canada brought substantial change to the face of the Canadian built environment, led by the contribution of John C. Parkin. As senior partner at the Toronto-based architectural firm John B. Parkin Associates (no relation) from 1947 to the 1970s, Parkin oversaw the creation of a large number of modernist projects, including hospitals, airports, schools, shopping malls, and factories, and received national recognition for his contributions. This richly illustrated book includes an interview with John C.