National Network for Equitable Library Service

2014 Forest of Reading, White Pine Award — Winner, Nonfiction The true story of how a young Québécois nun ended up a prisoner of war in Buchenwald and how her daughter discovered her secrets. In this true story, Armande Martel, a young nun from Quebec, is arrested by the Germans in 1940 during a stay at her religious order’s mother house in Brittany. She spends the war years in a German concentration camp. After her return to Canada, she leaves the Church, finds the love of her life in Montreal, and adopts Lise Dion.

The first comprehensive biography of Canada’s third-highest- scoring ace in the First World War. Ever wondered what it would be like to fly a biplane or triplane in the First World War? Raymond Collishaw and the Black Flight takes you to the Western Front during the Great War. Experience the risks of combat and the many close calls Collishaw had as a pilot, flight commander, and squadron leader.

A doctor grapples with the challenges of mother and child health in the developing world. Recounting medical missions in half of the thirty countries in which she has worked for the past twenty-five years in Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific - from Darfur in Sudan to Papua New Guinea and Bhutan - Dr.

A vocal coach who has been in the vanguard of classical music in Canada for more than six decades. Stuart Hamilton is a well-known Canadian musician who has been in the forefront of music in Canada for more than 60 years. Here, in this memoir, he recounts his sometimes hectic assault on the Canadian music world. Along the way, Hamilton encountered, as a vocal coach and accompanist, most of the great Canadian singers of the last half of the 20th century, and some international ones as well. For 27 years Hamilton was an erudite and funny personality on CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera.

Once people encounter the natural world and become aware of its intricacy, fragility, beauty, and significance, they will recognize the need for conservation. The fascinating development of natural history studies in North America is portrayed through the life stories of 22 naturalists.

The colourful story of Don Harron’s 77-year career in the entertainment business. After 15 books about somebody else (mostly alter ego Charlie Farquharson) plus one book by his drag-queen character, Charlie’s rich city cousin Valerie Rosedale, Don Harron now presents the story of his 77-year stint in the entertainment business.

When Marjorie’s daughter began exploring archival records involving Britain’s child-migration program, a home-child saga emerged. Marjorie Arnison was one of the thousands of children removed from their families, communities, and country and placed in a British colony or commonwealth to provide "white stock" and cheap labour. In Marjorie’s case, she was sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, just north of Victoria, British Columbia, in 1937. As a child, Patricia was angered that her mother wouldn’t talk about the past.

An insider’s view of the opera world from one of its greatest figures. Everything about opera is larger than life, but the bigger the art form, the bigger the potential for disaster. When things go wrong at the opera house, they really go wrong. No one has a greater or more intimate knowledge of such moments than Lotfi Mansouri. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, Mansouri has directed nearly 500 productions at major opera houses around the globe.

Short-listed for the 2000 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction Norman "Red" Ryan was a notorious bank robber, safecracker, and killer. He escaped from Kingston Penitentiary twice - first by force, and then years later by gulling the credulous into believing that he was "reformed." The dupes of Ryan’s second emancipation included the prison’s Roman Catholic chaplain, several nationally prominent citizens, the country’s largest newspaper, and, ultimately, R.B.

Samuel Edward Weir Q.C. (1898-1981), a man both loved and reviled with scorn, was born in London, Ontario. Descended from pioneer stock, with roots in both Ireland and Germany, Samuel Weir possessed incisive wit, exceptional intelligence and a passionate zest for any subject that caught his eye. Over a period of sixty years he built an extraordinary collection of approximately one thousand works of outstanding art and sculpture.