National Network for Equitable Library Service

Spectacle is usually considered a superficial form of politics, which tries to distract and deceive a passive audience. It is difficult to see how this type of politics could be reconciled with the democratic requirement of active and informed agency. Rethinking the Spectacle re-examines the tension between spectacle and political agency using the ideas and practices of Guy Debord and the Situationist International as a point of departure.

Fragments of culture often become commodities when the tourism and heritage business showcases local artistic and cultural practice. But what happens when local communities become more involved in this cultural marketplace? Incorporating Culture examines how Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs are cultivating more equitable relationships with the companies that reproduce their designs on everyday objects.

Since the 1970s governments in Canada and Australia have introduced policies designed to recruit Indigenous people into public services. Today, there are thousands of Indigenous public servants in these countries, and hundreds in senior roles. Their presence raises numerous questions: How do Indigenous people experience public-sector employment? What perspectives do they bring to it? And how does Indigenous leadership enhance public policy making?

Over the century between the first Oblate mission to the Canadian central Arctic in 1867 and the radical shifts brought about by Vatican II, the region was the site of complex interactions between Inuit, Oblate missionaries, and Grey Nuns - interactions that have not yet received the attention they deserve. Enriching archival sources with oral testimony, Frédéric Laugrand and Jarich Oosten provide an in-depth analysis of conversion, medical care, education, and vocation in the Keewatin region of the Northwest Territories.

When Allison Watson awoke that day, she knew she was in a hospital bed. That's all. She had no idea how much time had passed since she had seen her family. When she tried to focus, her vision was blurry, and when she tried to wave someone down, she became so exhausted she thought she was dying. Hours later, when Watson was able to communicate, she asked a nurse if the news was good or bad. "It's good news," the nurse replied.

Since 1952, CBC television has played a unique role as the primary mass media purveyor of Canadian history. Yet until now, there have been no comprehensive accounts of Canadian history on television. Monica MacDonald takes us behind the scenes of the major documentaries and docudramas broadcast on the CBC, including in Explorations (1956-64) and the series Images of Canada (1972-76), The National Dream (1974), The Valour and the Horror (1992), and Canada: A People's History (2000-02).

For decades, the name Labatt was synonymous with beer in Canada, but no longer. Brewed in the North traces the birth, growth, and demise of one of the nation's oldest and most successful breweries. Opening a window into Canada's complicated relationship with beer, Matthew Bellamy examines the strategic decisions taken by a long line of Labatt family members and professional managers from the 1840s, when John Kinder Labatt entered the business of brewing in the Upper Canadian town of London, to the globalization of the industry in the 1990s.

Canada's Mechanized Infantry explores the development of the Canadian Army's infantry after the First World War. Modern studies of technology and war have tended to focus on tanks and armour, but soldiers discovered that military success really depends on the combination of infantry, armour, and artillery. Peter Kasurak demonstrates how the Canadian army implemented successful infantry vehicles and doctrine to further its military goals during the Second World War until organizational constraints took hold in the postwar period.

Between 1882 and 1930 approximately 9,800 Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settled in Winnipeg. Newly arrived Jewish immigrants began to establish secular mutual aid societies, organizations based on egalitarian principles of communal solidarity that dealt with the pervasive problem of economic insecurity by providing financial relief to their members.

Bridget Donnelly. Charlotte Reveille. Kate Slattery. Emily Boyle. Until now, these were nothing but names marked down in the admittance registers and punishment reports of Kingston Penitentiary, Canada's most notorious prison. In this shocking and heartbreaking book, Ted McCoy tells these women's stories of incarceration and resistance in poignant detail. The four women served sentences at different times over a century, but the inhumanity they suffered was consistent.