National Network for Equitable Library Service

The compelling story of Canada’s Irish pioneers, revealing the enormous scope of their achievements. Beginning in the eighteenth century, an increasing number of Irish people sought the better life that Ontario and Quebec offered. Set free from the stifling economic and social constraints that held them back in their homeland, they prospered. And yet, strangely enough, they continue to be mourned as victims. In this second book of the Irish in Canada series, Lucille Campey takes on the victim-ridden mythology of destitute Irish immigrants fleeing the famine of the 1840s.

Iconic photos from the First World War, newly colourized. See seminal images of Canada’s First World War experience in a new light — offered in full colour for the first time — with contributions from Margaret Atwood, Tim, Cook, Charlotte Gray, Paul Gross, Peter Mansbridge, and many others. Canadians today see the First World War largely through black and white photography. Colourizing these images brings a new focus to our understanding and appreciation of the role Canada played during the First World War.

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.

For Canadians, the First World War was a dynamic period of literary activity. Almost every poet wrote about the war, critics made bold predictions about the legacy of the period’s poetry, and booksellers were told it was their duty to stock shelves with war poetry. Readers bought thousands of volumes of poetry. Twenty years later, by the time Canada went to war again, no one remembered any of it. Battle Lines traces the rise and disappearance of Canadian First World War poetry, and offers a striking and comprehensive account of its varied and vexing poetic gestures.

Avant Canada presents a rich collection of original essays and creative works on a representative array of avant-garde literary movements in Canada from the past fifty years. From the work of Leonard Cohen and bpNichol to that of Jordan Abel and Liz Howard, Avant Canada features twenty-eight of the best writers and critics in the field.

More than a quarter of a century has passed since Canada promised to recognize and respect the rights of children under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ratification of the Convention cannot, however, guarantee that everyone will abandon proprietary notions about children, or that all children will be free to enjoy the substance of their rights in every social and institutional context in which they find themselves, including—and perhaps especially—within families.

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.

Human rights has become the dominant vernacular for framing social problems around the world. In this book, Dominique Clément presents a paradox in politics, law, and social practice: he argues that whereas framing grievances as human rights violations has become an effective strategy, the increasing appropriation of rights-talk to frame any and all grievances undermines attempts to address systemic social problems.

Activating the Heart is an exploration of storytelling as a tool for knowledge production and sharing to build new connections between people and their histories, environments, and cultural geographies. The collection pays particular attention to the significance of storytelling in Indigenous knowledge frameworks and extends into other ways of knowing in works where scholars have embraced narrative and story as a part of their research approach. In the first section, Storytelling to Understand, authors draw on both theoretical and empirical work to examine storytelling as a way of knowing.

Youth are one of the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. Although there has been much research on how youth become homeless and survive on the streets, we know very little about their pathways off the street and the many challenges that present during this process. This book relates the lived experiences of homeless youth as they negotiate the individual, sociocultural, and economic tensions of transitioning out of homeless and street contexts and cultures.