National Network for Equitable Library Service

The cowboy, as perhaps no other figure, has captured the imagination of North Americans for over a century. Before Owen Wister's publication of The Virginian in 1902, the image of the cowboy was essentially that of the dime novel - a rough, violent, one-dimensional drifter, or the stage cowboy variety found in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Wister's novel was to transform, almost overnight, this image of the cowboy.

J. B. (Jack) Taylor (1917-1970) was an important figure in the history of Banff and western Canada’s artistic community. Inspired by the locale, Taylor spent his career striving to depict the idea of the mountain, moving over time from traditional representations of nature to an intuitive perception of the essential elements of landscape - rock, water, and sky. Always, he sought to capture his ideas through the development of a new visual language. He applied this new vernacular to a range of studies encompassing portraiture through to other landscapes.

Marion Nicoll (1909-1985) is a widely acknowledged and important founder of Alberta art and certainly one of a dedicated few that brought abstraction into practice in the province. Her life and career is a story of determination, of dedication to her vision regardless of professional or personal challenges. Nicoll became the first woman instructor hired at the Provincial Institute of Art and Technology (now the Alberta College of Art and Design) - and although limited to teaching craft and design, she became a significant mentor for generations of artists.

Winner / Lauréate, Prix du Canada en sciences sociales, 2015! http://www.ideas-idees.ca/media/media-releases/winners-canada-prizes-an… Finaliste de langue française, Essais, des Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général de 2013!

Wilderness and Waterpower: How Banff National Park Became a Hydroelectric Storage Reservoir explores how the need for electricity at the turn of the century affected and shaped Banff National Park. Today's conservationists and energy researchers will find much to think about in this tale of Alberta's early need for electricity, entrepreneurial greed, debates over aboriginal ownership of the river, moving park boundaries to accommodate hydro-electric initiatives, the importance of water for tourism, rural electrification, and the ultimate diversion to coal-produced electricity.

The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901-1977 is the first biography of one of Canada's most remarkable botanists. Alf Erling Porsild (1901-1977) grew up on the Arctic Station in West Greenland and later served as curator of botany at the National Museum of Canada. He collected thousands of specimens, greatly enlarging the National Herbarium and making it a superb research centre.

What is family? Citing national security and societal welfare, the Harper government adopted a strict definition of family to limit access to citizenship for certain immigrants.

Problems – of integration, failed political participation, and requests for various kinds of accommodation – seem to dominate the research on minority Muslims in Western nations. Beyond Accommodation offers a different perspective, showing how Muslim Canadians successfully navigate and negotiate their religiosity. The authors critique the model of reasonable accommodation, suggesting that it disempowers religious minorities by implicitly privileging Christianity and by placing the onus on minorities to make formal requests for accommodation.

The literature about postsecondary education in British Columbia has largely focused on public colleges and universities, while paying less attention to vocational colleges, apprenticeship, continuing education, and private institutions. Robert Cowin addresses that gap. He provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the contemporary provincial postsecondary system and examines the role of social justice, human capital formation, and marketization during five significant transitions.

Media for diasporic communities have emerged in major cities and reflect a multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual reality. But do these media serve their respective communities exclusively, or are they available and accessible to members of greater society at large? Diasporic Media beyond the Diaspora explores structural and institutional challenges and opportunities for these media and suggests policy directions with the aim of fostering broader intercultural dialogue.