National Network for Equitable Library Service

In 1970, when he travelling in Spain as an 18-year-old, David Homel took a false step and ended up in pieces at the foot of a cliff. After a spell in a Spanish hospital, he was gathered up in the arms of a nearby US military hospital where he began a long march back toward life, through botched surgeries, opiate addiction, and the loneliness of being a crippled traveler. Many years later, living in Montreal with growing pain and incapacity, he made an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon who gave him advice to live by.

What does diversity mean for the Quebec identity? Who gets to consider themselves a Quebecer? The author, a young journalist who moved to Quebec City from Saskatchewan, has some critical questions for the adopted province she loves. Are Quebecers less tolerant than other Canadians? Ongoing debate about secularism and religious symbols has led many observers to ask that very question. Premier François Legault denies that racism or Islamophobia exists, even after gunman Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire in a Quebec City mosque in 2017, killing six people and wounding 19 others.

Stanley Péan's Taximan is the trace, the record of exile from Haiti. It is also a portrait of urban North America through its displaced people who, despite their native sadness, turn up the music and drive.

Montreal writer Dany Laferrière became "Immortal" in 2015, when he was inducted into the Académie française, the highest honour in all French literature. In these wide-ranging interviews with Adam Leith Gollner, portions of which were originally published in The Paris Review, Laferrière reveals how his life and his writing are inseparable, discussing everything from his breakout debut, How To Make Love To a Negro Without Getting Tired, to the extraordinary success of more recent novels such as The Return and I Am a Japanese Writer.

Steve Dangle's incredible odyssey, from self-starting Leafs lover to sports-media star How do you turn ranting about hockey into a career? Steve "Dangle" Glynn is a YouTuber, podcaster, and sports personality from Toronto, who managed to turn a 16-second online rant about the Maple Leafs into a career in sports media. From video blogging in his parents' house at 19 to yelling on televisions across Canada at 28, Dangle has been involved with some of the most important sports companies in the country.

Comedian Shawn Hitchins explores his irreverent nature in this debut collection of essays. Hitchins doesn't shy away from his failures or celebrate his mild successes--he sacrifices them for an audience's amusement. He roasts his younger self, the effeminate ginger-haired kid with a competitive streak. The ups and downs of being a sperm donor to a lesbian couple. Then the fiery redhead professes his love for actress Shelley Long, declares his hatred of musical theatre, and recounts a summer spent in Provincetown working as a drag queen. Nothing is sacred.

Dysentery, drunken soldiers, and corrupt officials provide the background for Neil Peart's physical and spiritual cycling journey through West Africa. The prolific drummer for the rock band Rush travels through African villages, both large and small, and relates his story through photographs, journal entries, and tales of adventure, while simultaneously addressing issues such as differences in culture, psychology, and labels.

Making advanced stats simple, practical, and fun for hockey fans Advanced stats give hockey's powerbrokers an edge, and now fans can get in on the action. Stat Shot is a fun and informative guide hockey fans can use to understand and enjoy what analytics says about team building, a player's junior numbers, measuring faceoff success, recording save percentage, the most one-sided trades in history, and everything you ever wanted to know about shot-based metrics.

The music of Frank Sinatra, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and many other artists provides the score to the reflections of a musician on the road in this memoir of Neil Peart's travels from Los Angeles to Big Bend National Park. The emotional associations and stories behind each album Peart plays guide his recollections of his childhood on Lake Ontario, the first bands that he performed with, and his travels with the band Rush.

In the summer of 2016, more than a third of Canadians tuned in to watch what was likely the Tragically Hip's final performance, broadcast from their hometown of Kingston, Ontario. Why? Because these five men were always more than just a band. They sold millions of records and defined a generation of Canadian rock music. But they were also a tabula rasa onto which fans could project their own ideas: of performance, of poetry, of history, of Canada itself.