National Network for Equitable Library Service

The achievement of the vote in 1918 is often celebrated as a triumphant moment in the onward, upward advancement of Canadian women. Acclaimed historian Joan Sangster looks beyond the shiny rhetoric of anniversary celebrations and Heritage Minutes to show that the struggle for equality included gains and losses, inclusions and exclusions, depending on a woman’s race, class, and location within the nation.

The idea of political unity contains its own opposite, because a political community can never guarantee the equal status of all its members. The price of belonging is an entrenched social stratification within the political unit itself. This book explores how the desire for political unity generates a collective commitment to certain lived fictions – the citizen-state, the market economy, and so forth – that shape our understanding of political legitimacy and responsibility.

Whatever deficits remain in the Canadian project to make justice available to all, class actions have been heralded as a success. They have been employed over the past several decades to overcome barriers to justice for those who would otherwise have no recourse to the courts. First proposing a conceptualization of access to justice that moves beyond mere access to a court procedure, leading expert Jasminka Kalajdzic then methodically assesses survey data and case studies to determine how class action practice fulfills or falls short of its objectives.

Breaching the Peace tells the story of the ordinary citizens who are standing up to the most expensive megaproject in BC history and the government-sanctioned bullying that has propelled it forward. Starting in 2013, journalist Sarah Cox travelled to the Peace River Valley to talk to locals about the Site C dam and BC Hydro’s claim that the clean energy project was urgently needed. She found farmers, First Nations, and scientists caught up in a modern-day David-and-Goliath battle to save the valley, their farms, and traditional lands from wholesale destruction.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau – radical progressive or unavowed socialist? His legacy remains divisive. The Constant Liberal traces the charismatic politician’s relationship with the left and labour movements throughout his career. Christo Aivalis argues that Trudeau was in fact a consistently classic liberal, driven by individualist and capitalist principles. This comprehensive analysis showcases the interplay between liberalism and democratic socialism that defined Trudeau’s world view – and shaped his use of power.

As the nineteenth century ended, the popularity of sport hunting grew and Ontario wildlife became increasingly valuable. Restrictions were imposed on hunting and trapping, completely ignoring Anishinaabeg hunting rights set out in the Robinson Treaties of 1850. Who Controls the Hunt? examines how Ontario's emerging wildlife conservation laws failed to reconcile First Nations treaty rights and the power of the state.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission urged a better understanding of Aboriginal law for all Canadians. This book responds to that call, outlining significant legal developments in straightforward, non-technical language. Jim Reynolds provides the historical context needed to understand the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers and explains key topics such as sovereignty, fiduciary duties, the honour of the Crown, Aboriginal rights and title, treaties, the duty to consult, Indigenous laws, and international law.

In the 1950s and ’60s, co-operative jazz clubs opened their doors in Canada in response to new forms of jazz expression emerging after the war and the lack of performance spaces outside major urban centres. Operated by the musicians themselves, these hip new clubs created spaces where jazz musicians practised their art. Live at the Cellar looks at this unique period in the development of jazz in Canada.

What has it meant to be a man in Canada? Percy Nobbs, architect, fisherman, fencer; Andy Paull, residential school survivor and athlete; Yves Charbonneau, jazz musician and commune member; “James,” black and gay in postwar Windsor. Who were these men, and how did they identify as masculine? Populated with figures both well known and unknown, Making Men, Making History reveals the dissonance between ideals of manhood and masculinity and the everyday lives of Canadian men and boys.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Canada v. Bedford that key prostitution laws were unconstitutional. Red Light Labour addresses the new legal regime regulating sex work by analyzing how laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their clients, and their workspaces. This groundbreaking collection also offers nuanced interpretations of commercial sexual labour from the perspectives of workers, activists, and researchers.