National Network for Equitable Library Service

In Luther H. Holton: A Founding Canadian Entrepreneur, Henry Klassen has made accessible the story of one of early Montreal's most remarkable citizens. Rising from humble origins, Luther H. Holton became an entrepreneur extraordinaire, with interests in real estate, railway building, steamboats, and banking. From the success of his various business ventures, Holton moved easily into the world of politics.

Magic Off Main chronicles the life and art of Esther Warkov, a visual artist of Jewish heritage who lives in Winnipeg and paints in a surrealistic and postmodern style. It considers Warkov's art through an understanding of her life and the palpable effect her life as a Jewish woman growing up on the Canadian prairies has had on her art. By tracing the development of Warkov's art over forty years, Rasporich addresses aspects of biography, social and cultural history, and art history in a cohesive volume.

Through a unique combination of biography, memoir, and autobiography, Cherie Smith traces four generations of her immigrant family and, in doing so, charts the very course of Russian-Jewish immigration to the Canadian prairies over the last one hundred years. Mendel's Children: A Family Chronicle begins in the shtetles of Poland and Latvia in the 1890s and follows an often wild and woolly assortment of relatives as they strive to become Canadians.

Myth of the Barrens is a true account of a young Metis woman's discovery of the land and ancient spirits of the Canadian North. Bren Kolson travels with a Dene elder in winter across the Barrens, entering a world in which the landscape is both physical and spiritual -- the sacred land of the ancestors. Kolson vividly describes the challenges that lead her to a deeper understanding of both the land and herself, as she discovers how to not only survive but to thrive in this seemingly inhospitable landscape.

Sam Steele, “the man who tamed the Gold Rush,” had a high-profile public career, yet his private life has been closely protected. Sam Steele: A Biography follows Steele’s rise from farm boy in backwoods Ontario to the much-lauded Major General Sir Samuel Benfield Steele.

This well-paced narrative recounts the story of the great Sioux chief Sitting Bull's retreat into Canada after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The story tells of the respect that developed between the fierce warrior and the celebrated Mountie Major James Walsh.

Translated from personal memoirs and diaries, this is a compelling story of Anthony Hlynka, the only sitting Member of Parliament of Ukrainian origin from 1940 to 1945. Representing the constituency of Vegreville, Alberta, for the Social Credit party, Hlynka was a high-profile Member of Parliament who garnered much attention from the English-language press. He was instrumental in raising awareness of human rights issues and the plight of displaced persons following the Second World War and was a major supporter of the so-called third wave of Ukrainian immigrants to Canada.

During a time of two world wars and a sluggish world economy, many Northern Europeans left their homelands to build the American and Canadian West with dreams of abundance and new life. Spanning a period from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, To Be a Cowboy recounts the dreams and realities of a father and a son. Otto Christensen came to North America in the early 1900s as an indentured farm worker from Denmark with a dream of becoming a successful farmer in Alberta.

From the best-selling author of The Invention of Nature comes an exhilarating story about a remarkable group of young rebels—poets, novelists, philosophers—who, through their epic quarrels, passionate love stories, heartbreaking grief, and radical ideas launched Romanticism onto the world stage, inspiring some of the greatest thinkers of the time.

Anna LeBaron's father was wanted by the FBI for killing anyone who tried to leave his radical polygamist cult. Anna escaped when she was thirteen, but the nightmare was not over. This true story of murder, fear, and betrayal is also the heart-cry of a fatherless girl and her search for home.