National Network for Equitable Library Service

Short-listedfor the 2005 Ottawa Book Award for Non-fiction Soldier, sailor, adventurer, and philosopher, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville was a talented French officer whose remarkable career took him from the boudoirs of Paris to the flintlock battlefields of North America and on to the luch islands of the South Pacific. In this lively biography, author Victor Suthren follows Bougainville’s career in North America during the Seven Years War and the American Revolution and his adventures in the South Seas.

Why write in the first place, other than your grocery list? Eric Nicol believes it's the second-most satisfying thing you can do lying down. But it's not enough to want to write. You must need to write. Now, after more than seventy years of scribbling – he wrote for the school newspaper at Lord Byng High School in Vancouver, British Columbia – Eric holds forth on dangling participles, punctuation, and literary jargon.

Poet, travel writer, teacher, quiz-show presenter, broadcaster, adventurer - Kildare Dobbs has played many parts, met many people, and been many places. His life journey, marked by frequent diversions and detours, reflects the exuberant eclecticism of the man himself. In Kildare Dobbs: A Writer's Life, Dobbs takes us from a gas-lit big-house childhood in 1930s Tipperary, to college days at Cambridge, to commando training and naval service in the Second World War.

In his eightieth year, Lord Rowallan has finally completed this autobiography. This is a book both moving and modest. He shares with us his joys and sorrows alike, keeping nothing back, yet never causing us embarrassment. He has inspired many people, especially the young, by his life, his unswerving standards, and his indomitable faith; and this, his testament, will surely do the same.

For almost twelve years, Jean Beaulne was a member of the Baronets "the Beatles of Quebec" along with René Angélil. In this book, he has collaborated with writer and journalist Jean Beaunoyer to tell the untold story of René Angélil and Céline Dion. Previously unknown details of René Angélil’s personal and professional life are revealed in this unprecedented investigation into the man who orchestrated one of the foremost successes in the history of show business.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canada’s most beloved author, not only gave the world the classic novel Anne of Green Gables, but she was also a devoted minister’s wife, mother, neighbour, and friend to many, who in turn were honoured to have know this great lady. In Remembering Lucy Maud Montgomery, the writer is remembered through first-hand reminiscences of the people who knew her. Her Sunday school students, neighbours, maids, family, and friends paint a portrait of Montgomery as she has never before been seen.

In the early 1850s, white American abolitionist Benjamin Drew was commissioned to travel to Canada West (now Ontario) to interview escaped slaves from the United States. At the time the population of Canada West was just short of a million and about 30,000 black people lived in the colony, most of whom were escaped slaves from south of the border. One of the people Drew interviewed was Harriet Tubman, who was then based in St. Catharines but made several trips to the U.S.

Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother 1900 - 2002 presents the life of a remarkable woman. A Canadian perspective on a sovereign who created and cultivated a special relationship with Canada, it is the portrait of a queen who always evoked passionate reactions.

"Princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact" -- so said the nineteenth-century writer Walter Bagehot. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary. This love story of the world's most famous couple presents a thematic look at the most outstandingly successful marriage of recent times. This illustrated study explores the pressures and stresses of living life in the glare of public scrutiny.

In 1878, Glasgow shoemaker William Quarrier founded an organization that offered help to the thousands of desperate, poverty-stricken children in Glasgow’s infamous slums. A few years later Quarrier’s Village was opened, providing a refuge for the abandoned and the orphaned in the rolling fields of Renfrewshire. Since these beginnings, Quarriers has cared for more than 40,000 children in need.