National Network for Equitable Library Service

Born in Quebec, Emma Lajeunesse studied in Europe and in 1869 at the age of 23 launched her opera career in Italy. Almost overnight she became Albani, the world-renowned diva.

As a child she was "contrary,"as a young woman she defied convention to choose art over marriage, and as a middle-aged woman she was considered a full-blown eccentric. Listening to her own inner voice, Emily Carr created an art unique to British Columbia.

Across North America in 2007-2009, communities will celebrate the David Thompson Bicentennials. For 34 years the great explorer, surveyor, and fur trader travelled across the continent, finding and mapping the routes between the St. Lawrence and the Pacific. Trusting the stars and his sextant, he surveyed a continental area so vast it remains a mapping achievement unequalled in human history. This is the story of David Thompsons epic journey his trail by stars.

A highly personal account of the travels of Max Finkelstein as he retraces, some two hundred years later, the route of Alexander Mackenzie, the first European to cross North America (1793). Mackenzie's water trail is now commemorated as the Alexander Mackenzie Voyageur Route. More than just a travelogue of a canoe trip across Canada, this is an account that crosses more than two centuries.

The Marks Brothers may well have been the most remarkable theatrical family in Canadian history. A phenomenon on the vaudeville circuit, the seven brothers left the farm and took to the boards and the footlights throughout the latter part of the 19th century and into the 1920s. The brothers from Christie Lake, near Perth in Eastern Ontario, played to an estimated eight million Canadians, as well as to sizeable audiences in the United States.

Along the Trail in Algonquin Park has delighted thousands of readers across Canada and the United States from the time of its first publication in the summer of 1980. This is the fourth reprint of the classic work by the late legendary outdoorsman, Ralph Bice of Kearney, Ontario. The writing is vintage Ralph Bice; a combination of unequalled park knowledge, remarkable outdoor adventures and delightful rustic humour.

The Lure of Faraway Places is the publication canoeist Herb Pohl (1930-2006) did not live to see published. But Pohl’s words and images provide a unique portrait of Canada by one who was happiest when travelling our northern waterways alone. Austrian-born Herb Pohl died at the mouth of the Michipcoten River on July 17, 2006. He is remembered as "Canada’s most remarkable solo traveller." While mourning their loss, Herb Pohl’s friends found, to their surprise and delight, a manuscript of wilderness writings on his desk in his lakeside apartment in Burlington, Ontario.

In 1984, Marc Garneau became Canadas first astronaut and a national hero. Since then, seven of his fellow citizens have followed in his footsteps, many more than once. This book was written as a twenty-fifth anniversary tribute to these brave men and women who defied tremendous odds, risked their lives, and soared from Earth on sheets of flame.

Through the inspirational, wise, and informative stories of the residents, either in their own words or based on interviews, and environmental photographs of each, this book focuses on various residents of long-term care facilities and especially on the positive facets of their life, their thoughts, and their feelings. The only issue that reaches the media about nursing homes is the negative and unfortunate events that sometimes occur, but there is so much more to the story.

Short-listed for the 2002 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction So you grow up as a member of the baby boom. You’re well-brought up, well-educated, and your parents have great expectations. And, yet, somehow, you just don’t feel you belong. Along the way, you find the right wrong boyfriends: the poet-husband, and bane of your mother’s existence, the married Japanese doctor.