National Network for Equitable Library Service

Born and raised in Fort McMurray, Damian Asher was a fifteen year veteran and captain in the city's fire department. On May 1, 2016, when a raging wildfire struck the city and forced the entire population to evacuate, Damian and his crew were on the front lines of the fire, and after weeks of fighting the wildfire that appeared insatiable, the firefighters finally managed to regain control of the city.

When Terri Raines was twenty-seven years old, she took a vacation that changed her life. Leaving behind her wildlife rescue work in Oregon, Terri traveled to Australia, and there, at a small wildlife park, she met and fell in love with a tall, blond force of nature named Steve Irwin. They were married in less than a year, and Terri eagerly joined in Steve's conservation work. The footage filmed on their crocodile-trapping honeymoon became the first episode of The Crocodile Hunter, and together, Steve and Terri began to change the world.

Written in response to the horrors he experienced and witnessed during the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl’s landmark book, Man’s Search for Meaning, has sold millions of copies and been translated into twenty-seven languages. But although Frankl’s thought and philosophy have been widely analyzed, until now little has been written about his life, and about the deeply loving, intensely spiritual relationship that led him and his wife to dedicate their lives to reducing pain and oppression in the world.

Beyond the Blue Mountains details Woodcock’s life in the British Columbia bush, his close and longstanding relationship with the Doukhobors, his battles with US immigration officials. We learn of the founding of the influential Canadian Literature review, and we follow Mr. Woodcock on his extended and beautifully-described tours of India and the South Seas. George Woodcock is not only a revered literary critic. He is also a gifted and witty raconteur. Beyond the Blue Mountains allows us further insights into the life of this fascinating man.

Stories from a Canadian fish and wildlife officer. 

Mythologizing Norval Morrisseau examines the complex identities assigned to Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau. Was he an uneducated artist plagued by alcoholism and homelessness? Was Morrisseau a shaman artist who tapped a deep spiritual force? Or was he simply one of Canada’s most significant artists? Carmen L. Robertson charts both the colonial attitudes and the stereotypes directed at Morrisseau and other Indigenous artists in Canada’s national press. Robertson also examines Morrisseau’s own shaping of his image.

Before she became a psychiatric nurse at "The Mental" in the 1950s, Kay Parley was a patient there, as were the father she barely remembered and the grandfather she'd never met. Part memoir, part history, and beautifully written, Inside The Mental offers an episodic journey into the stigma, horror, and redemption that she found within the institution's walls. Now in her nineties, Parley looks back at the emerging use of group therapy, the advent of patients' rights, evolving ethics in psychiatry, and the amazing cast of characters she met there.

A Brush Full of Colour is the story of a boy whose passion for learning would save him from a life in the coalmines. The books by the American writer Jack London and Canadian poet Robert Service fired his imagination with scenes of the wilderness and the Klondike Gold Rush. He trained as an artist, and a stint in the British Intelligence Service allowed him to travel. But Ted never stopped dreaming of the North, and when he saw an advertisement for teachers in Northern Alberta, he jumped at the chance to emigrate to Canada, where the biggest adventure of his life would begin.

Covers the highlights of 26 years in the career of Judge Glen McDonald, who was the colorful and often controversial Vancouver Coroner from 1954 to 1980 and supervisory coroner for the province of British Columbia from 1969 to 1980.

Three cowhands with a dream of owning a cattle ranch make a heroic pioneer trek across uncharted mountain ranges to open up the frontier grasslands in northern British Columbia during the early 1930s.