National Network for Equitable Library Service

What do the doors of Advent calendars conceal? Chocolates, sometimes, or toys. Sometimes there are illustrations of chocolates and toys. And holly. And snow. Things that make Christmas Christmas in Canada. Embark on a new Yuletide tradition with this Advent calendar in words and images, wonderfully illustrated by Seth, and with sharp prose by Derek McCormack that captures the Canadian Christmas.

As seen on W NetworkTessa Virtue and Scott Moir dazzled the world when they became the first Canadians -- and first North Americans -- to win an Olympic gold medal in ice dancing in 2010. Now, for the first time ever, they share their incredible and inspiring story with the world.

The CBC Massey Lectures, Canada's preeminent public lecture series, are for many of us a highly anticipated annual feast of ideas. However, some of the finest lectures, by some of the greatest minds of modern times, have been lost for many years -- unavailable to the public in any form.

The Munk Debates is Canada's premier international debate series, a highly anticipated cultural event and feast of ideas. Launched in 2008 by philanthropists Peter and Melanie Munk, these debates bring together some of the world's greatest thinkers to discuss the most pressing political, social, and cultural issues that are shaping the course of world events.

Bestselling author Frank Galgay offers up this collection of his personal favorites from a wide variety of Canadian writers. Spanning 160 years, Classic Christmas Stories includes heartwarming tales of Christmases from pastoral Canadian towns, to hustling and bustling cities where the Christmas spirit can often be woefully hard to find. The stories and anecdotes illustrate how the season has changed in meaning and value with the march of time and contain allegories of the joys of gift-giving and receiving for readers of all ages.

“But I think I have told you a love story. Is there any other word for it? “Sense of place” doesn’t seem to quite cut it for Tack’s Beach and me. I hope that in my flick around Tack’s Beach harbour in the 1950s, I have shed a bit of light upon where we hail from, we Newfoundlanders and Labradorians of the outports—some of us resettled, all of us clinging to every morsel of this place, Newfoundland and Labrador.” Out from the Harbour is a long-awaited treat for readers young and old.

Launched in 1945, the schooner Norma & Gladys illustrates the best qualities of Newfoundland and Labrador’s industries of shipbuilding, the Labrador fishery, the Grand Banks fishery, and coasting freight to remote seaside towns. Her story also illustrates the worst examples of the province’s favourite bloodsport: partisan politics. In 1973, she was purchased by the provincial government and refitted as a floating maritime museum; her political legacy soon included innumerable blunders and cover-ups, mutiny, a stowaway, and perhaps the ghost of a sealing captain.

From the northern shores of Labrador to the south coast of Newfoundland, there are as many ghost stories as there are bays and inlets. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador is rich with tales of ghost ships, mysterious lights, sinister spectres, tokens of impending death, headless pirates and murdered loves. From legends of phantom loggers to stories of possessed teapots, Haunted Shores: True Ghost Stories of Newfoundland and Labrador is an eerie exploration of the phantom-filled nooks and crannies of the province. Why does a mournful lady ghost return to Arnold’s Cove every November?

St. Patrick's Hall Schools, the creation of the Benevolent Irish Society (BIS), was the first modern school in Newfoundland. No ordinary educational establishment, it played a primary part in raising the Catholic young men of St. John's from the degrading poverty that was their lot in the early 19th century to economic affluence and to positions of importance in society in the 20th century. In Newfoundland itself, St.

Tis a Wonderful Time to Be Alive is Winston Oldford’s personal account of growing up in Burnside, Bonavista Bay, in the 1940s and 1950s. The tiny community underwent a baptism by fire—literally—in the early twentieth century. Following a devastating forest fire in the area in 1912, the settlements of Squid Tickle and Holletts Cove became known, collectively, as Burnside. Today, with a population close to 200, it is one of seven communities on the Eastport Peninsula.