National Network for Equitable Library Service

Desired and reviled, adulated and condemned, Winnipeg inspires intense and contradictory emotions from residents, visitors and people who have never even ventured within wading distance of the Manitoba capital. The city at the centre of North America inspires a profound sense of ambivalence, stuck as it is between a colourful and triumphant early history, a long period of 20th-Century decline and an uncertain if optimistic future.

Travel with Gordon Goldsborough from Rapid City School to Mallard Lodge to Union Stockyards and many places in between as the author helps us reclaim some of our long-lost heritage. This full colour, richly illustrated book looks at abandoned sites around Manitoba, describing their features, what caused them to be abandoned, and what they tell us about the history of the province.

Somewhere between North Dakota and Nunavut sits a curious land with a coastline patrolled by polar bears, highways lined with monuments to household produce and dinner plates drenched in a gluey condiment known as honey dill sauce. This is Manitoba, a province that has captured the imagination of ̥well, maybe dozens of people around the world for more than a century. To many Canadians, Manitoba is nothing but canola, snow and mosquitoes. To people in Winnipeg, its capital and largest city, it's that place where the flood happens three out of every five years.

Before the internet, before TV, Manitoba was a hotbed for innovation in radio. These innovations range from the first publically-owned radio station to the first play-by-play broadcast of women's hockey. During World War II, a Winnipeg broadcaster was as well-known in England as Churchill. And Neil Young's very first recording was done at a local station. These are but a few of the stories of early radio in Manitoba. In its first half century, the medium was a powerful, revolutionary force that touched and linked virtually everyone in the province.

Charlotte Ross (1843-1916) belonged to the first generation of women to practice medicine in Canada and was Manitoba’s first qualified woman doctor.

Jim Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw was a respected Cree Elder from Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, who spoke only Cree and provided these original counselling discourses. The book offers the speeches in Cree syllabics and in Roman Orthography as well as an English translation and commentary.

In May 1919, 30,000 Winnipeg workers walked away from their jobs, shutting down large factories, forcing businesses to close and bringing major industries to a halt. Mounted police and hired security, at the behest of the ruling class, violently ended the protest after six weeks. Two men were killed. What started as trade union revolt, the Winnipeg General Strike became a mass protest and was branded as a revolution. In Magnificent Fight, Dennis Lewycky lays out the history of this iconic event, which remains the biggest and longest strike in Canadian history.

Local history buffs, students, teachers, and armchair historians will find a wealth of information and practical advice in this guide to the study of local history. The authors explore some of the most fruitful areas of research in such themes as the environment, population, transportation and communication, agriculture, politics, social and family life. In five appendices they provide more detailed information for the determined researcher. Specific advice is given on compiling a community archive or data base, and on publishing a local history.

A biography of Dr. Elinor Black (1905-1982), the first Canadian woman to gain membership in the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in London.

Born in 1912, Mrs. Alice Ahenakew grew up in a traditional Cree community in north-central Saskatchewan. As a young woman, she married Andrew Ahenakew, a member of the prominent Saskatchewan family, who later became a well-known Anglican priest and Cree healer." "Mrs. Ahenakew's personal reminiscences include stories of her childhood, courtship and marriage, as well as an account of the 1918 influenza epidemic and encounters with a windigo. The centrepiece of this book is the fascinating account of the bear vision to which the Rev. Andrew Ahenakew owed his healing powers.