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In June 1942, Japanese troops occupied the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska in Alaska, the first enemy occupation of US territory since the War of 1812.

Bob Teather entered RCMP Basic Recruit Training three decades ago with no idea of what he was getting into. Along with 31 other confused young men, he found himself in Regina, Saskatchewan, as a lowly member of Troop 18. Bald, intimidated and soon to be bruised, Bob began a six-month ordeal that he candidly recalls in this engaging book.

The influence of the Royal Navy on the development of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest was both effective and extensive. Yet all too frequently, its impact has been ignored by historians, who instead focus on the influence of explorers, fur traders, settlers, and railway builders.

When the members of Canada’s First Arctic Expedition set out from Victoria aboard HMCS Karluk in the summer of 1913, it was a moment of great optimism. The three-year mission would chart unexplored landmasses of the Western Arctic and secure Canada’s place in the international geographic community. Little did the team of distinguished scholars and scientists realize, however, how their hopes would soon be brought to ruin.

In late 1942, Britain was desperate to win the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. German U-boats had sunk hundreds of Allied ships containing millions of tons of cargo that was needed to continue the war effort. Prime Minister Churchill had to find a solution to the carnage or the Nazis would be victorious.

John R. Jewitt's story of being captured and enslaved by Maquinna, the great chief of the Mowachaht people, is both an adventure tale of survival and an unusual perspective on the First Nations of the northwest coast of Vancouver Island. On March 22, 1803, while anchored in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Boston was attacked by a group of Mowachaht warriors. Twenty-five of her 27 crewmen were massacred, their heads "arranged in a line" for survivor John R. Jewitt to identify.

Dawn, June 6, 1944. Off the Normandy coast 6,500 ships carry 150,000 Allied troops. This is D-Day, the long-awaited Allied invasion of German-occupied Europe. The Allies will storm five beaches. One is code-named Juno Beach. Here, 14,500 Canadians will land on a five-mile stretch of sand backed by three resort towns. The beach is heavily protected by a seawall, barbed wire, underwater obstacles and hundreds of mines. Behind these defenses a heavily armed German force waits inside thick concrete pillboxes and deep trenches that bristle with machineguns and artillery pieces.

December 20, 1943. Two Canadian infantry battalions and a tank regiment stand poised on the outskirts of a small Italian port town. They expect to take Ortona quickly. But the German 1st Parachute Division has other ideas. For reasons unknown, Hitler has ordered Ortona held to the last man. Houses, churches and other buildings are dynamited, clogging the streets with rubble. Germans with machine guns lie in ambush. Snipers slip from one rooftop to another. The Canadians seem to have walked into a death trap. This is a battle fought at close range, often hand to hand.

Inspired by memories of fantastic family birthday parties, mother-and-daughter team Nikki Tate and Dani Tate-Stratton researched the history of birthdays in order to answer such questions as, How much does where you grow up influence the way you celebrate getting a year older? Have people always celebrated birthdays? The more they investigated, the more they realized that there's a lot more to birthdays than cake, presents, a few games and perhaps a goody bag. They discovered there are as many ways to observe birthdays as there are places in which to do it.

Winner of the 2001 Canadian Jewish Book Awards: Izzy and Betty Kirshenbaum Foundation Prize for Yiddish translation, Montreal of Yesterday was originally published in Yiddish in 1947. It had earlier appeared in installments in the pages of the Keneder Adler - the Canadian Eagle - Montreal's legendary Yiddish-language newspaper. For the first time, this captivating classic on Jewish immigrant life in Montreal [1900-1920] is available in English.