National Network for Equitable Library Service

Did you know that Canada's Criminal Code still has provisions outlawing the practice of witchcraft and "crafty sciences"? Did you know that blasphemy is a crime in Canada? And did you know that putting a picture of a red poppy on your website could get you in trouble with the Royal Canadian Legion? Lawyer and author Bob Tarantino takes readers on an entertaining and informative romp through Canada's legal labyrinths in a book that spotlights the country's past and present strange-but-true laws and legal history.

In 1754 Eleanor Powers was hung for a murder committed during a botched robbery. She was the first woman condemned to die in Canada, but would not be the last.In Uncertain Justice, Beverley Boissery and Murray Greenwood portray a cast of women characters almost as often wronged by the law as they have wronged society.

Unbuilt Toronto explores never-realized building projects in and around Toronto, from the city’s founding to the twenty-first century. Delving into unfulfilled and largely forgotten visions for grand public buildings, landmark skyscrapers, highways, subways, and arts and recreation venues, it outlines such ambitious schemes as St. Alban's Cathedral, the Queen subway line and early city plans that would have resulted in a Paris-by-the-Lake.

Looking back over the past 75 years, there is no doubt that public transportation has played a major role in the development and maturing of Toronto and its metropolitan area. Indeed , despite the fiscal challenges facing it, the TTC today remains a transit agency with an enviable reputation. The TTC Story:The First Seventy-five Years, by Mike Filey, features over one hundred magnificent black and white images selected to illustrate the principal "transit" event in each year of the TTC's existence.

Three hundred years ago, Captain Kidd was hanged for piracy, but before died he claimed to have hidden a vast fortune in the Indies. In the years since, maps to the fabled island have appeared and there have been many attempts to recover that treasure. This book examines Kidd’s life against the backdrop of piracy in the Indian Ocean and concludes that there is much to justify his claim, and even more to his story - a life of piracy thrust upon him by noble backers, men who broke their own laws and then let him die for their crimes.

Mike Filey’s column "The Way We Were" first appeared in the Toronto Sunday Sun not long after the first edition of the paper hit the newsstands and front porches on September 16, 1973. Since that day more than three decades ago, Mike’s column has enjoyed an uninterrupted stretch as one of the paper’s most popular features. In 1992 a number of his columns were reprinted in Toronto Sketches: The Way We Were by Dundurn Press.

Toronto Sun columnist Mike Filey is back with Toronto Sketches 8, the series that captures the people, politics, and architecture of Toronto’s past with photographs and anecdotes that will change the way you see the city forever. The book brings us back to the time of Toronto’s original horse-drawn streetcar, the construction of Maple Leaf Gardens, and other memories of Toronto, many of which show how history repeats itself, as in the gas price wars of the early 20th century or the debate in 1911 over building a bridge to Toronto island.

Mike Filey is back again with another installment in the popular Toronto Sketches series.

Stories of Old Toronto never lose favour with the city’s nostalgia buffs, and as long as Mike Filey continues to provide us with his "The Way We Were" columns, no one’s appetite will have to go unsatisfied.When Mike’s Toronto Sunday Sun columns were first brought together in Toronto Sketches, demand was so high that it prompted a second collection … then a third … and a fourth … and a fifth.Now, for 2000, Mike has once again brought together some of the best of his Toronto Sunday Sun columns for Toronto Sketches 6, the latest installment in the wildly popular series.

Mike Filey’s "The Way We Were" column in the Toronto Sun continues to be one of the paper’s most popular features. In Toronto Sketches 5, the fifth volume in Dundurn Press’s Toronto Sketches series, Filey brings together some of the best of his columns from 1996 and 1997.Each column looks at Toronto as it was, and contributes to our understanding of how Toronto became what it is. Illustrated with photographs of the city’s people and places of the past, Toronto Sketches 5 is a nostalgic journey for the long-time Torontonian, and a voyage of discovery for the newcomer.