Biographies and autobiographies

  • How we go home : voices from Indigenous North America

    Creator

    Jasilyn Charger

    Abstract

    How We Go Home shares contemporary first-person stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land, rights, and life. Each of the twelve narrators' lives has been shaped by loss, injustice, and resilience—and by the struggle to share space with settler nations whose essential aim is to take all that is Indigenous. In her introduction, Sinclair writes: “These are stories about returning to place, revitalizing culture and language, and re-forming traditional support systems.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Halifax

    Fernwood Publishing

    Not specified
  • Keep true : a life in politics

    Creator

    Pawley, Howard

    Abstract

    Howard Pawley, former Premier of Manitoba (1981–88), led the province during one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Elected at the outset of a serious national recession, his government successfully implemented social democratic policies that ran counter to the neo-conservative trends that dominated the period, including job creation, labour reform, and human rights legislation.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Winnipeg, Manitoba

    University of Manitoba Press

    Not specified
  • One man's documentary : a memoir of the early years of the National Film Board

    Creator

    McInnes, Graham

    Abstract

    Graham McInnes was one of many talented young people recruited by the charismatic John Grierson to build the National Film Board of Canada during the heady days of WWII. McInnes’s memoir of these “days of high excitement” is an insider’s look at the NFB from 1939 to 1945, a vivid “origin” story of Canada’s emerging world-class film studio that provides the NFB with the kind of full-bodied vitality usually associated with the great Hollywood studios in their golden years.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Winnipeg

    University of Manitoba Press

    Not specified
  • Just Jen : thriving through multiple sclerosis

    Creator

    Powley, Jen

    Abstract

    Jen Powley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at fifteen. By thirty-five, she had lost the use of her arms and legs. Just Jen is a powerful memoir that tells the story of Powley's life at the time of her diagnosis, and the infinite, irrevocable ways it has changed since. Powley's writing pulls no punches. She is lively, bold and unapologetic, answering questions people are often afraid to ask about living with a progressive disease. And yet, these snapshots from Powley's life are not tinged with anger or despair.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Winnipeg

    Fernwood

    Not specified
  • Alien heart : the life and work of Margaret Laurence

    Creator

    Powers, Lyall Harris

    Abstract

    Margaret Laurence remains one of Canada’s best-known and most beloved writers. Twice winner of the Governor General’s Award for fiction, she was, as the late William French wrote, “more profoundly admired than any other Canadian novelist of her generation.” Lyall Powers is both a respected scholar of literature and a lifelong friend of Laurence’s, having met her when they were students together at Winnipeg’s United College in the 1940s.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    East Lansing

    Michigan State University Press

    Not specified
  • Letters from a young emigrant in Manitoba

    Creator

    Ffolkes, Edward

    Abstract

    Letters from a Young Emigrant in Manitoba first published in 1883 and long out of print, is one of the best records of Canadian immigrant life. The letters were written by Edward ffolkes, who left England in 1880 to study at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph and later to homestead in southern Manitoba. They describe with rare insight the daily struggles and expectations of an “ordinary” man who had the courage to take up a new life on the frontier. Ronald A.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    [Winnipeg]

    University of Manitoba Press

    Not specified
  • One version of the facts : my life in the ivory tower

    Creator

    Duckworth, H. E.

    Abstract

    In his engaging memoirs, One Version of the Facts: My Life in the Ivory Tower, Dr. Henry Duckworth takes readers from his student days in Winnipeg and Chicago in the 1930s to his time as president of the University of Winnipeg (1971-1981) and chancellor of the University of Manitoba. An accomplished physicist, he wrote the first definitive text in English on mass spectroscopy, discovered the last stable isotope (platinum), and helped create important programs at universities and at the National Research Council.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Winnipeg, Man.

    University of Manitoba Press

    Not specified
  • My parents : memoirs of New World Icelanders

    Abstract

    My Parents: Memoirs of New World Icelanders is a collection of essays written by second-generation Icelandic immigrants in North America, describing the lives of their parents. Originally collected in 1956 by Dr. Finnbogi Gumundsson, the first Chair of Icelandic at the University of Manitoba, seven of the fourteen memoirs are translated here from Icelandic to English. They offer a rare first-hand look into the lives of New World immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Winnipeg [Man.]

    University of Manitoba Press

    Not specified
  • Lord Selkirk : a life

    Creator

    Bumsted, J. M.

    Abstract

    Thomas Douglas, the Fifth Earl of Selkirk (1770-1820), was a complex man of his times, whose passions left an indelible mark on Canadian history. A product of the Scottish Enlightenment and witness to the French Revolution, he dedicated his fortune and energy to the vision of a new colony at the centre of North America. His final legacy, the Red River Settlement, led to the eventual end of the dominance of the fur trade and began the demographic and social transformation of western Canada. The product of three decades of research, this is the definitive biography of Lord Selkirk.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Winnipeg [Man.]

    University of Manitoba Press

    Not specified
  • Manie Tobie : femme du Manitoba

    Creator

    Juéry, René

    Abstract

    René Juéry parle de Marie-Thérèse Goulet-Courchaine, de ses ancêtres prestigieux, de sa jeunesse, de sa riche expérience et de son destin cruel. Certains textes de Manie Tobie traitent des coutumes du pays.

    Audience
    Adult**
    Publisher (Source)

    Saint-Boniface, Man.

    Éditions des Plaines

    Not specified