National Network for Equitable Library Service

Early Pentecostal revivals swept through Canadian communities, big and small, in the early 1900s. Reports abounded of worshippers falling down at the altar, speaking in tongues, having dreams and visions, and experiencing divine healing. Tent meetings inspired curious onlookers to witness these phenomena for themselves. Following these revival meetings, Pentecostals organized, built churches, and expanded across the country, while many churches were beginning to decline.

Many women who lived through the Second World War believed it heralded new status and opportunities. But did it? Making the Best of Itexamines how gender and other identities intersected to shape the experiences of female Canadians and Newfoundlanders during the war. The contributors to this thoughtful collection consider mainstream and minority populations, girls and women, and different parts of Canada and Newfoundland in their essays.

A vision shared. A manifesto. This remarkable work argues that Anishinabeg need to reconnect with non-colonized modes of thinking, social organization, and decision making in order to achieve genuine sovereignty. In Our Hearts Are as One Fire,Jerry Fontaine recounts the stories of three Ota’wa, Shawnee, and Ojibway-Anishinabe leaders who challenged aggressive colonial expansion – Obwandiac, Tecumtha, and Shingwauk. He weaves Ojibwaymowin language and knowledge with conversations with elders and descendants of the three leaders.

During the Second World War, Canadian factories produced mountains of munitions and supplies, including some 800 ships, 16,000 aircraft, 800,000 vehicles, and over 4.6 billion rounds of ammunition and artillery shells. However, the end of hostilities in 1945 turned the leftover assets into peacetime liabilities. Alex Souchen provides a definitive account of the disposal crisis triggered by Allied victory and shows how Canadians responded to the unprecedented divestment of public property by reusing and recycling military surpluses to improve their postwar lives.

In 1975, Indonesian forces overran East Timor, which had just declared independence from Portugal. The occupation lasted twenty-four years. Challenge the Strong Windrecounts the evolution of Canadian government policy toward East Timor during that period. Canada initially followed key allies in endorsing Indonesian rule, but Canadian civil society groups promoted an alternative foreign policy that focused on self-determination and human rights. Ottawa eventually yielded to pressure from these NGOs and pushed like-minded countries to join it in supporting Timorese self-determination.

Canadians have been involved in, intrigued by, and frustrated with Irish politics, from the Fenian Raids of the 1860s to the present day. Yet scholars have largely neglected Canadian–Irish relations since the consolidation of the Irish Free State in the 1920s. In Canada and Ireland,Philip J. Currie addresses this lacuna and examines political relations between the two countries, from partition to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

The end of the Second World War saw a “crisis of white masculinity” brought on by social change. As a result, several prominent white male pop culture figures sought out and appropriated African American cultural trappings to benefit from what they believed were powerful black masculinities.

With compelling insight, Canada 1919examines the concerns of Canadians in the year following the Great War: the treatment of veterans, including nurses and Indigenous soldiers; the rising farm lobby; the role of labour; the place of children; the influenza pandemic; the country’s international standing; and commemoration of the fallen. Even as the military stumbled through massive demobilization and the government struggled to hang on to power, a new Canadian nationalism was forged.

Since the late nineteenth century, Niagara Falls has been heavily engineered to generate energy behind a flowing façade designed to appeal to tourists. Fixing Niagara Fallsreveals the technological feats and cross-border politics that facilitated the transformation of one of the most important natural sites in North America. Daniel Macfarlane shows how this natural wonder is essentially a tap: huge tunnels around the reconfigured Falls channel the waters of the Niagara River, which ebb and flow according to the tourism calendar.

Caroline Kearney faced a heartbreaking dilemma. In 1865 she was newly widowed, thirty-one years old, and the mother of six children. She had hoped her husband would leave his sheep station in Victoria, Australia to her sons. Instead, his will required that the family move to Ireland and live in a house chosen by her brothers-in-law.