National Network for Equitable Library Service

In 1914, the SS Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver Harbour and was detained for two months. Most of its 376 passengers were then forcibly returned to India. Unmooring the Komagata Maru challenges conventional Canadian historical accounts by drawing from multiple disciplines and fields to consider the international and colonial dimensions of the voyage. By situating South Asian Canadian history within a global-imperial context, the contributors offer a critical reading of Canadian multiculturalism through past events and their commemoration.

As a commercial fisher in Nova Scotia in the early 1990s, Raymond Rogers experienced the collapse of Canada's East Coast fishery first-hand. Afterward, while preparing to leave the province to find work elsewhere, Rogers noticed a lone gravestone across the road from his home in Shelburne County that commemorates the life of Donald McDonald, a crofter from the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, who "departed this life" in 1881.

The Modern Chinese Folklore Movement coalesced at National Peking University between 1918 and 1926. A group of academics, inspired by Western thought, tried to revitalize the study of folklore to stave off postwar disillusionment with Chinese elite culture. By documenting this phenomenon's origins and evolution, Jie Gao opens a new chapter in the world history of the Folklore Movement. Largely unknown in the West and underappreciated in China, the Chinese branch failed to achieve its goal of reinvigorating the nation.

The name Sri Lanka conjures two images. One is of an island of incredible beauty, a tropical paradise of golden beaches, mist-shrouded mountains carpeted with tea fields, and 2000-year-old cities and archaeological monuments, a land of apparent peace and tranquility. The other is of a brutal thirty-year civil war, an island riven with death, destruction, and racial divides. Here is a story that belongs to neither of those images, a story of a boy growing up in Sri Lanka in the midst of all that beauty and in the run-up to those bitter times.

The third instalment in Jim Blanchard's popular history of early Winnipeg, "A Diminished Roar" presents a city in the midst of enormous change. Once the fastest growing city in Canada, by 1920 Winnipeg was losing its dominant position in western Canada. As the decade began, Winnipeggers were reeling from the chaos of the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But it was the divisions exposed by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike which left the deepest marks.

Captains of whaling vessels were experienced navigators of northern waters, and William Penny was in the vanguard of the whaling fraternity. Leading the first maritime expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, he stood out not just for his skill as a sailor but for his curiosity about northern geography and his willingness to seek out Inuit testimony to map uncharted territory. Hunters on the Track describes and analyzes the efforts made by the Scottish whaling master to locate Franklin's missing expedition.

Caught Between Two Devils is based on the real-life experiences of Antanas Paskevicius, his wife Jadwyga, and his sister Maria. In April of 1944, their lives were forever altered when they were sent to a work camp in northeast Germany where they struggled for ten months. Despite the risk of betrayal, torture, and death, they stole a Wehrmacht truck in February 1945 and, along with other prisoners, fled and headed for Bavaria. The struggles of Antanas, Jadwyga and Maria are not unique; there were six million foreign prisoners compelled to work for the Third Reich.

Starting in 1837, rebels in Upper and Lower Canada revolted against British rule in an attempt to reform a colonial government that they believed was unjust. While this uprising is often perceived as a small-scale, localized event, Revolutions across Borders demonstrates that the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38 was a major continental crisis with dramatic transnational consequences.

Civilians play crucial roles in building empires. Constructing Empire shows how Japanese urban planners, architects, and other civilians contributed to constructing a modern colonial enclave in northeast China, their visions shifting over time. Japanese imperialism in Manchuria before 1932 resembled that of other imperialists elsewhere in China, but the Japanese thereafter sought to surpass their rivals by transforming the city of Changchun into a grand capital for the puppet state of Manchukuo.

"What is the secret that allows L'Arche to exist? I'll tell you: pleasure!" explains Jean Vanier, founder of the international federation of L'Arche communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities share their lives. Vanier's spiritual vision and playful sense of humour shaped L'Arche, but the organization was also informed by its surprising history with the United Church of Canada.