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This special bundle contains seven books that detail Canada’s long and storied history in the performing arts. We learn about Canada’s early Hollywood celebrity movie stars; Canadians’ vast contributions to successful international stage musicals; the story of The Grand, a famous theatre in London, Ontario; reminiscences from the early days of radio; the history of the renowned Stratford Festival; and a lavish history of the famous National Ballet of Canada. Canada’s performing artists blossomed in the twentieth century, and you can learn all about it here.

Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction — Shortlisted On April 5, 1999, Serbian police found a truck half-submerged in the Danube River. When they looked inside, they found it filled with human bodies. Following orders, they hid the truck and its contents. Two weeks later, on the other side of Serbia, the same thing happened. The full picture would only emerge years later, when the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia investigated and prosecuted the chief architects of the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.

A provocative account of the 78th Fraser’s Highlanders and its crucial place in history. The remarkable story of the men of the 78th Fraser’s Highlanders moves from the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland, through the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution, to the War of 1812. Simon Fraser, chief of the Clan Fraser of Lovat, raised the 78th Highlanders, a regiment that played a major role in defeating the French on the Plains of Abraham.

The end of the War of 1812 brought with it great political, economic, and social upheaval. The sixth and final book of the Upper Canada Preserved — War of 1812 series, The Ashes of War examines in detail the closing stages of the war on the Northern Frontier, including the two-month siege of Fort Erie, the engagement at Cook’s Mills, the American attempt to recapture Michilimackinac (Mackinac), the tale of the Nancy, and the American raids into southwestern Upper Canada.

The story of the complex relationship between two world leaders during one of the greatest crises in human history. Born just two weeks apart in 1874, Winston Churchill and William Lyon Mackenzie King had much in common. Both forged long parliamentary careers, and each led his country to victory in World War II. A BBC poll deemed Winston Churchill the greatest Briton of all time, and Mackenzie King has been judged by a group of historians as the greatest Canadian prime minister.  Their parallel careers fostered a working relationship that lasted almost fifty years.

A bestseller in Quebec that describes the horse-trading, intrigue and unrest behind Trudeau’s quest to repatriate the Constitution. After the referendum in 1980, Pierre Elliott Trudeau turned his sights on repatriating the Constitution in an effort to make Canada fully independent from Britain. What should have been a simple process snowballed into a complicated intrigue. Quebec, which thought its prerogatives would be threatened if the Constitution were repatriated, mounted a charm offensive, replete with fine dining and expensive wines in order to influence key British MPs.

Ottawa Book Award 2015 — Shortlisted Between 1918 and 1921 a great storm blew through Canada and raised the expectations of a new world in which all things would be possible.|The years after World War I were among the most tumultuous in Canadian history: a period of unremitting change, drama, and conflict. They were, in the words of Stephen Leacock, “a time such as there never was before.” The war had been a great crusade, promising a world made new. But it had cost Canada sixty thousand dead and many more wounded, and it had widened the many fault lines in a young, diverse country.

Commemorating the Rideau Club’s 150th anniversary, this richly illustrated book celebrates the history of Ottawa’s premier private club since its founding in 1865. Co-founded by Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir George-Étienne Cartier, the history of Ottawa’s premier private club — the Rideau Club — is intertwined in so many ways with the development of Canada over the past 150 years.

Polar Winds traces a century of northern flight from balloonatics to bush pilots and beyond. "They were all gamblers and fortune seekers. They did things on their own — were independent people who wanted to be free to roam. They were good people, but, of course, some were loners or escapists.

An exploration of Canadian Remembrance Day history, customs, and traditions. Who are the people who offered their lives in war? Why do we remember them? How do we honour their memory? For children learning about remembrance and the human toll of war, there can be hard questions to answer. This book is meant to answer the questions kids ask about Remembrance Day and to explain how and why we honour the men and women who have served our country. Canada has developed unique ways of honouring and demonstrating respect for its war dead and veterans.