National Network for Equitable Library Service

When Alice M. Kilgour donated her family farm to the City of Toronto in 1928, intending it for use as a public park, no one could have imagined what lay ahead. Ownership of the land was transferred to the Canadian government in 1943. By 1948, Sunnybrook Hospital opened its doors and became the largest veterans’ hospital in Canada. More than 60 years later, Sunnybrook stands as an important symbol of Canada’s gratitude toward its war veterans.

The essence of a vibrant, growing, and changing Calgary is captured over the life of its development. Calgary is a typical boom-and-bust town that was first based on ranching and farming, then oil and gas, and now energy. And energy is what its citizens have, whether for skiing, work, or construction. It is a city that leaps ahead eagerly to new futures and rarely looks back., but Calgary can also be an unsentimental city, discarding its ideas, plans, and buildings with ease.

A compelling look at tobacco’s uses and abuses from its Native origins to today’s controversies. When Europeans discovered tobacco among Amerindians in the New World, it became a long-sought panacea of panaceas, the critical ingredient in enemas, ointments, syrups, and powders employed to treat everything from syphilis to cancer.

When Marjorie’s daughter began exploring archival records involving Britain’s child-migration program, a home-child saga emerged. Marjorie Arnison was one of the thousands of children removed from their families, communities, and country and placed in a British colony or commonwealth to provide "white stock" and cheap labour. In Marjorie’s case, she was sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, just north of Victoria, British Columbia, in 1937. As a child, Patricia was angered that her mother wouldn’t talk about the past.

This is a long-awaited history of one of Metro Toronto's most historic churches, St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Scarborough, founded in 1818. This publication records the many memorable individuals to fill its pulpits and pews as well as stories of its associations, buildings and community anecdotes.The story of St. Andrew's is also very much a history of Scarborough and of the pioneer families who settled the area.

New Brunswick’s enormous timber trade attracted the first wave of Scots in the late 18th century. As economic conditions in Scotland worsened, the flow of emigrants increased, creating distinctive Scottish communities along the province’s major timber bays and river frontages. While Scots relied on the timber trade for economic sustenance, their religion offered another form of support. It sustained them in a spiritual and cultural sense. These two themes, the axe and the bible, underpin their story.

Follow the evolution of the rail legacy of the Canadian Prairies from the arrival of the first engine on a barge to today’s realities. Rails Across the Prairies traces the evolution of Canada’s rail network, including the appearance of the first steam engine on the back of a barge. The book looks at the arrival of European settlers before the railway and examines how they coped by using ferry services on the Assiniboine and North Saskatchewan Rivers.

An examination of Upper Canadian life at the dawn of a modern nation. Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst explores the web of human relationships that developed in Upper Canada following the American Revolution, in the years leading up to the War of 1812, and during the conflict that raged for two years between the young United States and Britain, its former master.

From 1812 to 1815 a war was fought between the United States and Britain that decided the destiny and future of North America. The Call to Arms is the first of six books in the series Upper Canada Preserved — War of 1812. Each book in this battlefield-based chronicle combines the best of modern historical research with extensive quotations from original official documents and personal letters to bring to life this crucial period of Canada’s early history. Numerous historical images of locations are counterpointed with comparable modern perspectives to give a true then-and-now effect.

Unbuilt Victoria celebrates the city that is, and laments the city that could have been. For most people, resident and visitor alike, Victoria, British Columbia, is a time capsule of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. From a modest fur-trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company it grew to be the province’s major trading centre.