National Network for Equitable Library Service

Most emigration from England was voluntary, self-financed, and pursued by people who, while expecting to improve their economic prospects, were also critical of the areas in which they first settled. The exodus from England that gathered pace during the 19th century accounted for the greatest part of the total emigration from Britain to Canada. And yet, while copious emigration studies have been undertaken on the Scots and the Irish, very little has been written about the English in Canada.

One hundred and twenty-five years of steamboating in Muskoka come alive with the anniversary celebration of the RMS Segwun. The Royal Mail Ship Segwun is the oldest operating steamship in North America, a Muskoka icon, and one of Ontario’s best-known tourist attractions. Built as a paddlewheeler in 1887, the RMS Segwun saw her initial career suspended in the 1950s when the ship ceased operations. Fortunately, she began a new chapter in 1974 when she was lovingly restored and magnificent sightseeing cruises were offered.

Two sisters conduct a modern-day investigation into a Victorian-era murder of a toddler and discover their grandmother was a key witness. While researching her ancestry on the Internet one gloomy evening, Penny is astonished by what she finds. Urgently, she instructs her sister Sheelagh, "Search ’Slaidburn Suspected Child Murder!’ Now!" So begins a remarkable story within a story spanning more than a century.In 1885 Yorkshire, sisters Grace and Isabella, accused of murdering Grace’s secret illegitimate toddler, were on trial for their lives.

The impact of the British Empire on the history of the Upper Ottawa Valley is explored through the experiences of early emigration-assisted 19th-century Scottish immigrants. Between 1815 and 1832, Great Britain settled more than 3,500 individuals, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, in the Ottawa Valley. These government-assisted emigrations, which began immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, are explored to reveal their impact on Upper Canada. Seeking to transform their lives and their society, early Scots settlers crossed the Atlantic for their own purposes.

His Majesty’s Indian Allies is a study of British-Indian policy in North America from the time of the American Revolution to the end of the War of 1812, with particular focus on Canada.

A revised and greatly expanded edition of this important and long out of print reference book on Upper Canada to 1841. Similar in format to A Handbook of British Chronology, this work is a listing of all legislative councilors, and assemblymen, all officials, dates of all parliaments, and judges and court officials. It gives as well, a complete picture of local government: legislation relating to local territorial authorities, lists of counties, districts, cities and townships, and all major officials.

The young girl from the Ottawa Valley who served as a nurse in North Africa with only a helmet of fresh water a day, the teenage soldier from Fredericton who stole pig swill to survive in a Hong Kong prisoner of war camp, the English woman who survived the sinking of the Athenia to become a war-bride, and an Alberta airman who crashed off the icy coast of Greenland, these are but only four of the thirty compelling personal accounts of war experiences.

On April 18, 2002, "friendly fire" killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, Canada’s first combat deaths since the Korean War. On April 18, 2002, Alpha Company, Third Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, was on a training exercise at Tarnak Farms, a former Taliban artillery range in southern Afghanistan. The exercise had been underway for nearly seven hours when two American fighter pilots flew overhead.

2013 Information Book Awards — Long-listed Peace after the First World War inspires hope for a better life that’s crushed by the advent of the Second World War. Beginning with the Treaty of Versailles and the hope for the birth of a better world, Failed Hope follows the postwar rise of fascism, social unrest, Prohibition, the Great Depression, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, and the wars in Abyssinia, Spain, and China. The general strike in Winnipeg provides a Canadian perspective to the global labour turmoil of the period.

In April 1941, a passenger ship was attacked and sunk by Nazi Germans. This is the story of seven Canadian women survivors detained in Germany. In April 1941, seven Canadian women became prisoners of war while on a voyage from New York City to Cape Town. Their aging Egyptian liner, the Zamzam, was sunk off the coast of South Africa by the German raider Atlantis. The passengers were transferred to a prison ship and eventually put ashore in Nazi-occupied France.