National Network for Equitable Library Service

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission urged a better understanding of Aboriginal law for all Canadians. This book responds to that call, outlining significant legal developments in straightforward, non-technical language. Jim Reynolds provides the historical context needed to understand the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers and explains key topics such as sovereignty, fiduciary duties, the honour of the Crown, Aboriginal rights and title, treaties, the duty to consult, Indigenous laws, and international law.

In the 1950s and ’60s, co-operative jazz clubs opened their doors in Canada in response to new forms of jazz expression emerging after the war and the lack of performance spaces outside major urban centres. Operated by the musicians themselves, these hip new clubs created spaces where jazz musicians practised their art. Live at the Cellar looks at this unique period in the development of jazz in Canada.

What has it meant to be a man in Canada? Percy Nobbs, architect, fisherman, fencer; Andy Paull, residential school survivor and athlete; Yves Charbonneau, jazz musician and commune member; “James,” black and gay in postwar Windsor. Who were these men, and how did they identify as masculine? Populated with figures both well known and unknown, Making Men, Making History reveals the dissonance between ideals of manhood and masculinity and the everyday lives of Canadian men and boys.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Canada v. Bedford that key prostitution laws were unconstitutional. Red Light Labour addresses the new legal regime regulating sex work by analyzing how laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their clients, and their workspaces. This groundbreaking collection also offers nuanced interpretations of commercial sexual labour from the perspectives of workers, activists, and researchers.

In 1844, seven widows dared to cast ballots in an election in Canada West, a display of feminist effrontery that was quickly punished: the government struck a law excluding women from the vote. It would be seven decades before women regained voting rights in Ontario. Our Voices Must Be Heard explores Ontario’s suffrage history, examining its ideals and failings, its daring supporters and thunderous enemies, and its blind spots on matters of race and class.

The verb esperar means to wait. It also means to hope.—“The Past Was a Small Notebook, Much Scribbled-Upon”, Cora Siré Waiting, that most human of experiences, saturates all of our lives. We spend part of each day waiting—for birth, death, appointments, acceptance, forgiveness, redemption. This collection of thirty-two personal essays is as much about hope as it is about waiting. Featuring literary voices from the renowned to the emerging, this anthology of contemporary creative nonfiction will resonate with anyone who has ever had to wait.

In the aftermath of World War II, more than 4,500 Polish veterans, displaced by war and the Soviet-oriented Polish government, were resettled in Canada as farm workers; 750 of these men were accepted by the province of Alberta. Polish War Veterans in Alberta examines how these former soldiers came to experience their new country and its sometimes-harsh postwar realities.

In 2013, a violent crime left Jane Harris seriously injured and tumbling down the social ladder toward homelessness -- for the second time in her life -- leading her to question the underlying conditions that could allow this to happen in a country like Canada. Finding Home in the Promised Land is the result of her harrowing journey through the wilderness of social exile. Her Scottish great-great-grandmother Barbara's portrait opens the door into pre-Confederation Canada; Harris's own story lights our journey through 21st-century Canada.

In this award-winning collection from his Montreal Gazette city columns, Joe Fiorito reveals the true heart and soul of a large city. He walks the streets, meeting and talking to the people who make the city tick, but never make the front-page news.

Out of Grief, Singing is an achingly beautiful account of how a woman comes to terms with the loss of her newborn. After a bewildering series of rapid diagnoses and emergency interventions, Charlene's daughter Chloe is born. But her too-brief life is spent in the neonatal intensive care unit, and her mother, leveled by an epidural anaesthetic procedure gone wrong, can barely make it to her daughter's side.