National Network for Equitable Library Service

Joelle Pouliot was a nurse with a comfortable life in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Then she volunteered for a 6-week stint with Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders. She arranged a temporary leave-of-absence from her government job, and packed her bag. She found herself headed to Uganda - a country where there is one doctor for every 25,000 people, where the average life expectancy is 41 years. 3 out of 5 Ugandans don’t have access to clean drinking water. Cholera spreads through contaminated water. Joelle Pouliot was on her way to fight a cholera epidemic.

This two-hour series is a revealing personal and professional portrait of Canadian singer and composer Joni Mitchell.

This two-hour series is a revealing personal and professional portrait of Canadian singer and composer Joni Mitchell.

May 1940. Britain is losing the war. Churchill is desperate for bombers. Aircraft deliveries from U.S. factories are being ravaged by German U-Boats at sea. Can the planes be flown across the storm-swept North Atlantic to Britain? A ragtag band of determined civilian flyers comes together to deliver planes by the thousands. At the time, transatlantic flight was in its infancy, and knowledgeable observers believed such a scheme to be impossible. Yet the plan was a success, and by the end of the war, 9,027 aircraft were delivered across the Atlantic, helping to turn the tide of the war.

A 2-hour series about the tradition of Christmas mummering Long before Santa, Bing Crosby and the Mattel Toy Company stole the occasion, the Winter Solstice was celebrated with seasonal rituals like this. Although mummers still appear annually in parts of Newfoundland, England and Ireland, this great-grand-daddy of Halloween masquerade died out in most of North America long.

In 1880, two Inuit families from Labrador in northern Canada were exhibited in European zoos. Spectators flocked to the zoo exhibit expecting to see "exotics" from some "primitive race". What they found instead were Labradorimiut who spoke three languages, played German hymn tunes on violin and who were keeping their own ethnographic notes on the "uncivilised" Europeans. While spectators gaped at them, the Inuit gazed back. And one of them - Abraham Ulrikab - kept a diary.

Homes tells the story of Abu Bakr al Rabeeah, a young boy whose family moved from Iraq to Syria just before the start of the Syrian civil war. It recounts what it was like living in Syria during this time -- the normal things like video games, sleepovers, and family jarringly juxtaposed with car bombings, massacres, and the constant threat of what could happen next. In 2014 the family finally found safety in immigrating to Edmonton, Canada, and the book also recounts both the gratefulness and the loneliness of the family's immigration experience.

Edmonton's Al Rashid Mosque has played a key role in Islam's Canadian development. Founded by Muslims from Lebanon, it has grown into a vibrant community fully integrated into Canada's cultural mosaic. The mosque continues to be a concrete expression of social good, a symbol of a proud Muslim-Canadian identity. Al Rashid Mosque provides a welcome introduction to the ethics and values of homegrown Muslims. The book traces the mosque's role in education and community leadership, and celebrates the numerous contributions of Muslim Canadians in Edmonton and across Canada.

Margaret Laurence and Jack McClelland-one of Canada's most beloved writers and one of Canada's most significant publishers-enjoyed an unusual rapport. In this collection of annotated letters, readers gain rare insight into the private side of these literary icons. Their correspondence reveals a professional relationship that evolved into deep friendship over a period of enormous cultural change. Both were committed to the idea of Canadian writing; in a very real sense, their mutual and separate work helped bring "Canadian Literature" into being.

In Keetsahnak / Our Murdered and Missing Indigenous Sisters, the tension between personal, political, and public action is brought home starkly. This important collective volume both witnesses the significance of the travelling exhibition Walking With Our Sisters and creates a model for antiviolence work from an Indigenous perspective. The contributors look at the roots of violence and how it diminishes life for all.