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Showing 3153–3168 of 9481 results
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Harshly Purring
$19.95A heartbroken derelict. An abruptly idealistic executive. A father trying to reconnect with his daughters. Three men inhabiting the same neighbourhood with completely divergent lives come together in a collision that will leave each of them changed forever. In his debut novel, Michael Knox evokes, in cinematic prose, a glimpse of the complexity of the suburban, and a meditation on disaster and masculinity. Harshly Purring presents a poetic and brutal look at isolation and disaster, both self-inflicted and otherwise, and the ways in which human beings struggle to survive it.
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harvest
$16.95For rob mclennan, poetry is a way of seeing, and what is seen in harvest: a book of signifiers is always a landscape as it inhabits the poet and his various personae. In the absence of capital letters, with only minimalist punctuation, and with a denial of the possessive case, (all formal signifiers of precedence and ownership), these poems do not appropriate the landscapes of their gaze, but rather liberate them.
What is harvested here are the signifiers for journeys: tickets, postcards, letters—recording unseemly haste, enforced idleness, losing one’s way, and sometimes finding it again. All coloured in the deceptive hues of a populist and egalitarian style, these poems are allowed to signify their own powerful and at times devastating ambiguities, from “a magic more elusive than any spell she whispered” to “the salt waste left by the flood, where no seed grows.”
the present is a small thing & moves very fast
in the same river, which as they say,
moves. it takes
& takes & takes. a polaroid
too long
to develop.
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Harvest And Other Plays
$19.95The past infiltrates the present and real life exists alongside the world of the imagination in this collection of three plays by Calgary-based writer Ken Cameron. In My One and Only, a 15-year-old Canadian boy becomes Marilyn Monroe’s secret companion when she comes to the Rockies in 1955 to film River of No Return; in Harvest, Cameron turns a real-life incident involving his parents into a comedy about a rural couple who unwittingly rent their farm out to a marijuana grow-op; and in the monologue My Morocco, Cameron himself takes the stage to tell the story of his fraught relationship with his estranged sister, news of whose death reaches him while he is on vacation in Morocco.
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Has the World Ended Yet?
$22.00In these astonishing tales, Has the World Ended Yet? mashes up scheming ghosts, undead marketers, travelling deity salesmen, deadly supermodels, a troubled hit man and his sex doll partner, a truly Cold War, fallen heroes, old gods and avenging angels in a Twilight Zone–style collection that is as absurd as the real world yet profoundly human. We follow characters that are larger than life with tragic flaws that would put the Greek myths to shame, as they move through a broken, corrupted Instagram version of our lives.
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Hastings Mill
$24.95In the summer of 1865, when Captain Edward Stamp began to organize the construction of a small sawmilling operation on the south shore of Burrard Inlet, he likely never realized that a future metropolis was in the making. The fledgling Stamp’s Mill, later to become Hastings Mill, was Vancouver’s first community-a townsite inhabited by an eclectic mix of colourful characters from widely diverse backgrounds. Life centered around the iconic Hastings Mill Store, where one came to obtain groceries, hardware, mail and the warmth of human interaction around an oil drum fire. Historic times aplenty unfolded at Hastings Mill. Here residents rallied to assist victims of the Great Vancouver Fire. Lumber cargo loads of legendary size and quality were shipped to markets near and far. Dominion Day festivities were celebrated in fine style on a sports field of mill sawdust. Indigenous occupants of the region engaged in mill employment and commerce. Chinook jargon was the widely spoken, multi-lingual trade language of the era. When time and local demographics ultimately spelled the death knoll for the sawmill and its weathered structures in 1930, an unlikely group of determined ladies rose to the challenge of saving the Hastings Mill Store, Vancouver’s oldest building.
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Hastings-Sunrise
$18.95Hastings-Sunrise is a love letter to a fleeting place and time. Bren Simmers’s second collection captures her old East Vancouver neighbourhood in the midst of upheaval. As it is colonized by tides of matching plaid and diners serving pulled-pork pancakes, condo developments replace the small businesses and cheap rentals that once gave the area its charm.Much like opening a set of nesting dolls, leafing through the collection exposes further layers of depth and intimacy. Within the context of cultural change, Simmers explores the meaning to be found in everyday things: the making of a home, the life built from daily routines. At the same time, she reveals the dissonance that can occur between personal and large-scale change: “Twitter feed of melting sea ice, / colony collapse / while we picnic under pink ribbons, / kiss again like we mean it.”Throughout the collection, the poet’s eye unfailingly lights on the perfect details to evoke a scene: “On Mr. Donair’s spit, / the earth rotates. Papal smoke emits / from Polonia Sausage, semis shunt / downtown.” Visual poems forming maps of Christmas lights and autumn colours further bring the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood to life, illustrating the interweaving of human and natural spaces and locating “home” in between.Like a tree clothed in multicoloured yarn or a miniature house filled with free books, Hastings-Sunrise is a gift to readers, beautiful in its simplicity.
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Hat Girl
$17.95Pertice McIlveen, a young Ontario woman who loves Hemingway and hates hats, receives a mysterious key in the mail. Accompanied by her best friend Es, she travels to Gannet Island off the coast of New Brunswick to find the door it fits into. There she discovers a charming cottage by the sea has been willed to her by a secret benefactor identified only as PM, on the condition she wears the hats that come with it. She accepts the challenge, leaving behind her life in Toronto and moving into Honeysuckle Cottage. As she seeks to solve the mystery of PM, Pertice is gradually changed by the hats she wears and the islanders she meets. With the help of Charlotte, the proprietor of the local bed and breakfast, her artist husband Will, and two men caught between land and sea, Pertice discovers a new kind of grace under pressure.
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Hats of Mr. Zenobe, The
$14.95I first became aware of the story of Vahan Poladian, the inspiration for Mr. Zenobe, through my colleague Agnès Limbos to whom I had sent some rough notes on the new piece I was working on. One day I received a phone call from Agnès, who was on tour in Switzerland. She had just visited the Musée de L’Art Brut (Outsider Art Museum) in Lausanne and seen Vahan Poladian’s remarkable collection housed there. Strangely enough, his story dovetailed with many of the ideas that I had sent to Agnès just months earlier.
I travelled to Lausanne myself, and spent an incredible day looking at Poladian’s creations and screening the short film Monsieur Poladian á St. Raphael. I was shocked and astonished by his story of exile, crumbled spirit, then spectacular transformation of creative ardour, verve, and passion.
Vahan Poladian was born in Kayseri, Turkey in 1902. The Turks began systematically killing the Armenians in 1915, with a death toll that reached 1.5 million. Poladian’s family fled the country. With the assistance of relatives, Poladian attempted to immigrate to the USA, but he was refused entry. He went instead to Cuba, where he worked as a travelling salesman. But this did not last long. Poladian was able to return to Europe when France accepted him as an immigrant.
He settled in Paris, where he made contact with the expatriate Armenian community. Poladian married an Armenian woman who bore him a daughter, Viviane. With the onset of the Second World War, however, Poladian was conscripted by the French Army, and forced to leave his family. His unit was captured by the Germans and Poladian was sent to a POW camp.
Upon his release at the end of the war, Poladian made his way back to Paris, only to discover that his wife and child had disappeared. For several years he searched in vain for them. His mother had also immigrated to France and he was briefly reunited with her after the war. She died soon after, however, and her death and the loss of his wife and child was a devastating shock for Poladian.
Poladian became “socially autistic,” closing off the world. In 1966, at the age of 64, he entered the Armenian Home in St. Raphael, France. He would spend his remaining years there. The Home gave Poladian a stipend of one franc a day, which he used to create an amazing phantasmagoria of hats and costumes. Twice daily he paraded through the streets of St. Raphael, showing his collection of “Ancient Terrors and Glories,” always with “the hope to change the world with laughter.”
Vahan Poladian died quietly in the Armenian Home in 1982 after refusing to eat. Part of his enormous collection of hats and costumes was donated to the Musée de L’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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Haunting of Adrian Yates, The
$19.95Adrian’s best friend and his boyfriend don’t get along. Oh, and his boyfriend is a ghost.
Adrian Yates expected his summer would involve sharing Slurpees with his best friend Zoomer and pretending not to hear his dads’ whispered fighting. And that’s exactly how it was going, until the night Sorel appeared in the graveyard by Adrian’s apartment. Sorel gets Adrian in ways no one else has; the fact that he’s not technically alive only makes things exciting. But Sorel can’t always control his otherworldly behaviour, and Zoomer’s worried he might be hiding something. On stormy summer nights behind the cemetery’s iron gates, Adrian and Sorel meet in secret and the pair begin to experiment with consensual possession. Despite the warning signs, Adrian is certain he has everything under control–until suddenly he finds himself fighting for his life.
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Have Not Been the Same (rev)
$29.95Published in autumn 2001, Have Not Been the Same became the first book to comprehensively document the rise of Canadian underground rock between the years 1985 and 1995. It was a tumultuous decade that saw the arrival of Blue Rodeo, The Tragically Hip, Sarah McLachlan, Sloan, Barenaked Ladies, Daniel Lanois, and many others who made an indelible mark not only on Canadian culture, but on the global stage as well. Have Not Been the Same tells all of their stories in rich detail through extensive first-person interviews, while at the same time capturing the spirit of Canada’s homegrown music industry on the cusp of the digital age.
Ten years on, the 780-page book is still regarded by critics and musicians as the definitive history of the era. To mark this milestone, the authors have updated many key areas of the book through new interviews, further illuminating the ongoing influence of this generation of artists. And with its treasure trove of rare photos intact, this revised edition of Have Not Been the Same is sure to maintain the book’s status as one of the seminal works in the field of Canadian music writing, and a must-read for any Canadian music fan.
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Haven
$19.95Strangers Elsie and Matt are both feeling great voids in their lives. Elsie, a literature professor, is grieving her famous novelist mother’s tragic death. Matt, a city engineer, is trying to regain childhood memories from living in war-torn Yugoslavia. When a sudden sinkhole in front of Elsie’s apartment building swallows a car that happens to contain a copy of Elsie’s mother’s novel, their paths cross, and the two are quickly drawn to each other’s search for fulfillment.
Haven is a beautiful portrait of how certain life events can be incredibly isolating, and what happens when people come into our lives when we need them most.
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Haw[Thorn]
$4.95A selection of poems on women’s heritage and family memories.
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Hawksley Burns for Isadora
$24.95“Quite possibly the coolest thing to come out of Canada.” — Time
Out This strange blending of prose and poetry is a collection of enigmatic love letters to an elusive object of affection that first appeared in the classified ads of two Toronto newspapers. Stirring curious interest and provoking strong responses, these romantic notes capture one side of a fascinatingly eccentric love affair. Exquisitely rendered paintings combine with lushly written missives to offer a tantalizing peek into the intimate intricacies of a deeply felt love from a lauded musician whose lyrics have been praised as exotic, daring, vulnerable, brilliant, and weird.
• A finalist for the Pearson Canada Reader’s Choice Award
• Winner of Best New Solo Artist and Best Video at 2002 Juno Awards
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Hazard, Home
$20.00Room is made for martens when time hollows a hemlock:
the arborists’ hazard, home to more scufflers and singers.
It’s the dying that reinvigorates; roosts, rests, hidden shelters,
clinging of bat claw under flap of loose bark.
Hazard, Home is a tribute to both wonder and grief for Earth’s inhabitants and systems. With admiration for the land holders (trees) and inhabitants of the rainforest, wetlands and oceans of her home, former Tofino Poet Laureate Christine Lowther delves into the pressing issues of urbanization, climate change, and loss of biodiversity while expressing her deep concern for those feathered, furred, webbed, and rooted. Hazard, Home is set apart from traditional nature poetry by its decolonial lens which pays tribute to stolen lands as well as displaced people and cultures. Lowther’s words are both startling and reflective as she bears witness to the devastating impact of our presence on the natural world. Through her evocative writing, Lowther inspires us to celebrate the beauty of nature while recognizing the urgent need for change.
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He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car
$18.00He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car is elegiac, lyrical, ironic; a series of reflections, recollections; a collection about relationships-to family, clocks, water, trees, ungulates, endings-recognizing that not all relationships are straightforward: a mother’s secret false teeth, a teakettle riddled with bullet holes, pears and small knives. To leave a face in the funeral car is to fall out of time, to fall into history, to ponder the meanings of dust, the quiet records of suicide. Thisis poetry that covers a broad range, wide and changing, the strangeness of everyday life buoyed by the solace of language, the pleasure of song. Each word in its right place, each poem reflecting beyond surface meaning.
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He Moved A Mountain
$21.95Dr. Frank Arthur Calder of BC’s Nisga’a First Nation was the first aboriginal person to be elected to any Canadian governing body. For twenty-six years he served as an MLA in the legislature of British Columbia. He was the driving force behind Canada’s decision to grant recognition of aboriginal land title to First Nations people throughout the country. He accomplished this goal by guiding the controversial request through a series of court cases, finally to the Supreme Court of Canada, achieving success when Parliament, in an all-party resolution, passed a measure recognizing indigenous title. Because of this historic decision, Canada serves as a resource for other aboriginal populations in countries where similar accommodations for aboriginal people have not yet been made. Calder received many honours in his lifetime, including the Order of Canada. The one he most cherished, however, was one rarely bestowed by the Nisga’a Nation: “Chief of Chiefs.” While growing up, Frank went to grade 10 in residential school, completed high school and then graduated from the University of BC (in the Anglican Theological College). It took him two years longer than usual to complete university, as he had to return home during the fishing season to earn the money for his tuition.