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Showing 5009–5024 of 9481 results
Set in the community of Listuguj, Gespe’gewa’gi, Nipugtug follows the journey of A’le’s (Mi’gmaw for Alice), a young Mi’gmaw woman, snowshoeing through the forest. There, she meets animals, Wapus (Rabbit), Wowgwis (Fox), Tia’m (Moose), Ga’qaquj (Crow) and trees, Masgwi (Birch), Qasgusi (Cedar) who guide her through both challenging and nourishing emotions of learning her Mi’gmaw language. Grounded in her relationship with the territory, A’le’s navigates memories of her language that cling to realities within and beyond her life.
A young woman from Montreal follows the geese to the Inuit North in this deeply felt witnessing of contemporary Aboriginal life, as shaped by decades of colonial rule and government neglect. Having worked in the North for years, Juliana Léveillé-Trudel‘s account of the Indigenous experience offers a portrait of a valiant people undaunted by institutionalized racism, but in many cases broken by domestic violence, and corrupted by corporate mining and the presence of temporary workers up for the summer from the South in search of big paycheques.
Delivered across two searing monologues, Nirliit is a testament to a people’s perseverance as much as it is an apology by those who inflicted those circumstances upon them. Léveillé-Trudel courageously transcends the borders between historical divisions to make a meaningful individual connection.
When the real world is emptied of all that you love, how can you keep yourself from dependence on the virtual?Animal activist and punk rock star Larissa Kenders lives in a dystopian world where the real and the virtual intermingle. After the disappearance of her soulmate, Andrew, Kenders finds solace by escaping to Nirvana, a virtual world controlled by Hexagon. In Nirvana, anyone’s deepest desires may be realized – even visits with Andrew.Although Kenders knows that this version of Andrew is virtual, when he asks for her assistance revealing Hexagon’s dark secret, she cannot help but comply. Soon after, Kenders and her closest allies find themselves in a battle with Hexagon, the very institution they have been taught to trust. After uncovering much more than she expected, Kenders’ biggest challenge is determining what is real – and what is virtual.Nirvana is a fast-paced, page-turning young adult novel combining elements of science fiction, mystery, and romance. Part of a trilogy, this book introduces readers to a young woman who refuses to give up on the man she loves, even if it means taking on an entire government to do so./
Jas M. Morgan’s nîtisânak honours blood and chosen kin with equal care. A groundbreaking memoir spanning nations, prairie punk scenes, and queer love stories, it is woven around grief over the loss of their mother. It also explores despair and healing through community and family, and being torn apart by the same. Using cyclical narrative techniques and drawing on their Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis ancestral teachings, this work offers a compelling perspective on the connections that must be broken and the ones that heal.
Winner of the 2019 Quebec Writers’ Federation Concordia University First Book Prize
?The legendary Terry Sawchuk is said to have kept parts of himself in jars: one for teeth, one for bone chips, and another for his appendix. no cage contains a stare that well is jarring in much the same way. Each poem in this collection is a self-contained vessel in which a distinct bit of our national game – a player or a fight, a save or a goal, an injury or a regret – is preserved; mementos cross-cut into countless sheets of ice.
Often dark and brooding, this book offers a league of gloomy characters: a spiteful Zamboni driver and a nearly blinded beer-leaguer; a maimed minor-hockey coach and that over-bearing hockey dad you’ve heard in the rink. These are poems about hockey – shifting their way through the game, its characters, images, and passions.
no cage contains a stare that well is like an impossible glove save in overtime – exulting in the game while examining the darker, musty corners of its locker rooms. But these poems speak to life off-ice as well: to how we know what we know, how we feel what we feel, and how we win or lose.
No Depression in Heaven asks how we respond to bad times. Written during country music’s most recent ascent in popularity, this poetry “LP” consists of ten “tracks” that each take up a rhythm, only to bend it out of shape.
Dwelling on whether it is best to look backward to a seemingly better past, longing for a way to make things great again, or to stare into the abyss of the future, gambling that entry into heaven will finally provide release from a weary life, No Depression in Heaven rejects both of these dangerous horizons. It chooses instead to remain resolutely in present uncertainty, addressing our latter-day anxiety through poetic improvisation, treating the text as a space of play and experimentation. Drawing inspiration from a variety of sources, both musical and poetic – and taking its title from a famous Carter Family song – No Depression in Heaven asks what it means to hold onto something toxic because of the comforts it affords, to daydream about days long past rather than gripping the reins of the present.
This is a book that pulls on its boots, tilts its hat, and brushes the dust off its Nudie suit before tipping language out of key.
Fame can be fickle. Nobody knows that better than overnight sensation Gabriel Pegg . . . you know, Port-o-Potty Guy . . . from Erratic Automatic. Remember him? He went from the penthouse to the outhouse, and now Gabriel is persona non grata in the entertainment biz. Broke, behind on his child support payments, and a wanted man, Gabriel heads to the only place he has left: Greatness, Manitoba, population…I don’t know, but there’s one traffic light. Gabriel believes his destiny as a serious auteur awaits him, once he can rid himself of those pesky parental commitments. When Gabriel unwittingly signs himself up for six-days-a-week custody of his 11 year old daughter, Sometimes there’s just no Escape from Greatness.
“Beautifully written, sharply observed, warm, wise, and funny, No Escape from Greatness is the thing we’ve all been waiting for: the Great Canadian Novel! But if there is already one (what the hell do I know, I’m an American, we don’t know anything!) then, by God, this one is the next one!”
Steve Kaplan, Script Consultant, Author, The Hidden Tools of Comedy: The Serious Business of Being Funny
“Screenwriter and novelist Jeffrey John Eyamie has created a humorous, but grounded, story on Gabriel Pegg’s fall from his 15 minutes of fame and his climb back”
-The Mirimachi Reader
A profoundly moving exploration of our capacity to heal one another.
Ellie and Eric Nyland have moved their two sons back to Eric’s childhood farmhouse, hoping for a fresh start. But there’s no denying it, their family is falling apart, each one of them isolated by private sorrows, stresses, and missed signals. With every passing day, Ellie’s hopes are buried deeper in the harsh winter snows.
When Eric finds Hannah Finch, the girl across the road, wandering alone in the bitter cold, his rusty police instincts kick in, and he soon discovers there are bad things happening in the girl’s house. With nowhere else to send her, the Nylands reluctantly agree to let Hannah stay with them until she can find a new home after the Christmas holidays. But Hannah proves to be more balm than burden, and the Nylands discover that the only thing harder than taking Hannah in may be letting her go.
A rogue moose wanders into a suburb near Quebec city, tramples lawns and gardens, stumbles in and out of a swimming pool, is tracked by three gun toting heads of family who shoot it down just as a school bus goes by wherein a little girl is trilling “Three Little Kittens.” Thus begins No Grave For This Place, Judy Quinn’s bleak, ironic, and at times darkly comic tribute to Auberivière, the neighbourhood where she grew up. Here “streets are landing strips / for planes that will never arrive,”
the dead “descend / the steps of prefab houses / champagne flutes in their hands,”
and a pack of cats “throws itself on the electric fences / surrounding our inner lives.” Quinn’s voice will resonate with all those who have, by association or from experience, tasted the cultural barrenness that can underlie civilized life.
Join Rob Simpson on a dozen once-in-a-lifetime adventures in the world of international media
Though he’s now known to hockey fans across North America for his NHL commentary and as co-host of the Stellick and Simmer SiriusXM radio show, Rob Simpson didn’t start his radio and TV career rinkside: his media background has taken him around the world and into uniquely unexpected situations. In No Heavy Lifting, Simpson recounts some of his wildest adventures from stints as a TV weatherman in Hawaii, a hockey reporter at the Torino Olympics, a skydiver in Idaho, and a marathoner in New York, to immigrating north of the border.
Take ten grand a year out of your bank account, for ten years, and gamble it away? Check. Take a humanitarian trip to the Serengeti with a beloved NHL player whose brain damage may have led to his death? Check. Alienate and scandalize the most powerful man in Hawaiian politics? Check. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro wearing someone else’s boots and clothes? Checkmate.
Featuring stories about NBA legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, “Dr. J” Julius Erving, and Larry Bird, and NHL superstars Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton, Steve Montador, Scott Gomez, Domenic Moore, and Nicklas Lidström, this episodic memoir is told with Simpson’s arch sense of humor.
A stolen sign, ‘No Jews Live Here,’ kept John Lorinc’s Hungarian Jewish family alive during the Holocaust.
From pre-war Budapest to post-war Toronto, journalist John Lorinc unspools four generations of his Hungarian Jewish family’s journey through the Holocaust, the 1956 Revolution, and finally exodus from a country that can’t rid itself of its antisemitic demons.
This braided saga centres on the writer’s eccentric and defiant grandmother, a consummate survivor with a love of flashy jewelry and a vicious tongue. Lorinc also traces the stories of both his grandfathers and his father, all of whom fell victim, in different ways, to the Nazis’ genocidal campaign to rid Europe of Jews.
This is a deeply reported but profoundly human telling of a vile part of history, told through Lorinc’s distinctively astute and compassionate consideration of how cities and cultures work. Set against the complicated and poorly understood background of Hungary’s Jewish community, No Jews Live Here is about family stories, and how the narratives of our lives are shaped by our times and historical forces over which we have no control.
“John Lorinc weaves Hungarian history with the equally fascinating history of his own family to tell a deeply researched story with universal resonance: how events, enormous and seemingly tiny (a genocidal war, foggy skies), conspire to create outcomes with life-and-death implications through generations.” – Marsha Lederman, author of Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed
At the height of the Covid pandemic, BC provincial court judge Philip Seagram faced a personal reckoning. His work had been consuming so much of his life he had been unaware even of his own son’s university graduation. He came to the blunt realization that he needed to leave his career.
The internal turmoil felt by Seagram during this time reflected the chaos of the outside world: the pandemic wore on; BC was ravaged by heat domes, massive floods, and forest fires; Canada’s divisions, be they over politics or vaccines, were deepening; increasingly, social media was being used as a weapon instead of a means of connection.
In the spring of 2022, as the pandemic wound down and the war in Ukraine ramped up, Seagram embarked on a cross-Canada journey, travelling across the country busking on the sidewalks of major cities. The sign he placed before him as he played invited people to give or take money from his guitar case. Anything left over was donated to Ukraine humanitarian relief.
In No Judgment and Other Busking Stories, Philip Seagram recounts his eight-week busking venture. He chronicles the challenges faced and insights gained while driving from city to city and meeting people through his street performances. Canada, vast as it is, began to feel smaller as he connected with strangers through music. And by extension, so did the world. At its core, No Judgment is a tale of human connection in a disconnected world and the part music can play in this.
Busking, Seagram learned, is both an expression of trust and an invitation. The busker, like any musical performer, asks, “Do you feel this too?”
Incest denial and sexual assaults disrupt a young woman’s solo spiritual quest and her two romantic adventures in India in 1990-91. Two decades later, after profound healing, she’s resilient at mid-life. Finding the love and intimacy she craves, she can, at last, forgive her dying father—and her mom, for her decades of silence. Unlike many stories of healing and spiritual discovery, No Letter in Your Pocket avoids predictable recovery rhetoric and insular victimhood. Instead, it is a testament to thriving empowerment.
A risqué autobiographical novel that fictionalizes the sexual adventures of the author’s youth
In 2012, acclaimed writer George Bowering published Pinboy, a fictional memoir of his teenage sexual awakening. With No One, Bowering returns to play with form and fact in this autobiographical novel that continues the narrator’s journey in a quest story full of further sexual awakenings as that Pinboy becomes a man.
A writer called “alert, playful, and questioning” by The Globe and Mail, Bowering infuses this work with sexual politics, romantic and social developments, and a backdrop of ancient themes of homesickness and captivity. Readers may delight in the details of the retelling or perhaps they will be browned off. There are no guarantees. The ending will be a pleasant surprise for readers, patient and otherwise.
From wherever I am, I will
send word like a golden thread,
roll an unravelling ball through time
toward myself.
In this stunning debut collection, Bronwen Wallace Award finalist Jessica Bebenek presents two distinct and moving portraits of early womanhood. The first is that of the devoted, caregiving granddaughter navigating hospital hallways and the painful realities of palliative care. The second is that of a woman a decade older, compassionately looking back on her younger self. In this second half, Bebenek rewrites poems from the first, honouring unimaginable loss and turning it into genuine healing.
At once sensual, visceral, and dreamlike, No One Knows Us There takes us from the sterility of the hospital into the sumptuous natural world. We face horror in a manicured garden and discover beauty in a suncapped lake. A theoretical mathematician leads us to an elk encounter, the crooked bodies of birds are found in the spring thaw, and we become our own pet snail in a mason jar.
Ultimately, grief is radically transformed through plainspoken yet lyrical language, and this keen examination of trauma evolves into a striking celebration of the inevitability of change.