All Books

Side Effects: A Footloose Journey to the Apocalypse

$20.00

Side Effects: A footloose journey to the apocalypse is a novel about the post-World War II baby boom generation and the factors that have led to climate catastrophe. The novel provides a portrait of the boomers by following the lives of a zany, idealistic couple and their growing family through the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s. Beginning on a honeymoon motorcycle trip the couple sets the goal of putting down roots in California, the land of wild beauty, abundance, and political activism. The music, art, science, and politics of the era are palpable throughout the book.

Sideways

By: Heather Haley

$14.00

Heather Haley’s poetry is tough, irreverent, and in-your-face. She asks all the questions that a nice girl’s not supposed to ask. Down back roads and highways, her characters long to possess the past and harness the future. Cowboys, car accidents, broken hearts, dead lovers-and potential violence-hover like heat on the horizon. Whether theyre gangsta girls or riot grrrls, roaming the range or pacing the mall, Haley’s women are always in the forefront, in the driver’s seat, crankin’ thewheel in their direction. Like wild horses bustin’ loose, or an explosion in the kitchen, Haley’s women know “how heady power is, how it lathers beneath a mount.” Her characters bite life on the neck and take what they need; and just when they think it’s gone, meaning happens. This is brawny and uncompromising language from a voice that demands to be reckoned with.

“A supple and unusual book.” – Lyle Neff, author of ‘ Full Magpie Dodge’ and ‘Bizarre Winery Tragedy’

Siegebreakers

By: Justin Podur

$22.00

Under the crushing weight of the siege of Gaza, Laila and Nasser are members of the Palestinian resistance fighting desperately to free their people. Together, they learn of a plan to unite the disparate Palestinian factions and break Israel’s siege. Unknown to them, Ari, a brilliant Israeli spy, has decided that his conscience can no longer allow him to participate in the starvation of Gaza. A double agent whose every move is under mounting suspicion, Ari reaches out to the American contractors who trained him with a secret plan. As they all struggle to break the siege, they face the wrath of the Israeli military machine.

Siegfried: Dragon Slayer

By: Mark Allard-Will

$24.99

Impulsive young Prince Siegfried craves glory and recognition from his aloof parents, the king and queen of Denmark. Starting a war with a neighbouring country and seeking out the most feared dragon in the realm seems like a good place to start.

An epic tale full of action, adventure, mythological beasts, magical swords, powerful rings, and a treacherous companion.

Adapted from the ancient Norse mythological Völsunga Saga, Siegfried: Dragon Slayer is the first in a two-part series by Canadians Mark Allard-Will and Jasmine Redford.

SigfussonÕs Roads

By: Svein Sigfusson

$24.95

Here was a man who had done it all with winter roads. Here was the spark plug that drove a work force of over 400 men deep into the wilderness of northwestern Ontario, northern Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The Sigfusson Transportation Company built a winter road system like no other on earthstretching 3,560 miles into the dead of winter. Rather than have Sigfusson gain a hard–earned profit by building and operating a winter–road freighting system annually at no cost to society, the governments of the day in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario each were successful in putting the company out of business.

Sightings: Poems

By: Patrick Friesen

$24.00

The poems in Patrick Friesen’s latest collection move between the visible and invisible, between the contradictions of human history and the immediacy of a complex present. Friesen examines memory and music, rivers and personalities, open to all possibilities and sceptical of wisdom. This book marks a half century of poetry collections by Patrick Friesen.

Sightlines

By: Henry Beissel

$20.00

This collection is truly global in scope and universal in perspective. From a bog near Ottawa to the lagoons of Venice, from a chamber concert in an Ontario barn to a blind beggar in Mexico, from the infinities of interstellar space to the birth of a grandson — Henry Beissel celebrates the world in all its richness, mysteries and ecstasies, without ever flinching from its contradictions and torments, and offers exciting sightlines on the human condition.

Signal Decay

By: Keith Cadieux

$6.95

Tim has recently passed away and left Lori with piles of expensive recording equipment and mountains of debt. Tim’s family wants to move on from the loss but Lori can’t let go, not while she can still hear Tim’s laugh as though he’s still there beside her. That is, until she begins to hear his laugh in odd places, like old recordings Tim never worked on.

Can love transcend to keep us connected through death? Or do we just create our own reality when we’re not ready to let go?

Significance of Moths, The

By: Shirley Camia

$17.00

Against the backdrop of the changing seasons, Shirley Camia’s The Significance of Moths is a graceful exploration of home and memory through the eyes of the migrant and the migrant child. As lives are displaced by new landscapes, where does home exist? In the land or in the mind? For new Canadians and their children there is no easy answer. In the journey to form identity, The Significance of Moths confronts the ghosts of “what was” with the here and now.

Signs of Literature

By: Kenneth James Hughes

$24.95

This language primer begins with a suitably esoteric-looking chapter called “The Language of Time.” It isn’t until the second paragraph that the unsuspecting reader realizes Hughes is talking about the language of Time magazine, which he analyzes as a piece of fiction. Indeed, for Hughes, there is no such thing as a substantive distinction between fiction and non-fiction—there are only texts that do things with structural techniques of syntax and signs. Some of these texts we have commonly agreed to believe are fiction; others we have commonly agreed to believe are fact. None of these texts, however, has anything to do with truth, much less Truth with a capital “T”. In an amazing brief and headlong rush through the history of language from classical Greece to the 20th century, Hughes demonstrates convincingly that neither the empirical world, nor the metaphysical world, has ever informed language. Rather, it is always language which informs the world.

Hughes’s careful analysis of the techniques of the English language, from Anglo-Saxon verse to the latest post-modern text, constantly reminds us that language is always a made thing, and that the empirical objects captured by language are never immediate, but always mediated by the perception and the craft of the speaker or the author. This book is a must for every serious student of language and literature: because it introduces the reader so effortlessly to the latest vocabulary and techniques of structuralist criticism, it is a basic tool for anyone wishing to communicate his or her ideas to anyone else, and in any discipline. The surprise of the book for the lay reader is that it is so richly entertaining. Its constant demystification of the technique of communication we most take for granted—common speech—offers the reader surprise and delight from the first page to the last.

Signs of Subversive Innocents

By: Cora Siré

$14.95

Signs of Subversive Innocents travels the depth of human experience from the celebratory to the delusional. This debut collection by Cora Siré tells of characters and realms, both distant and familiar, with vibrant intensity and lyricism. The poems speak of physical and metaphysical signs—omens, gestures, creations, and other markings or traces of human existence—and the impulse to subvert destiny, the tension between actuality and desire that underlies beauty, terror, desperation, and triumph. Uniquely structured around a quartet set in an abandoned marble quarry, the poems resonate for their ingenuity and range while evoking the search for connection in a complex world.

Signs of the Times

By: Bud Osborn

$16.00

Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design

Signs of the Times reunites the poetry of Bud Osborn and the woodprints of Vancouver printmaker and painter Richard Tetrault. As with their first collaboration, Oppenheimer Park, Signs of the Times is both an unflinching look at Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and a beautiful object in its own right.

Praise for Signs of the Times:

“The greatest barriers we face are cynicism on the part of those who have the resources and power to make change happen, and hopelessness on the part of those who have had everything stripped from them. Signs of the Times meets these barriers head-on and shows us a way through, together.” (Libby Davies, from the Preface)

“Osborn reclaims the role of poet as social catalyst… Osborn challenges us to not turn away as he presents his characters in the harshness and brutality that result from the economic and social oppression they experience… These poems and prints are a revelation to those who live in the downtown eastside and to those who observe and are perplexed by the complexities and contradictions of this community. These two remarkable artists have offered themselves and their experience with generosity, openness, and compassion.” (Kim Elliott, rabble.ca)

“… a timeless marriage of ardent words in the tradition of Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman, on behalf of those whose voices aren’t often heard, with striking woodcuts and linocuts reminiscent of the works of Lynd Ward and Clifford Harper. Osborn’s poems about the dehumanizing experience of being homeless in a city express a generic sense of outrage and compassion even as they describe specifically the lives of suffering junkies, prostitutes, and ‘binners’ in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” (Chris Dodge, The UTNE Reader)

Sila

By: Chantal Bilodeau, Chantal Bilodeau

$17.95

In Inuit mythology, “sila” means air, climate, or breath. Bilodeau’s play of the same name examines the competing interests shaping the future of the Canadian Arctic and local Inuit population. Equal parts Inuit myth and contemporary Arctic policy, the play Sila features puppetry, spoken word poetry, and three different languages (English, French, and Inuktitut).

There is more afoot in the Arctic than one might think. On Baffin Island in the territory of Nunavut, eight characters – including a climatologist, an Inuit activist and her son, and two polar bears – find their values challenged as they grapple with a rapidly changing environment and world. Sila captures the fragility of life and the interconnectedness of lives, both human and animal, and reveals in gleaming tones that telling the stories of everyday challenges – especially raising children and maintaining family ties – is always more powerful than reciting facts
and figures.

Our changing climate will have a significant impact on how we organize ourselves. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Arctic, where warming temperatures are displacing entire ecosystems. The Arctic Cycle – eight plays that examine the impact of climate change on the eight countries of the Arctic – poignantly addresses this issue. Sila is the first play of The Arctic Cycle. With its large-as-life polar bear puppets, the play is evocative and mesmerizing, beautifully blurring the boundaries between folklore and science.

Silence Made Visible

By: Margery Fee

$25.00

Silence Made Visible: Howard O’Hagan and Tay John collects essays about Howard O’Hagan’s best-known novel, as well as providing a chronology of his life, an annotated bibliography of his works, an interview with Keith Maillard, and two short memoirs, one by Lovat Dickson, the other by E.W. Strong. Essays by Margery Fee, Ronald Granofsky, W.J. Keith, and Ralph Maud deal with the novel’s anthropological sources, its publishing history, its canonization, its treatment of women in the context of its major symbolic patterns, and its connections with O’Hagan’s other works. This collection also includes short pieces by O’Hagan himself, some previously unpublished: his first published story, some autobiographical sketches, and his odd, witty chronicles of several meetings of the Berkeley Arts Club.

Silence of the North, The

By: Alan Butcher

$16.95

“The Silence of the North” is a poetic reflection of Canadian least known and most enigmatic Arctic region. Alan Butcher challenges our notions of landscape and wilderness, culture and perception, the limits of experience, and the nature of being. This is a poetry collection that investigates the human understanding, parting the veil of the mundane to reveal passion, beauty, myth, and mystery of Canadian Arctic. At once atmospheric, with a surreal blend of emotion and memory, “The Silence of the North” is a fluid and ever-shifting landscape of possibilities. These poems are restless and inquisitive. They echo a desire to forge a voice that is as curious as it is distinctive. This poetry collection will appeal to all lovers of poetry, particularly those who enjoy striking imagery linking the quotidian to the universal.

Silence to Strength

$18.00

From the 1960s through the 1980s the Canadian Children’s Aid Society engaged in a large-scale program of removing First Nations children from their families and communities and adopting them out to non-Indigenous families. This systemic abduction of untold thousands of children came to be known as the Sixties Scoop. The lasting disruption from the loss of family and culture is only now starting to be spoken of publicly, as are stories of strength and survivance.
In Silence to Strength: Writings and Reflections on the 60s Scoop, editor Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith gathers together contributions from twenty Sixties Scoop survivors from across the territories of Canada. This anthology includes poems, stories and personal essays from contributors such as Alice McKay, D.B. McLeod, David Montgomery, Doreen Parenteau, Tylor Pennock, Terry Swan, Lisa Wilder, and many more. Courageous writings and reflections that prove there is strength in telling a story, and power in ending the silence of the past.

All Books in this Collection