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Congress 2025
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All Books in this Collection
Showing 33–48 of 61 results
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She Won The Vote For Women
$28.95“a fascinating, informative, definitive, and inspiring biography. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, making it especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library 20th Century Canadian Political History and Women’s Biography collections.” — Midwest Book Review
Lillian Beynon Thomas’ suffragist campaign succeeded where all others had failed. This full-length biography fills an important gap in the history of the ‘votes for women’ movement, a campaign which saw Manitoba become the earliest federal or provincial Canadian jurisdiction to grant women the franchise.
Lillian’s “Home Loving Hearts” page in the Prairie Farmer newspaper, a weekly column in which she advocated for a wide variety of women’s rights, made her one of the most popular, pioneering women’s page journalists on the prairie. During this time, she founded the rural Homemakers’ Clubs affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan. To achieve the franchise, she eschewed the then traditional tools of back-room, partisan party politics by instead developing a broadly-based, grass-roots movement which stands as a forerunner of modern political campaign techniques.
Facing hostile opposition to her pacifist views in Winnipeg during World War One, she and her husband went into voluntary exile in New York City where she raised money through a newspaper column describing the plight of destitute sailors in that metropolis. Returning home, she became a leading Canadian short-story writer, playwright, and public advocate for a Canadian cultural identity, distinct from that of Britain or America.
This is the story of how a young girl came with her settler family to a desolate part of the hardscrabble prairie and who, despite these humble origins, succeeded in engineering a fundamental Canadian democratic reform and championing the emerging Canadian cultural nationalism.
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Siegfried: Dragon Slayer
$24.99Impulsive 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.
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Silence to Strength
$18.00From 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. -
Spiritual Pursuits and Other Stories
$22.95Lien Chao’s new collection of stories is about Toronto as a meeting place for people of all backgrounds. Set in the decades from the 1980s to the 2020s, the stories depict the ripple effects of China’s economic success, the peak of business globalization, and its inevitable decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. The author has chosen an unhampered social and geographical setting to observe Canadians in the world and at home, including immigrants and refugees. The author has depicted in great detail friendships among neighbours and single women. As Canadians merge into mixed neighbourhoods, spiritual pursuits in individual lifestyles are shared socially as communal rituals.
These five long stories touch on a number of social groups. Newcomer portrait artists build their businesses on the streets of downtown Toronto in the 1990s; a Canadian business club tries hard to enter the retail markets in China in the 2010s; a multi-millionaire from China organizes an artists’ salon in Scarborough; a group of spiritual pursuers meet weekly in Markham Village for meditation and discussion of ancient Chinese wisdom and spirituality.
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Standoff
$21.95Faced with a constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, Canada’s “reconciliation project” has obviously gone off the rails. In this series of concise and thoughtful essays, lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor explains why reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is failing and what needs to be done to fix it.
Widely known as a passionate advocate for Indigenous rights, McIvor reports from the front lines of legal and political disputes that have gripped the nation. From Wet’suwet’en opposition to a pipeline in northern British Columbia, to Mi’kmaw exercising their fishing rights in Nova Scotia, McIvor has been actively involved in advising First Nation clients, fielding industry and non-Indigenous opposition to true reconciliation, and explaining to government officials why their policies are failing.
McIvor’s essays are honest and heartfelt. In clear, plain language he explains the historical and social forces that underpin the development of Indigenous law, criticizes the current legal shortcomings and charts a practical, principled way forward.
By weaving in personal stories of growing up Métis on the fringes of the Peguis First Nation in Manitoba and representing First Nations in court and negotiations, McIvor brings to life the human side of the law and politics surrounding Indigenous peoples’ ongoing struggle for fairness and justice. His writing covers many of the most important issues that have become part of a national dialogue, including systemic racism, treaty rights, violence against Indigenous people, Métis identity, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and the duty to consult.
McIvor’s message is consistent and powerful: if Canadians are brave enough to confront the reality of the country’s colonialist past and present and insist that politicians replace empty promises with concrete, meaningful change, there is a realistic path forward based on respect, recognition and the implementation of Indigenous rights.
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Stolen Sisters
$19.95Stolen Sisters is a first-of-its-kind play that gives voice to the lives and legacies of three Beothuk women and girls whose names have survived in historical record.
These are stories that have been mis-told, misrepresented, and mythologized by colonial interference. By shifting the lens of history to reflect Indigenous perspective and experience, the women brought to life in Stolen Sisters set the record straight, telling their own stories with both humour and unflinching honestly. Based on the oral and written Indigenous histories of colonization locally and worldwide, the voices of Stolen Sisters shine a light on the global experience of Indigenous women and girls and, in particular, Newfoundland’s part in that legacy.
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Straight Outta Busan
$19.99A collection of short cartoons from Stefano Jun chronicling his experiences growing up a Korean immigrant in Western Canada. Having moved to Canada as an 8 year old with no knowledge of English, Stefano encounters culture shock, family love, friendship, and ultimately finding a place for himself in the vast country he has called home for 20 years now.
These slice of life stories are a keenly observed insight into the experience of growing up in an unfamiliar place. Full of emotion, humour and surprise, Modern Asian Family: Straight Outta Busan is a delight to read.
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Sunrise over Half-Built Houses
$26.00Enter into the life and mind of a shy teenager coming of age in the early 2000s in a pretty, suburban neighbourhood where nothing is quite as it seems—including her. At a glance, she’s a student with a boyfriend and a job at the coffee shop. Yet she’s skipping class, grappling with intense feelings for girls and growing dangerously dependent on illicit pills with cute names.
Wanting nothing more than to be who she is on the inside, Erin Steele’s spiral into addiction and parallel quest for meaning takes readers into big houses with spare room for secrets; past quiet cul-de-sacs where kids party in wooded outskirts zoned for development; where West Coast rains can pummel for days.
Written with searing honesty that stares at you until you turn away, then stares at you some more, Sunrise over Half-Built Houses digs down past pleasantries and manicured lawns, through the sucking hole of addiction, then further still to reveal a place where we can all see ourselves and each other more clearly.
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Take Your Baby And Run
$25.95“Part memoir, part medical malfeasance whistle-blowing, and essential reading for medical reform activists, “Take Your Baby And Run” is especially and unreservedly recommended.” – Midwest Book Review
Foreword by Lanette Siragusa, RN NM
Take Your Baby and Run is Carol Youngson’s first-hand account of the shocking ineptitude and misogynistic behaviour that led to the death of twelve children, primarily infants, under the care of Dr. Jonah Odim at Winnipeg’s largest hospital in 1994. Youngson was the nurse in charge of the cardiac unit and in her book she details the dysfunctional hospital hierarchy that allowed this tragedy to unfold, leading to the longest running inquiry in Canadian history. Sadly, the themes of this book are just as relevant today during our current health crisis.
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The Anstruther Reader
$24.95Compiled to celebrate ten years worth of limited edition chapbooks and broadsides, The Anstruther Reader tracks the evolution of Anstruther Press, one of Canada’s most prominent micropresses. Featuring notable authors such as Klara du Plessis, Tolu Oloruntoba, David Ly, Rebecca Salazar, David Barrick, Fawn Parker, and T. Liem, The Anstruther Reader makes a case for the press’s reputation as a launching pad for emerging and established poets alike, and spotlights its mandate to publish poetry that both pushes against and expands the boundaries of Canadian literature.
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The Cipher
$22.95It is June 1940 and fifteen-year-old Olivia Baldini’s idyllic English life is shattered as Britain declares war on Italy. With hyperthymesia, Olivia possesses an extraordinary ability to recall information with vivid detail, a gift that makes her invaluable to Churchill’s secret sabotage army, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Trained in nursing, coding, and espionage, Olivia is dispatched behind enemy lines in Italy, aiding partisans and resistance fighters.
Nino Fabris, dreaming of world travel with the merchant marines, is thrust into the war when his ship is conscripted. Captured in North Africa and sent to a POW camp in Kenya, Nino seizes a chance for freedom by joining the SOE.
In the chaos of war, Olivia and Nino’s paths intertwine. The Cipher is a gripping tale of love, resilience, and the power of the truth — and who you trust with it.
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The Downloaded
$19.95The new novel by Canada’s top Science Fiction writer
In 2059 two very different groups have their minds uploaded into a quantum computer in Waterloo, Ontario.
One group consists of astronauts preparing for Earth’s first interstellar voyage. The other? Convicted murderers, serving their sentences in a virtual-reality prison.
But when disaster strikes, the astronauts and the prisoners must download back into physical reality and find a way to work together to save Earth from destruction.
The Downloaded debuted in a six-month exclusive window as an Audible Original narrated by Academy Award-winner Brendan Fraser promoted by national TV and radio ad campaigns. This print edition is coming out immediately after Audible’s exclusivity ends and is being supported by a six-city cross-Canada author book tour.
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The Emptiest Quarter
$22.95The three novellas in The Emptiest Quarter find their inspiration in the sands and streets of Abu Dhabi, where author Raymond Beauchemin lived for four years, a time that overlapped with the building of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums and the opening of Sorbonne and NYU campuses, the convulsions of the Arab Spring and the eruption of civil war in Syria. The characters who populate The Emptiest Quarter live at both the centre and the fringes of the conflict between preservation and progress, including sheikhs, western oil-and-gas men, burned-out journalists, pearl divers, and Filipina caregivers, all striving to find themselves, to find love, to find balance in ever-shifting sands.
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The First Stone
$18.95“No one remembers why it started—
What the first stone was for—
And so no one can think of a reason to stop.”Can something torn apart by war be put together again? From the award-winning author of Gas Girls and Sound of the Beast, Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s The First Stone is an epic-yet-intimate exploration of the harrowing path from violence to forgiveness. In an unnamed village in a country modelled after Uganda, two children are captured by an army and forced to commit unimaginable atrocities while their family longs for their return. Through poetry and song, this insightful drama sheds light on the exploitation of child abductees, the communities from which they are stolen, the determination to bring them home, and the hard road to reconciliation that follows.
Expansive in its scope, The First Stone is a profound parable that traces ancestral cycles of violence and the imperatives of transformative justice with staggering clarity. This merciful call for humanity follows one family’s struggle to reunite, measuring the cost of holding on and the grace of letting go.
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The Forgotten Frontier
$24.95Ela Tahoe, a runaway turned deputy sheriff, is forced to contend with a Confederate invasion of her New Mexican town three months after the conclusion of the Civil War. Ela will need to confront her heritage and past with the Apache in order to get their aid to combat this Confederate threat, leading her to look at the world from the Native American perspective once again. Conceived as a tightly paced, gut wrenching western thriller, Ela fights tooth and nail to save the lives of her townspeople and most importantly, her son.
The American Western Frontier is arguably one of the most widely misrepresented histories, rife with inaccuracies and stereotypes. Black Mi?kmaq and Anishinaabe author Tristan Jones powerfully and critically reimagines and reclaims a historical retelling of the Frontier with a focus on the historically missing Indigenous narrative. Illustrated by master sequential artist Alexander Bumbulut, The Forgotten Frontier should be on everyone?s reading list.
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The Loxleys and the War of 1812
$19.99Double Award Winning Graphic Novel 2014 Alberta Book Awards Children’s/YA Book of the Year and Illustrated Book Award Winner.
The story follows the Loxleys, a Canadian family living in the Niagara peninsula as they’re torn apart by the American invasion of Canada in 1812, and the subsequent war that raged across both countries as British troops, Canadian militia, and First Nation warriors sought to thwart the expansionist plans of the American government. The Loxley’s take part in key historical events and they deal with the realities of the war on their doorstep, the personal loss, setbacks and victories tied into the conflict.
Free study guide available.