The compelling biography of former British Columbia cabinet minister Bob Williams weaves his political and economical insights with the story of his unconventional life.In Using Power Well, former provincial politician Bob Williams tells his atypical life story: beginning with his childhood in the working-class east end of Vancouver, Williams goes on to describe his early years as a planner in Delta, BC, his political life on Vancouver City Council and in ...

This groundbreaking book brings to life a forgotten chapter in the history of Canada and Russia – the journey of 4,200 Canadian soldiers from Victoria to Vladivostok in 1918 to help defeat Bolshevism. Combining military and labour history with the social history of BC, Quebec, and Russia, Benjamin Isitt examines how the Siberian Expedition exacerbated tensions within Canadian society at a time when a radicalized working class, many French-Canadians, and even the soldiers themselves objecte...

Eugene T. Kingsley led an extraordinary life. Born in mid-nineteenth-century New York,y 1890 he was a railway brakeman in Montana. An accident left him a double amputee and politically radicalized, and his socialist activism that followed took him north of the border where he eventually was considered by the government to be “one of the most dangerous men in Canada”.Able to Lead traces Kingsley’s political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the ...

In October 1890, Eugene T. Kingsley’s life changed irrevocably when he was injured in a fall between two rail cars while working as a brakeman on the Northern Pacific Railway. Following the amputation of both his legs, Kingsley became radicalized and joined the Socialist Labor Party in San Francisco. His activism eventually brought him to Vancouver, B.C. where he founded the Socialist Party of Canada. A self-described “uncompromising enemy of class rule and class robbery,” Kingsley wrote p...

Disabling Barriers analyzes issues relating to disability at different moments in Canadian and American history. In this volume, legal scholars, historians, and disability-rights activists demonstrate that disabled people can change their social status by transforming the political and legal discourse surrounding disablement.Employing tools from the fields of law and history, this original contribution explores how disabled people have been portrayed and treated in a varie...

Militant Minority tells the compelling story of British Columbia workers who sustained a left tradition during the bleakest days of the Cold War. Through their continuing activism on issues from the politics of timber licenses to global questions of war and peace, these workers bridged the transition from an Old to a New Left.In the late 1950s, half of B.C.'s workers belonged to unions, but the promise of postwar collective bargaining spawned disillusionment tied to inflat...

Patterns of the Past has been published to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Ontario Historical Society. Organized on 4 Sept 1888 as the Pioneer Association of Ontario, the Society adopted its current name in 1898. Its objectives, for a century, have been to promote and develop the study of Ontario’s past. The purpose of this book is both to commemorate and to carry on that worthy tradition.Introduced by Ian Wilson, Archivist of Ontario, and ...

In this elegant and rigorously researched work, Kenneth McNaught details the life, work, and principles of J.S Woodsworth and shows the powerful moral and political force that the pacifist, Methodist thinker exerted on Canadian politics.Woodsworth first went to the House of Commons in 1922, and became leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation at its formation in 1933. A socialist to the end, he exhibited his anti-war convictions to Parliament, when, in 1939, he alone spoke ...

This classic book, Harold Innis's last, returns to print with a new introduction by James Carey. An elaboration of Innis's earlier theories, Changing Concepts of Time looks at then-new technological changes in communication and considers the different ways in which space and time are perceived. Innis explores military implications of the U.S. constitution, freedom of the press, communication monopolies, culture, and press support of presidential candidates, among other interesting and dive...

The influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not tho...

Anarchism has been both a vision of a peaceful, cooperative society—and an ideology of revolutionary terror. Since the term itself—anarchism—is a negation, there is a great deal of disagreement on what the positive alternative would look like. The black flag comes in many colors.The Anarchist Handbook is an opportunity for all these many varied voices to speak for themselves, from across the decades. These were human beings who saw things differently from their fellow men...

The award-winning, bestselling author of While Canada Slept gives his view of a country wasted on Canadians.What is national character? What makes the Americans, the British, the French, the Russians, and the Chinese who they are? In this homogenized world, where globalization is a byword for a deadening sameness, why do peoples who live in the same region, use the same money, read the same books, and watch the same movies remain different from one another? As much as Cana...