The Rowell-Sirois Commission and the Remaking of Canadian Federalism investigates the groundbreaking inquiry launched to reconstruct the federal system and reveals its legacy for Canadian federalism today.In 1937, the Canadian confederation was broken. As the Depression ground on, the provinces faced increasing obligations but limited funds, while the dominion had fewer responsibilities but lucrative revenue sources. The commission was struck to review the system. Overcomi...

In 1910, young Pierre Maturié bid farewell to his comfortable bourgeois existence in rural France and travelled to northern Alberta in search of independence, adventure, and newfound prosperity. Some sixty years later, he wrote of the four years he spent in Canada before he returned to France in 1914 to fight in the First World War. Like that of so many youthful pioneers, his story is one of adventure and hardship—perilous journeys, railroad construction in the Rockies, panning for gold in...

July 1st 1867 is celebrated as Canada's Confederation - the date that Canada became a country. But 1867 was only the beginning. As the country grew from a small dominion to a vast federation encompassing ten provinces, three territories, and hundreds of First Nations, its leaders repeatedly debated Canada's purpose, and the benefits and drawbacks of the choice to be Canadian. Reconsidering Confederation brings together Canada's leading historians to explore how the provinces, territories, ...

New ways of thinking about literature and history have radically changed how we think about or even “define” a region like the Prairie West. In fact, the very concept of “defining” has come into question by new theoretical approaches and it may now seem a hopeless endeavour. But the process of defining can be just as important as the actual production of a definition.Toward Defining the Prairies highlights recent approaches to thinking about the Prairie West. Bounded by pi...

The Canadian Prairie has long been represented as a timeless and unchanging location, defined by settlement and landscape. Now, a new generation of writers and historians challenge that perception and argue, instead, that it is a region with an evolving culture and history. In a collection of ten essays, History, Literature and the Writing of the Canadian Prairies explores a more contemporary prairie identity, and reconfigures “the prairie” as a construct that is non-linear and di...

These true stories of people who work and live in the spectacular mountain wilderness of Alberta and British Columbia are filled with humour, keen observations about man and nature, and memorable human and animal characters. Old-time cowboys Johnny and Cal offer their no-nonsense brand of homespun wisdom. Wasp, the talented saddle horse, teaches his rider more than just horsemanship. From life-and-death drama to peaceful meditations, these tales capture the danger and beauty of the mountai...

One hundred years ago, a young doctor from Cleveland by the name of Robert Newcomb, travelled north to a place called Temagami. It was as far north as one could travel by any modern means. Beautiful beyond any simple expletive, the Temagami wilderness was a land rich in timber, clear-water lakes, fast flowing rivers, mystery and adventure. Newcomb befriended the local Aboriginals -- the Deep Water People -- and quickly discovered the best way to explore was by canoe. Bewitched by the spiri...

"Fire! Wake up! The shelter is on fire!"His students affectionately call him "Doc Survival." He's Quebec's Indiana Jones in a forest setting. Searching for the treasures of the wilderness has been his life-long quest; with passion as his only guide, he has dared to penetrate the forest on its own terms, facing increasingly difficult challenges in the hope of becoming nature's confidant, of learning her secrets.Professor emeritus André-François Bourbeau holds a Guin...

The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents wit...

Beena and Sadhana are sisters who share a bond that could only have been shaped by the most unusual of childhoods — and by shared tragedy. Orphaned as teenagers, they have grown up under the exasperated watch of their Sikh uncle, who runs a bagel shop in Montreal's Hasidic community of Mile End. Together, they try to make sense of the rich, confusing brew of values, rituals, and beliefs that form their inheritance. Yet as they grow towards adulthood, their paths begin to diverge. Beena cat...

In this true story, Armande Martel, a young nun from Quebec, is arrested by the Germans in 1940 during a stay at her religious order’s mother house in Brittany. She spends the war years in a German concentration camp. After her return to Canada, she leaves the Church, finds the love of her life in Montreal, and adopts Lise Dion.Growing up, Lise is familiar with only a few facts of her mother’s past. It’s when she clears her mother’s small apartment after her death that Lise Dion di...

Finally, after over 30 years of hagiographies, comes a book that sets the record straight and tells us the truth about Pierre Elliott Trudeau.In this unprecedented and meticulously researched sweep of the record, Globe and Mail bestselling author Bob Plamondon challenges the conventional wisdom that Trudeau was a great prime minister. With new revelations, fresh insights, and in-depth analysis, Plamondon reveals that the man did not measure up to the myth.While no one dispu...