Over the last 50 years, the struggles to achieve equity in sport have become central to the feminist mission. This book contains an inspiring collection of stories from the women on the front lines: athletes, coaches, educators, and activists for women's sport, who have done so much to foster change. Many of the women profiled here reflect on their tough beginnings in sport: being isolated and unconnected, competing in makeshift settings, training alone, and inadequate equipment. But they ...

In 1998-99, Manchester United won the Premier League, the FA Cup and Champions League – the only English team ever to accomplish such a feat. Whether that makes it the finest of all time is open to debate, but what is not is the status of the season: it featured astounding football, exceptional competition, staggering determination, ceaseless tension, astonishing plot twists, and a cast of fascinating, iconic characters.The Promised Land relives these breathless moments on...

Phil and Tony Esposito, Paul Henderson, Ken Dryden, Frank and Peter Mahovlich, Ron Ellis, Yvan Cournoyer, Rod Gilbert, Bobby Clarke, Guy Lapointe, Stan Mikita, Brad Park - these are some of the Team Canada heroes who struggled mightily to defeat the Soviet Union's formidable superstars. For most of September 1972, Canadians were riveted to their television screens in what became one of the most-watched events in Canadian history.At first, in Canada, the Canadians floundered so badl...

The story of a team, a town, and a leader: Vince Lombardi's first year as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, and how he turned them into a powerhouse.The once-vaunted Green Bay Packers were a laughingstock by the late 1950s. They hadn't fielded a winning team in more than a decade, and were close to losing their franchise to another city. They were in desperate need of a savior—and he arrived in a wood-paneled station wagon in the dead of winter from New York Cit...

Basketball, the only major world sport undeniably invented by a Canadian, has ironically failed to win Canadians’ hearts more than a century after its creation. James Naismith’s brainchild is a popular recreational pastime in his homeland, but players with bigger dreams had better take their talents south of the border. Canadian hoops has languished in the seemingly eternal shadow of hockey, with its cannibalization of air time, advertising dollars, and corporate capital.Faced with...

Known as football throughout the non-American sports universe, soccer boasts its own unique language, eccentric expressions and unparalleled personalities.Soccer is the world’s most popular sport by a long shot, even in spite of its peculiarities. For example:Soccer keeps time in the exact opposite direction of every other sport on the planet.Soccer matches, not games, are played by men wearing boots rather than cleats atop a pitch instead of a field.When ov...

An in-depth historical study of Nova Scotia's role in WWI and its lingering impact on the region, its people, and its economy.Though the First World War ended in 1918, it continued to haunt Canada for generations. In Nova Scotia at War, 1915-1919, historian Brian Douglas Tennyson examines what was, for the people of Canada, an unprecedented period collective military trauma. As Tennyson demonstrates, the war effort didn't end with the brave soldiers and sa...

Billy Proctor, resident legend of Echo Bay, BC, recounts almost a century’s worth of experience with this collection of stories, memories and local knowledge of the central BC coast region around Blackfish Sound. Situated in the beautiful Broughton Archipelago between northern Vancouver Island and the mainland coast, this region boasts a history and culture as engaging as its stunning locale—and nobody tells its story quite like Proctor.A lifelong fisherman, trapper, logger and, in...

The Great Famine in Ireland was a catastrophe of immense proportions. Eviction, emigration and death from starvation were widespread. Landlords, eager to dispose of 'surplus' tenants, engaged in 'assisted passages', whereby tenants were given financial incentives to emigrate. The clearances of uneconomic tenants from the 85,000-acre Coolattin Estate in County Wicklow by Lord Fitzwilliam were the most organised in Ireland during and after the Famine years. From 1847 to 1856 Fitzwilliam remo...

A complete history of the Toronto Maple Leafs, as told by the players, coaches, and reporters.On December 19, 1917, the Toronto Arenas took to the ice for the first NHL game ever played. Over the next hundred years, the franchise changed names twice, home rinks twice, and won 13 Stanley Cups on its way to becoming one of the most successful and storied franchises in NHL history.The Toronto Maple Leafs: The Complete Oral History gives the most compr...

History has told us in unambiguous terms that the statistics from July 1, 1916, were grim and shocking. Most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can recite the facts on cue: 801 men went “over the top” at Beaumont-Hamel, France; all but sixty-eight were either killed or wounded. Another number, startling as well: thirty, as in thirty minutes, a half-hour. That’s how long it took for German machine gunners to virtually wipe out the Newfoundland Regiment, from 9:15 on that sunny Saturday mornin...

"It's every bit as fascinating to read about the battles between the Cowboys and the Texans as it is to follow today's never-ending NFL dramas." —Mike Florio, ProFootballTalkIn the 1960s, on the heels of the "Greatest Game Ever Played," professional football began to flourish across the country—except in Texas, where college football was still the only game in town. But in an unlikely series of events, two young oil tycoons started their own professional football fr...