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History and geography

  • Author:
    Labbé, Pierrick
    Summary:

    En 1863, un groupe de travailleurs originaires du Québec et domiciliés à Ottawa décident de fonder une association de prévoyance pour aider leurs prochains dans le besoin. En s'inspirant de leurs expériences respectives au sein d'associations de prévoyance québécoises, les fondateurs établissent une première société de secours mutuels canadienne-française à Ottawa : l'Union Saint-Joseph d'Ottawa. Malgré une naissance et des débuts modestes, cette association connaîtra une grande histoire. Elle deviendra l'une des plus grandes sociétés fraternelles nationales, avec des ramifications dans plus de 600 communautés canadiennes-françaises du Canada et des États-Unis. Cet ouvrage analyse la fondation de l'Union Saint-Joseph d'Ottawa et son évolution entre 1863 et 1920. Durant cette période, cette petite association locale, dont les activités visent essentiellement le secours de la classe populaire, évolue pour devenir une grande société fraternelle nationale vouée à la sauvegarde des intérêts des Canadiens français. L’essentiel de ces mutations survient à la fin du XIXe siècle, alors qu’une petite élite entreprend des réformes administratives qui changent la manière de gérer la mutualité. Cette élite en profite également pour reformuler le projet social de l’association et ses objectifs afin de transformer l'Union Saint-Joseph en un instrument de lutte pour la survivance canadienne-française.

  • Author:
    Byers, Daniel
    Summary:

    Zombie Army tells the story of Canada’s Second World War military conscripts – reluctant soldiers pejoratively referred to as “zombies” for their perceived similarity to the mindless movie monsters of the 1930s. In the first full-length book on the subject in almost forty years, Byers combines underused and newly discovered records to argue that although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they soon became a steady source of recruits from which the army found volunteers to serve overseas. He also challenges the traditional nationalist-dominated impression that Quebec participated only grudgingly in the war.

  • Author:
    Hurst, Ronald, Weston, Richard
    Summary:

    The world's worst mid-air collision occurred over the Zagreb beacon on September 10th, 1976. In the aftermath, eight air traffic controllers were arraigned on charges of criminal neglect. All but one were acquitted: that individual was sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment. This book deals with those events, with the effect of that judgement on the safety of international aviation and with the moral and practical challenges which society faces as a result. In these pages the reader is asked to make his or her own judgement: first, as to the nature and extent of the alleged crimes, and secondly, as to what ends have been usefully served by the institution of criminal proceedings and the legal destruction of a single person. In making these evaluations the reader will follow the development of the disaster from three sources: the respective flight decks of the British Trident and the Yugoslav DC9 aircraft and the controller's consoles of the Zagreb Regional Flight Control Centre. In each of these situations men performed their tasks and responded to external pressures in accordance with their own personalities, and some of these happenings coalesced at length to determine the fatal outcome. Yet this book is not only the story of that crash. It is a statement about an imperfect system devised by and for human beings, and for the case that its improvement should rest on the honest admission of deficiency rather than on the ritual sacrifice of whoever stands in the glare of a massive technological failure .

  • Author:
    Shan, Patrick Fuliang
    Summary:

    Yuan Shikai (1859–1916) has been both hailed as China’s George Washington for his role in the country’s transition from empire to republic and condemned as a counter-revolutionary. Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal sheds new light on the controversial history of this talented administrator and modernizer who endeavoured to establish a new dynasty while serving as the first president of the republic, eventually declaring himself emperor. Drawing on untapped primary sources and recent scholarship, Patrick Fuliang Shan offers a lucid, comprehensive, and critical new interpretation of Yuan’s part in shaping modern China.

  • Author:
    Peddie, Francis, Loewen, Royden
    Summary:

    Between 1973 and 1978, six thousand Chileans leftists took refuge in central Canada after the Pinochet coup d’état. Once resettled at the northern extreme of the Americas, these political exiles had to find ways of coping with an abrupt and violent separation from their homeland that had deep material and emotional repercussions. In Young, Well-Educated, and Adaptable, Francis Peddie documents the experiences of twenty-one Chileans as they navigate their newfound identity as exiles. Peddie also considers how the admission of people from the wrong side of the Cold War ideological divide had an effect on Canadian immigration and refugee policy, establishing a precedent for the admission of political exiles over the decades that followed.

  • Author:
    Stout, Glenn
    Summary:

    In 1926, before skirt lengths inched above the knee and before anyone was ready to accept that a woman could test herself physically, a plucky American teenager named Trudy Ederle captured the imagination of the world when she became the first woman to swim the English Channel. It was, and still is, a feat more incredible and uncommon than scaling Mount Everest. Upon her return to the United States, "Trudy of America" became the most famous woman in the world. And just as quickly, she disappeared from the public eye. A Set against the backdrop of the roaring 1920s, Young Woman and the Sea is the dramatic and inspiring story of Ederleas pursuit of a goal no one believed possible, and the price she paid. The moment Trudy set foot on land, triumphant, she had shattered centuries of stereotypes and opened doors for generations of women to come. A truly magnetic and often misunderstood character whose story is largely forgotten, Trudy Ederle comes alive in these pages through Glenn Stoutas exhaustive new research.

  • Author:
    Stark, Peter
    Summary:

    A vivid and groundbreaking portrait of a young, struggling George Washington that casts a new light on his character and the history of American independence, from the bestselling author of Astoria Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naive and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War-a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution. With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships. By weaving together Washington's harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.

  • Author:
    Schneider, Stephen A.
    Summary:

    You Can’t Padlock an Idea examines the educational programs undertaken at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee and looks specifically at how these programs functioned rhetorically to promote democratic social change. Founded in 1932 by educator Myles Horton, the Highlander Folk School sought to address the economic and political problems facing communities in Appalachian Tennessee and other southern states. To this end Horton and the school’s staff involved themselves in the labor and civil rights disputes that emerged across the south over the next three decades.Drawing on the Highlander archives housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Avery Research Center in South Carolina, and the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, Stephen A. Schneider reconstructs the pedagogical theories and rhetorical practices developed and employed at Highlander. He shows how the school focused on developing forms of collective rhetorical action, helped students frame social problems as spurs to direct action, and situated education as an agency for organizing and mobilizing communities.Schneider studies how Highlander’s educational programs contributed to this broader goal of encouraging social action. Specifically he focuses on four of the school’s more established programs: labor drama, labor journalism, citizenship education, and music. These programs not only taught social movement participants how to create plays, newspapers, citizenship schools, and songs, they also helped the participants frame the problems they faced as having solutions based in collective democratic action. Highlander’s programs thereby functioned rhetorically, insofar as they provided students with the means to define and transform oppressive social and economic conditions. By providing students with the means to comprehend social problems and with the cultural agencies (theater, journalism, literacy, and music) to address these problems directly, Highlander provided an important model for understanding the relationships connecting education, rhetoric, and social change.

  • Author:
    Summary:

    A collection of radio dramatizations of events from world history produced for the radio program CBS is There, You Are There, which originally aired between 1947 and 1950.

  • Author:
    Nickerson, Janice
    Summary:

    Not only professional soldiers but also citizens serving as militiamen participated in the War of 1812. The militia’s contribution to the War of 1812 is not well understood. Even now, 200 years later, we don’t know how many Upper Canadian militia men died defending their home.York’s Sacrifice profiles 39 men who lost their lives during the war. They include 19 residents of the Town of York, five residents of York County, and 11 residents of Halton, Peel, and Wentworth Counties. Where possible, biographies include information about each man’s origin, residence, occupation, civic life, family, militia service, and circumstances of death. A section on records provides detailed guidance in finding and using records from the period to trace an ancestors militia service and life in this difficult time period.A complete list of men who served in the three York regiments during the war identifies those who were killed, injured, captured, or deserted.

  • Author:
    Hern, Frances
    Summary:

    During the second half of the 19th century, thousands of Chinese men arrived on the west coast of North America, seeking to escape poverty and make their fortunes in the goldfields or working on the railroads. Among them was 36-year-old Yip Sang, a native of Guangdong province in southeast China, who arrived in Vancouver in 1881 after failing to strike it rich in California. His luck was about to change. Through perseverance, hard work and an eye for opportunity, the enterprising Yip Sang amassed considerable wealth to pass on to his wives and 23 children when he died in 1927. As the unofficial mayor of Chinatown, Yip Sang was instrumental in helping new Chinese immigrants as they fought to overcome social, economic and political barriers. This fascinating history details the struggles and successes of Yip Sang and the first Chinese Canadians as they built new lives and left a lasting legacy for their families and community.

  • Author:
    Buruma, Ian
    Summary:

    A reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. Regime change had come on a global scale, creating the greatest power vacuum in history. Out of the vicious power struggles emerged the modern world as we know it.

  • Author:
    Serge, Victor
    Summary:

    Brimming with the honesty and passionate conviction for which he has become famous, Victor Serge's account of the first year of the Russian Revolution-through all of its achievements and challenges-captures both the heroism of the mass upsurge that gave birth to soviet democracy, and the crippling circumstances that began to chip away at its historic gains. Year One of the Russian Revolution is Serge's attempt to defend the early days of the revolution against those, like Stalin, who would claim its legacy as justification for the repression of dissent within Russia.

  • Author:
    Lieh Tzu
    Summary:

    Yang Chu was a philosopher of the classic age of Chinese thought who probably lived in the 300's B.C.E. He has been associated with the Taoists since the rise of official Confucianism and the consolidation of what we now call 'Taoism', although this term is problematic, as thinkers like Yang Chu, Chuang Tzu, and Lao Tzu are quite different and were not considered to be members of a single school in ancient times. In addition, the text that we still have which is attributed to Yang Chu is from a somewhat later period, preserved in the Lieh Tzu (other extracts of which are also available at sacred-texts in the book Taoist Teachings), which did not reach its final form until perhaps 400 C.E. or so. In this text, Yang Chu is far from being a mystic, and is concerned mainly with enjoying life to its fullest, allowing a person's individual character the fullest expression possible and not interfering with natural processes.

  • Author:
    Tregaskis, Richard
    Summary:

    The riveting true story of the world's fastest plane and the first manned flights into outer space. First tested in 1959, the X-15 rocket plane was at the forefront of the space race. Developed by the US Air Force and the National aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in collaboration with North American Aviation, the X-15 was sleek, black, and powerful'a missile with stubby wings and a cockpit on the nose. By 1961 it could reach speeds over three thousand miles per hour and fly at an altitude of thirty-one miles above the earth's surface'the lower reaches of outer space. Acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Richard Tregaskis tells the story of the X-15's development through the eyes of the brave pilots and brilliant engineers who made it possible. From technological breakthroughs to disastrous onboard explosions to the bone-crushing effects of intense g-force levels, Tregaskis captures all the drama and excitement of this crucial proving ground for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. X-15 Diary recounts a thrilling chapter in the history of the American space program and serves as a fitting tribute to the courageous scientists and adventurers who dared to go where no man had gone before. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Richard Tregaskis including rare images from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.

  • Author:
    Chiasson, Paul
    Summary:

    2017 Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award — Shortlisted Paul Chiasson reveals the possibility that early Chinese settlers landed in Cape Breton long before Europeans. From the very beginning of the European Age of Discovery, Cape Breton was considered unusual. The history of the area even includes early references to the island having once been the land of the Chinese. In 1497, at least a century before any attempt at European settlement in the region, the explorer John Cabot had referred to Cape Breton as the “Island of Seven Cities.”  The indigenous people of the region, the Mi’kmaq, were the only aboriginal people of North America who had a written language when Europeans first arrived. This writing, clothing, and customs also suggested an early Chinese presence. In Written in the Ruins, Chiasson investigates the ruins at St. Peters in the southern part of the island, where evidence brought to light supports a theory that could answer all the questions raised by the island’s curious, unresolved history.

  • Author:
    Oliver, Greg
    Summary:

    Hockey history like you've never seen it before. Who knew that paperwork could be so fascinating? In Written in Blue and White, author Greg Oliver explores the fascinating archives of Allan Stitt, one of hockey's leading collectors, unearthing gem after gem that details the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs through the past century. Explore early contracts with players, and how the clauses evolved; read personal correspondence from Leaf players and management; find out what was behind Wally Stanowski's 1945 fine for $100; see receipts from the 1935 Stanley Cup playoffs — and learn just how much oranges cost. Since documents can’t talk, Oliver seeks out the men behind the words, like former general managers Jim Gregory, Gerry McNamara, and Floyd Smith; players such as Ron Ellis, Dick Duff, and Darryl Sittler; and key behind-the-scenes people like trainers, agents, reporters, and publicists.

    The documents that breathe life into Written in Blue and White are complemented by a wide variety of stunning and rare photos from the Hockey Hall of Fame archives, as well as sample contracts and historical pieces from the collection of Allan Stitt.

  • Author:
    Wideman, John Edgar
    Summary:

    An award-winning writer traces the life of the father of iconic Civil Rights martyr Emmett Till-a man who was executed by the Army ten years before Emmett's murder. An evocative and personal exploration of individual and collective memory in America by one of the most formidable Black intellectuals of our time. In 1955, Emmett Till, aged fourteen, traveled from his home in Chicago to visit family in Mississippi. Several weeks later he returned, dead; allegedly he whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie, wanted the world to see what had been done to her son. She chose to leave his casket open. Images of her brutalized boy were published widely. While Emmett's story is known, there's a dark side note that's rarely mentioned. Ten years earlier, Emmett's father was executed by the Army for rape and murder. In Writing to Save a Life, John Edgar Wideman searches for Louis Till, a silent victim of American injustice. Wideman's personal interaction with the story began when he learned of Emmett's murder in 1955; Wideman was also fourteen years old. After reading decades later about Louis's execution, he couldn't escape the twin tragedies of father and son, and tells their stories together for the first time. Author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Wideman brings extraordinary insight and a haunting intimacy to this devastating story. An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, Writing to Save a Life is completely original in its delivery-an engaging and enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons. Wideman turns seventy-five this year, and he brings the force of his substantial intellect and experience to this beautiful, stirring book, his first nonfiction in fifteen years.

  • Author:
    Leith, Linda
    Summary:

    Montreal was the literary centre of Canada in the 1940s, a hotbed of literary activity in both English and French crowned by the international success of Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes and Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute. With the rise of nationalism in both English Canada and Quebec, Toronto emerged as the literary centre of English Canada, with Montreal the literary centre of Quebec. In literary terms, Canada and Quebec became two different countries, with two different languages and two different literatures. English Montreal went into decline and its once-great writers were marginalized. Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis is an insider's story of the writers who have been caught between these rival nationalisms. Herself a writer, Linda Leith was a leading figure in the creation of the Quebec Writers' Federation, and she is founder of Blue Metropolis Foundation. The story she tells is the story of a literary community that went missing from the map of Canada for a generation, and that has reemerged over the past ten years in a renaissance that has garnered international attention, winning some of the major book prizes such as Booker and Dublin IMPAC.

  • Author:
    Davies, Wayne K. D.
    Summary:

    Writing Geographical Exploration: Thomas James and the Northwest Passage, 1631-33 summarizes the various factors that influence the writing and interpretation of exploration narratives, demonstrating the limitations of the assumption that there is a direct relationship between what the explorer saw and what the text describes. Davies offers a revisionist evaluation of Captain Thomas James, who spent eighteen months in search of the Northwest Passage in the 1630s, to illustrate how modern textual analysis can enrich the appreciation of a traveller's account. Though James's work has been dismissed in the modern period, his work was highly regarded in previous centuries by scientist Robert Boyle and poet Samuel Coleridge. James was not a first-rank explorer, but he was an able navigator and leader, a perceptive scientific observer, and a master author who produced a thrilling tale of adventure that should occupy a more prominent place in exploration writing and history, literary theory, and post-modern geography.

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