Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Regional Canada Shopping
Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Regional Canada
Farley Mowat
Bay of Spirits: A Love Story
by McClelland & Stewart (Paperback) (Release Date: 2007-09-18)
In 1957, Farley Mowat shipped out aboard one of Newfoundland’s famous coastal steamers, tramping from outport to outport along the southwest coast. The indomitable spirit of the people and the bleak beauty of the landscape would lure him back again and again over the years. In the process of falling in love with a people and a place, Mowat also met the woman who would be the great love of his life. A stunningly beautiful and talented young artist, Claire Wheeler insouciantly climbed aboard Farley’s beloved but jinxed schooner as it lay on the St. Pierre docks, once again in a cradle for repairs, and changed both their lives forever. This is the story of that love affair, of summers spent sailing the Newfoundland coast, and of their decision to start their life together in Burgeo, one of the province’s last remaining outports. It is also an unforgettable portrait of the last of the outport people and a way of life that had survived for centuries but was now passing forever. ...
Paul Watson
Seal Wars: Twenty-five Years on the Front Lines with the Harp Seals
by Firefly Books (Paperback)
Captain Paul Watson has rammed fishing trawlers, smashed whaling ships, sailed boldly into Soviet-controlled waters, and stood bravely on an ice floe between a baby harp seal and an oncoming seal boat. In this daring and sprawling memoir, the captain of the Sea Shepherd recounts his remarkable life on the front lines in the war to stop the viscious slaughter of the Canadian harp seal. Seal Wars opens in 1996 with Paul Watson -- holed up in a hotel with Martin Sheen in the Magdalen Islands and facing an attacking mob of angry sealers -- being rescued by police and airlifted to safety. Watson recounts the childhood experiences that shaped his adult consciousness and environmental ethic. He records a history of the seal hunt (including all the tragedies, brutalities, and government mismanagement and obfuscation) from its beginning up to the rescue campaigns he courageously led from the prow of the Sea Shepherd. Starting in 1976 with a Greenpeace crew off Labrador, Paul Watson ...
Farley Mowat
No Man's River
by Da Capo Press (Paperback)
With No Man's River, Farley Mowat has penned his best Arctic tale in years. This book chronicles his life among Metis trappers and native people as they struggle to eke out a living in a brutal environment. In the spring of 1947, putting the death and devastation of WWII behind him, Mowat joined a scientific expedition. In the remote reaches of Manitoba, he witnessed an Eskimo population ravaged by starvation and disease brought about by the white man. In his efforts to provide the natives with some of the assistance that the government failed to provide, Mowat set out on an arduous journey that collided with one of nature's most arresting phenomena—the migration of the Arctic's caribou herds. Mowat was based at Windy Post with a Metis trapper and two Ihalmiut children. A young girl, known as Rita, is painted with special vividness—checking the trap lines with the men, riding atop a sled, smoking a tiny pipe. Farley returns to the North two decades later and discovers the ...
Edward Beauclerk Maurice
The Last Gentleman Adventurer: Coming of Age in the Arctic
by Houghton Mifflin (Hardcover)
"This is a great book about life at remote bases in Canada's far north as seen by a young English boy who went there by himself to see the world and got more than he could have bargained for. Beautifully written." --Sir Ranulph Fiennes"As spare, gleaming, and exhilarating as the Arctic wastes and the gentle, stoic Eskimos who had mastery of this realm . . . The book evokes the frozen seas, whale hunts, snow plains and storms that intimidated those rash enough to brave this world, and the traditions, myths, and hunting skills that contoured a bygone way of life . . . His translucent prose is a sparkling and moving record." -- Times (London)At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company -- the Company of Gentleman Adventurers -- and was sent to an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no telephone or radio and only one ship arrived each year. But the Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, ...
Patrick Lane
What the Stones Remember: A Life Rediscovered
by Trumpeter (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2005-09-13)
In this exquisitely written memoir, poet Patrick Lane describes his raw and tender emergence at age sixty from a lifetime of alcohol and drug addiction. He spent the first year of his sobriety close to home, tending his garden, where he cast his mind back over his life, searching for the memories he'd tried to drown in vodka. Lane has gardened for as long as he can remember, and his garden's life has become inseparable from his own. A new bloom on a plant, a skirmish among the birds, the way a tree bends in the wind, and the slow, measured change of seasons invariably bring to his mind an episode from his eventful past. What the Stones Remember is the emerging chronicle of Lane's attempt to face those memories, as well as his new self—to rediscover his life. In this powerful and beautifully written book, Lane offers readers an unflinching and unsentimental account of coming to one's senses in the presence of nature.
Joseph A. Springer
The Black Devil Brigade: The True Story of the First Special Service Force in World War II
by Motorbooks International (Hardcover)
They were the shock troops of the American Army. In their ranks were lumberjacks, miners, skiers-men from the United States and Canada who were accustomed to hardship and living on their own. Their training was extraordinary: forced marches of 100 miles in the Montana wilderness with 50-pound backpacks was typical. Weapons training was equally rigorous and the men became as dangerous with their hands and a knife as they were with rifle and machine gun. In Italy they became the unit called to accomplish the impossible. At Monte Cassino, and at Anzio, they did, earning the respectful accolade from their German enemies: Schwartzer Teufel-Black Devils. For the first time ever, the men of the First Special Service Force tell in their own words the full and complete story of their unit which is regarded as the parent of today's Green Berets.
Chester Brown
Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography
by Drawn and Quarterly (Hardcover)
Martyr or Madman? The Passionate Rebel History Can't Close The Book On.Is this the future of comics? Respectably penning the dowdy pages of history? Don't be fooled. This is one of the hippest comics going and will be a controversial must-have in 2003. Legendary cartoonist Chester Brown reveals in the dusty closet of Canadian history there are some skeletons that won't stop rattling. To some Louis Riel was one of the founding fathers of a nation but to others he was a murderer who nearly tore a country apart. A man so charismatic he was elected to government twice while in exile with a prize on his head--but so impassioned his dramatic behavior cast serious doubts on his sanity. Riel took on the army, the government, the Queen, and even the Church in the name of freedom. Will Riel's visionary democracy ever be enough to defend him from the verdict of history?
Cynthia J. Faryon
Unsung Heroes of the Royal Canadian Navy: Incredible Tales Of Courage and Daring During World War II (Amazing Stories)
by Altitude Publishing (Canada) (Paperback)
At the outbreak of World War II, the Royal Canadian Navy consisted of just 13 warships and about 3000 permanent and reserve members. By the war's end, however, it had grown into the third largest navy in the world, with 365 warships and more than 100,000 personnel. The men and women of the Royal Canadian Navy came from all corners of Canada to fight in the sea war against the enemy. Together, they exceeded even the highest expectations of their allies.
Susur Lee, Jacob Richler, Sara Angel
Susur: A Culinary Life, Books 1-2
by Ten Speed Press (Hardcover)
Over the past decade, Toronto-based chef Susur Lee has built an international reputation with his groundbreaking cuisine, winning raves such as "culinary genius" from critics and chefs alike. Borrowing heavily from French and Chinese traditions, Susur defies the ubiquitous "fusion" label with his wholly original and decidedly bold style of cooking, dubbed nouvelle Chinois. SUSUR: A CULINARY LIFE offers readers an intimate look at the evolution of this master chef. Toronto food writer Jacob Richler takes us on an enthralling culinary odyssey that begins with Susur’s apprenticeship at Hong Kong’s legendary Peninsula Hotel and follows the chef ’s major Successes at his award-winning restaurants Lotus and Susur. This in-depth study also chronicles Susur’s ambitious plan to modernize the ancient repertoire of classical Chinese cooking —a 5,000-year journey that ends in the creation of his vibrant new cuisine. A remarkable subject deserves a remarkable book, and SUSUR is as ...
Cathy Converse
Following the Curve of Time: The Legendary M. Wylie Blanchet
by Touchwood Editions (Hardcover)
M. Wylie Capi Blanchet has accompanied many a seafarer on the B.C. coast her bestselling book, The Curve of Time, introduced us to a resilient, adventurous, and enigmatic woman ahead of her time. Widowed in 1926, Capi cruised the coast in her 25-foot boat, the Caprice, with her five children and their dog. Beyond this incredible story, however, little is known about the rest of her life. What tied Capi to the West Coast, despite her upbringing and family ties in Eastern Canada? What made her see possibility in a boat that had been sunk to the bottom? Insiders recollections, and her own travels along Capi s route help Cathy Converse explore this very private woman. In revisiting these villages, inlets and islands described in The Curve of Time, Converse evokes Capi s spirit and enriches the impressions she left behind.