A View From The Ledge An Insiders' Look at the Schreyer Years
By Herb Schulz
Prairie Books Now
"The book is more than just a day-by-day political diary. it is also a
thoughtful, literary exploration of power and its effects on those who
exercise it."
OnManitoba
Schulz offers a unique view of Manitoba's first NDP government...it is
personal, opinionated, at times abrasive and often funny.
Review: It (Dancing Backwrds) embraces and
includes the history of gender struggles in the entire country.
And what a sorry history it is. Many Canadians will be shocked
at the barriers, the attitudes and the intransigence of the
male establishment when asked to share their power with females
with whom they must already share a country.
The book, dramatically and elegantly illustrated by Joshua
Stanton, begins around 1902 when women were still lugging
wood or coal and doing laundry all week. It ends, imaginatively,
in 2016, the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, when universal
daycare has been delivered and a woman is prime minister.
It makes many compelling stops between those dates. It shies
away from little, noting for example that the original suffragettes
met the description of today's terrorists.
Carstairs and Higgins clearly believe that a third wave of
feminists distinctly different from those of the early 20th
century and of the '60s, is waiting in the wings to do a mountain
of work that must be done to create a gender literate Canada.
They have written an unequivocal book that ought to provoke
these women in waiting to appear sooner rather than later.
(excerpted from a review by Leslie Hughes, The Winnipeg Free
Press, December 19, 2004)
The Return of the Nonsuch The Ship that Launched
an Empire By Laird
Rankin
Review: Rankin's book, an updated reissue
of a book that's been out-of-print since the 1970s, chronicles
the voyages not just of this Nonsuch, but also of the 17th-century
Hudson's Bay sailing ship that she replicates.
With the roof over your head, and no buildings or false skyline
to anchor the eye, you can almost feel the ship heaving, even
if you've never sailed on her.
While few have had that pleasure, millions have walked her
decks. It's for that reason that publisher Peter St. John
of Heartland Associates thinks he may have a winner on his
hands.
"Every child in Manitoba has scrambled aboard that ship."
he says. "And its a darn good story. You have a near
mutiny, you have her hull scraping an underpass in Washington
state, and she nearly sank on her maiden voyage."
(excerpted from a review by Kerry Campbell, the Winnipeg
Free Press, December 4, 2004)
Review: For longtime residents of "The Lake",
this is the best book ever written on Lake of the Woods.
(Long-time Lake of the Woods resident Agnes Hall)
Review: A tribute to a beautiful place
and its history. it¹s rare to find a book that combines
personal appreciation of a place with a thorough knowledge
of its history and its transformation over the centuries.
Heather Robertson and Melinda McCracken have combined their
love of Lake of the Woods and the area surrounding it with
meticulous research into its history. The result is a thoroughly
readable and entertaining book that will appeal to a great
variety of people.
Readers who have never seen Lake of the Woods
will find the book appealing for its presentation of a place
and the people who have lived there over the last few thousand
years. Readers who regularly vacation around Lake of the Woods
will love the book for the depth it provides in a historical
grounding, and readers who live on Lake of the Woods will
feel their area has been thoroughly understood and appreciated.
The book's authors take [the lake] through
to the present day, and it's fascinating right to the last
page. Every community should have such a beautifully written
and well researched history published, but in the meantime
we should be thankful to see Lake of the Woods celebrated
in such an elegant form.
The
Canadian Crucible Manitoba's
Role in Canada's Great Divide
By Frances Russell
Review: Frances Russell tells the extraordinary story
of the French language in Manitoba and of conflicts that have
shaped Canada itself. Riel, Roblin, Forest, Pawley all
the characters are here and all the turning points. She sketches
the contours of a fundamental divide in Confederation.
(Gerald Friesen, Professor of History, University of Manitoba)
Review: This manuscript gripped my
attention to the point that I put everything else aside for
a number of days in order to read it. It is a story that must
be told and Frances tells it well, with all the necessary
documentation. It's good to see [this history] recorded for
present and future generations.
(Cornelius J. Jaenen, Professor Emeritus, Université
d'Ottawa)
Review: One of the Earth's most majestic creatures, the great
white bear of the Arctic is both better known and more threatened
than at any time in history. Photographed in a variety of locations
around Hudson Bay, this story of a species in crisis captures
the life cycle of Canada's polar bear
population.
(Dikla Kadosh - Outdoor Photographer Dec '03).
Review: This wonderful [book] by photographer
Dennis Fast, captures the life cycle of the great white bears
that roam this historic stretch of Hudson Bay coastline and
Wapusk National Park. While Wapusk, White Bear of the North,
is filled cover to cover with images and information about
polar bears, its 112 pages are by no means restricted by that
primary focus. There are also many shorter sections on birds,
species, landscapes, and an emphatic alert to the fragility
of our northern eco-system. To my delight, this educational
'treasure of a book'about a subject dear to my heart is a
very affordable $29.95 CDN retail.Well done!
Review: The modern multicultural and bilingual nature
of Canada can obscure just ho Scottish the nation was at its
founding. From curling and golf to the Fathers of Confederation,
Scottish culture and Scotsmen dominated. Matthew Shaw's Great
Scots! may go a bit overboard in its subtitle - How the Scots
Created Canada - but not by much. For decades Scots ruled
the fur trade, and then used its profits to create railways,
banks and universities. Canada's first two prime ministers
were Scots, as were a quarter of all MPs before the Second
World War. The men who financed the Canadian pacific
Railway, the steel ribbon that would bind the new Dominion
together, were all Scots by birth. And although Shaw admits
that some Englishman named John Molson was a generous donor
to McGill University, its main benefactors were from Scotland:
James McGill (fur Trade), Peter Redpath (sugar), William MacDonald
(tobacco) and Donald Smith (railways).
(Maclean's magazine, Feb 2, 2004).
Review: "... employing a series
of nicely-wrought biographical sketches, [the author] demonstrates
how dominant the Scots and their descendants were in each
of [many] fields of endeavor ... for the reader content to
learn about, and presumably to celebrate, the influence of
various sorts of Scots upon the development of Canada, this
book should prove eminently satisfying."
