"What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self--a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience--she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo? Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us--and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror. Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now--and an intellectual adventure story for our times"--

A ground-breaking work of nation building, this unique biographical book by many of English and French Canada's best-known writers and thinkers -- Margaret Atwood, Lucien Bouchard, Dr. Samantha Nutt, Ken Dryden, etc. -- tells the story of the extraordinary legacy of the French contribution to our very way of life. In 1913, schoolgirls found a heavy metal plaque peeking out of the soil in St-Pierre, South Dakota. On it they saw engraved characters and signs they could not decipher. They took the plaque back home, and somehow, it found its way into the hands of a local historian who immediately realized the importance of the artifact. One hundred and seventy years earlier, French-Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de la Vérendrye had written about his travels to the west in search of the elusive "Western Sea." In his journal, he remembered: "I placed upon a hillock near the fort a lead plaque with the arms and inscription of the King." That was the plaque found by the children, the proof that de la Vérendrye was the first white man to set eyes on the Rockies, 60 years before Lewis and Clark's famous expedition. Traces of the French-Canadians' contribution to North American history can be found in all regions of the continent. More often than not, we are unaware of or indifferent towards these signs. Yet the descendants of the French travelled farther than one would expect, exploring the land and a wide variety of fields of human activity (science, arts, economy, etc.). Through their audacity, their courage and their determination, they shaped Canada -- and, to a smaller but still significant extent -- the United States. In a unique partnership with Les Éditions La Presse, Legacy is the story of a dozen French-Canadian pioneers, from the era of Nouvelle-France up to the 20th century. This ambitious book project will take the form of a series of biographical essays written by Canadian personalities and leading authors. Through the lives of these extraordinary persons, the authors will reflect on the French-Canadian legacy. They are all convinced that Canada would not be what it is today were it not for these French-speaking Canadians who explored the land, hung on to their culture while respecting that of others, longed for peace, fought with courage, and stood up for a brand of humanism that helped shape the country we live in today.

One evening in late October 1958, the deepest coal mine in North America "bumped"-its rock floors heaved up and smashed into rock ceilings. Most of the men on the shift perished. But nineteen men were trapped alive a mile below the earth's surface, struggling to survive without food, water, light, or fresh air. Almost a week passed without rescue. Hopes of finding life dwindled; then a miracle happened: Rescuers stumbled across a broken pipe that led to the cave of survivors. In the media circus that followed, the survivors' endurance was mythologized and twisted, and the state of Georgia's tourism ploy-inviting the survivors to recuperate on a Georgia beach-turned racist and pitted the miners against each other. Using long-lost stories and interviews with survivors, Greene has reconstructed an extraordinary drama of their struggle and miraculous rescue.

A fresh look at the nation's formative years through the lens of the clash between Washington and Jefferson.

In savage blizzards, blinding whiteouts and 60-below-zero temperatures, steel axles snap like twigs; brakes and steering wheels seize up; bare hands freeze when they touch metal. The lake ice cracks and sometimes gives way, so the roadbuilders drive with one hand on the door, ready to jump. John Denison and his crew waited for the coldest, darkest days of winter every year to set out to build a 520-kilometre road made of ice and snow, from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to a silver mine on Great Bear Lake, above the Arctic Circle - this is their story. Edith Iglauer was the first outsider ever to accompany them as they worked. This book, her chronicle of a gruelling, fascinating journey through Canada's north, has sold over 20,000 copies since its first publication in 1974.

Why Did You Do That? is an autobiography of David Matas, an international human rights advocate. The book sets out his human rights activities and then attempts to explain why he did them. People are focused on their immediate environment, their family, their friends, their work or their neighbourhood. Why should they go to the bother of trying to address a seemingly intractable situation in order to try help those with whom superficially they have nothing in common, who may be living in a country far away to which they have never been, speaking in a language they do not understand and part of a culture which is both foreign and strange? The reason for the autobiography is an attempt to answer that question. By trying to explain why he did what he did, the author hopes to mobilize others, not to do what he did or is now doing, but rather just to do something, to shed feelings of indifference and impotence, to join the international human rights cause.

Ben Dunkelman grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Toronto. Kicked out of several schools for being a hell-raiser, he was sent off to Europe and the Middle East in the 1930s, gaining hard experience that would serve him well in the years to come. On his return he worked for the family business, but when World War Two came he lost no time in enlisting. Dunkelman describes the war from the ordinary soldier's viewpoint, without embellishment or glorification. Yet he was a hero to his men--and to his country. After the war Dunkelman returned to Canada, but in 1948 he went to war again--this time to fight for the young nation of Israel in the struggle to establish a Jewish state. Dual Allegiance is the exciting, fast-paced story a man and the passions he was willing to fight for--and if necessary, die for.

Winner of the 2007 B.C. Award for Canadian Non-fiction A Globe and Mail Best 100 Book (2006) National Post Best Books (2006) A bold cultural portrait of contemporary Canada through the work of its most celebrated novelists, short story writers, and storytellers. Stories are the surest way to know a place, and at a time when the fabric of the country seems daily more uncertain, Noah Richler looks to our authors for evidence of the true nature of Canada. He argues why fiction matters and seeks to discover — in the extra-ordinary diversity of communities these writers represent — what stories, if any, bind us as a nation. Over two years, Richler has criss-crossed the country and interviewed close to one hundred authors — a who’s who of Canadian literature, including Wayne Johnston, Michael Crummey, Alistair MacLeod, Gil Courtemanche, Jane Urquhart, Joseph Boyden, Miriam Toews, Yann Martel, Fred Stenson, Douglas Coupland, and Rohinton Mistry — about the places and ideas that are most meaningful to their work. The result is a journey through the reality of Canada and its imagination at a critical point in the country’s evolution. Within thematic chapters he exposes our “Myths of Disappointment” and considers the stories of our native peoples, the rise of the city, and how our history as a colony shapes our society and politics even today. This Is My Country, What's Yours? is an impassioned literary travelogue and a vivid portrayal of our society, the work of Canadian authors, and the idea of writing itself. This Is My Country, What's Yours? is based on Noah Richler’s ten-part documentary of the same name originally broadcast on CBC Radio’s flagship Ideas program in spring 2005.

A father and son travel across North America in a pick-up truck--talking, laughing, fighting, and bonding. After years of thinking he'd never have kids, Lee Gutkind became a father at forty-seven and, following his divorce, soon found himself taking over more and more of the primary care responsibilities for his son, Sam. As one of a growing number of "old new dads" (recent studies have shown that one in ten children are born to fathers over forty), Gutkind realized that he faced challenges-both mental and physical-not faced by younger dads, not the least of which was how to bond with a son who was so much younger than himself. For the past five years, Gutkind's approach to this challenge has been to spend several weeks of every summer "truckin'" with Sam, a term they define as a metaphor for spontaneity, a lack of restriction: "Truckin' means that you can what you want to do sometimes; you don't always need to do what's expected." What began as long, cross-country journeys in a pick-up truck, including one memorable trip up the Alaska-Canadian Highway en route to a writer's conference in Homer, Alaska, have in more recent years ranged farther afield, to Europe, Australia, and Tibet. Whether listening to rock and roll music, entertaining themselves with their secret jokes and code words, fishing for halibut, or fighting over tuna fish sandwiches and how best to butter one's toast, Lee and Sam have learned to respect one another. In the process of their travels and their adventures, Lee has also come to grips with the downside of middle age and the embarassment of "senior moments," while Sam has inevitably begun to assert himself and shape his own life. Interspersed with Sam's own observations and journal entries, Truckin' with Sam is an honest, moving, and often hilarious account of one father's determination to bond with his son, a spontaneous travelogue that will appeal to old dads, new dads, and women who want to know more about how dads (and sons) think and behave.

This is a love story; an unlikely convergence of two people from different worlds who were able to make a rich and tender life together, and not only endure each other's company in alarmingly close quarters but revel in it. Edith Iglauer was born in Cleveland and lived an urban, sophisticated life in New York until she met and married John Daly, a commercial fisherman in British Columbia. She spent more than four years on his forty-one-foot troller, the Morekelp until his sudden death. John Daly was an impassioned and greatly talented fisherman who was convinced that he could "think like a fish"; an amateur philosopher who worked out, and followed, an orginal set of beliefs and principles; a mystic who, after forty years of fishing, felt himself to be at one with the sea and the mountains along the British Columbia coast; a scholarly looking, high-spirited, full-blown eccentric who covered the white walls of his pilothouse with his favorite quotations in bold black letters ("Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke. O.W. Holmes") Fishing with John established Edith Iglauer as one of BC's most popular writers. This unusual West Coast love story sold 16,000 copies in hardcover and continues to be a bestseller in paperback.

Norman Levine's Canada Made Me , first published in England in 1958, is a bitter, critical reassessment of the moral and cultural values of Canada. His account of his three-month journey from Halifax to Ucluelet, a fishing village on the west coast, is an unconventional portrait of Canada's underbelly. The book ends with the words: `I wondered why I felt so bitter about Canada. After all, it was all part of a dream, an experiment that could not come off. It was foolish to believe that you can take the throwouts, the rejects, the human kickabouts from Europe and tell them: Here you have a second chance. Here you can start a new life. But no one ever mentioned the price one had to pay; how much of oneself you had to betray.' Canada Made Me was regarded as so controversial that it did not appear in a Canadian edition until 1979. Critical opinion, however, has slowly swung around to the point the book was recently described in the Globe and Mail as a `laconic classic'. For this new edition Norman Levine has written an introduction which traces the book's publishing history and reputation.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The first biography in a generation of Canada's most eccentric and most important prime minister -- Mackenzie King -- and his defining influence on our 20th century. Most Canadian historians consider William Lyon Mackenzie King to be not only the country's greatest prime minister but also its most peculiar. From 1919 to 1948 he occasionally lorded over the Liberal Party, also serving as prime minister for much of that time. Mackenzie King was a brilliant tactician, was passionately committed to Canadian unity, and was a protector of the underdog, introducing such cornerstones of Canada's social safety net as unemployment insurance, family allowances and old-age pensions. At the same time, he was insecure, craved flattery, became upset at minor criticism, and was prone to fantasy -- especially about the Tory conspiracy against him. King loosened the Imperial connection with Britain and was wary of American military and economic power. Yet he loved all things British and acted like a praised schoolboy when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill or U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt treated him as an equal. King comes at a time when the Canadian people have resoundingly rebuffed the Liberal party under Michael Ignatieff; while the party's future remains uncertain, this definitive biography sheds light on its history under its greatest leader. This first major biography of Mackenzie King in 30 years mines the pages of his remarkable diary. At 30,000 pages, King is one of the most significant and revealing political documents in Canada's history and a guide to the deep and often moving inner conflicts that haunted Mackenzie King. With animated prose and a subtle wit, Allan Levine draws a multidimensional portrait of this most compelling of politicians.

W L Mackenzie King is published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside.

An autobiography of award-winner author Alison Pick.

Walter Gordon was a born member of the Canadian Establishment, a senior partner in one of the country's major accounting firms, successful and powerful in the world of business. After considerable persuasion by his close friend Prime Minister Lester Pearson, Gordon left business for politics and became finance minister in the Liberal government in 1963. But Gordon was different from many of his associates--he had an abiding concern for Canada, and for ensuring the independence of its enconomy. He worked to enshrine this perspective in the Liberal Party, the Pearson government and in Canadian politics generally. Walter Gordon: A Political Memoir tells the story of a politician who put principles above personal ambition, who suffered disappointments and defeats, but who always stood out as a man who remained true to his beliefs.