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In the early 1850s, white American abolitionist Benjamin Drew was commissioned to travel to Canada West (now Ontario) to interview escaped slaves from the United States. At the time the population of Canada West was just short of a million and about 30,000 black people lived in the colony, most of whom were escaped slaves from south of the border. One of the people Drew interviewed was Harriet Tubman, who was then based in St. Catharines but made several trips to the U.S. South to lead slaves to freedom in Canada.

In the course of his journeys in Canada, Drew visited Chatham, Toronto, Galt, Hamilton, London, Dresden, Windsor, and a number of other communities. Originally published in 1856, Drews book is the only collection of first-hand interviews of fugitive slaves in Canada ever done. It is an invaluable record of early black Canadian experience.

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Do you know which televised awards show gives a prize for "Favourite Smile"?

Or which Oscar host announced that he was going to raffle off a car during the ceremony?

Do you know who won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress of the 20th Century?

In Reel Winners, Richard Crouse, Reel to Real movie critic and CBC Radios "titan of trivia," gives you the lowdown on movie awards, from eight decades of Hollywood self-congratulation to international awards to the toasts from the fringe (like The Skinnies, which celebrate actors and their skin conditions). Reel Winners is the definitive guide to the inside scoop on movie awards.

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In the summer of 1777, while the British and the Americans were engaged in the bitter American Revolution, a massive campaign was launched from Canada into New York State.

Brigadier Barry St. Leger led a crucial expedition from Lake Ontario into the Mohawk Valley. The goal was to travel by waterways to join Lieutenant General John Burgoyne in the siege of Albany. But Leger encountered obstacles along the way. While laying siege to Fort Stanwix, Leger received word that Benedict Arnold was leading a massive relief column that was headed their way. Leger and his men retreated, and despite a later attempt to carry on, were never able to help Burgoyne. The Americans then destroyed the British-held Fort Ticonderoga, marking the end of the campaign.

The results of the failed St. Leger expedition were historic. Not only was the loss of Fort Ticonderoga was a major blow to the British war effort, but the campaign also brought about the disillusionment of the Iroquois Confederacy, and saw the founding of the infamous Butlers Rangers and the first major campaign of Sir John Johnsons Kings Royal Regiment.

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Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother 1900-2002

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Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother 1900 - 2002 presents the life of a remarkable woman. A Canadian perspective on a sovereign who created and cultivated a special relationship with Canada, it is the portrait of a queen who always evoked passionate reactions. Whether it was the anonymous soldier who vowed "to fight for that little lady," Adolf Hitler who described her as "the most dangerous woman in Europe," or the Canadian journalist who coined the expression "the Queen Mum," the Queen Mother seldom left people unmoved.

Opening with the royal tour of 1939, during which Canadians first felt her personal magnetism, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother 1900 - 2002 describes Elizabeths background and development, relating how she made a marriage that brought her to the centre stage of public life. It traces her tender support of her shy husband, a reluctant king, shows how she began her Commonwealth role, and recalls her shock at the sudden and unexpected call to wear the Crown.

Faced with the never-ending duties of a queen, Elizabeth proved capable of providing inspired leadership for a society faced with the stark prospect of destruction in a war to save the world. On the premature death of her beloved husband she became Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, a role that has shaped nearly half her life, and one in which Canada has always played an important part. The authors analyze Her Majestys successes and failures, both public and private, against the background of a century of violent disruption, material achievement, and incredible change.

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"Princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact" so said the nineteenth-century writer Walter Bagehot. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary. This love story of the worlds most famous couple presents a thematic look at the most outstandingly successful marriage of recent times.

This illustrated study explores the pressures and stresses of living life in the glare of public scrutiny. It is an early case of a married couple leading independent lives of extraordinary public service and indicating a path for others to follow. The historical experience of queens and their consorts and Elizabeth and Philips Canadian and Commonwealth roles add scope to this biography.

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Garry Toffoli, Lynne Bell, Arthur Bousfield

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One Man's Vision That Gave 7,000 Children a New Life in Canada

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In 1878, Glasgow shoemaker William Quarrier founded an organization that offered help to the thousands of desperate, poverty-stricken children in Glasgows infamous slums. A few years later Quarriers Village was opened, providing a refuge for the abandoned and the orphaned in the rolling fields of Renfrewshire. Since these beginnings, Quarriers has cared for more than 40,000 children in need. It now runs a diverse range of support and care programs for children, adults, and families in 85 projects across Britain.

In this book, Anna Magnusson explores the stories of the many people, both past and present, who have helped make Quarriers what it is today and celebrates the achievements of the charity over the past century. The result is a detailed record of the organizations evolution and an inspiring story of one mans legacy.

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More Fascinating Facts and Quirky Quizzes

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Mark Kearney and Randy Ray, Canadas Trivia Guys, thought they had covered it all with their previous best-selling trivia books, but it turns out this country has even more weird and wonderful tales to tell. Pucks, Pablum and Pingos is a unique collection of easy-to-read trivia bites, quizzes, and graphics that touches on history, sports, politics, entertainment, and more. Fun and full of factual fare, this book will satisfy the curious and indulge the inquisitive.

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Whether you think psychics are limited to 900-line phone scams, or whether you are a believer, Psychics and Mediums in Canada is sure to intrigue you. Well-respected psychics, mediums, and readers from across the country - individuals possessing extraordinary gifts of psychic insight - are profiled within. You will also find a history of psychism in our country, frequently asked questions, what to expect from a reading and how to evaluate a psychic, and how to develop your own psychic gift.

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The Wartime Letters of a Canadian Airwoman

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A first-hand account of the experiences of a young Canadian airwoman who served both in Canada and on overseas duty, this series of 150 letters brings home the day-to-day immediacy of life in uniform during the Second World War. Moments of hilarity interspersed with impatience and frustration are recorded verbatim, along with an underlying sense of urgency about winning a war that hung in the balance for too long.

Written to the Dead of Women at Macdonald College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Mary Buchs letters lay untouched for over fifty years after her return to Canada from England in 1945. Today they serve as a looking-glass into the War Years that is tinged with the freshness of youthful spontaneity and the promise of a brighter tomorrow.

Carolyn Gossage has interwoven colourful contextual sidebars that provide todays reader with an overview of times and circumstances that have become increasingly elusive in the intervening years.

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Profiles in Canadian Literature is a wide-ranging series of essays on Canadian authors. Each profile acquaints the reader with the writers work, providing insight into themes, techniques, and special characteristics, as well as a chronology of the authors life. Finally, there is a bibliography of primary works and criticism that suggests avenues for further study.

"I know of no better introduction to these writers, and the studies in question are full of basic information not readily obtainable elsewhere."-U of T Quarterly

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Profiles in Canadian Literature is a wide-ranging series of essays on Canadian authors. Each profile acquaints the reader with the writers work, providing insight into themes, techniques, and special characteristics, as well as a chronology of the authors life. Finally, there is a bibliography of primary works and criticism that suggests avenues for further study.

"I know of no better introduction to these writers, and the studies in question are full of basic information not readily obtainable elsewhere." -U of T Quarterly

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In PR: Fifty Years in the Field, Jack Donoghue brings together the results of a lifetime in public relations in the military, public, and private sectors. Each chapter focuses on a different public relations problem, so that the collection as a whole reflects the full spectrum of challenges that PR officers face. The book documents the strategies applied to and the lessons learned from public relations exercises involving such divergent events as the Hong Kong Courts Martial, the Manitoba flood of 1950, the Manitoba polio epidemic of 1953, and the National Energy Program. It also describes the PR problems presented by the Alberta nurses strike of 1977 and the fiasco of Information Canada. Jack Donoghues memoirs provide a different and instructive view on significant events in Canadas history.

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The Watercolours of George Russell Dartnell, 1835-1844

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Posted to Canada examines, for the first time, the immense body of work created by George Dartnell, a British army surgeon stationed in Canada from 1835 to 1844. Dartnell, an accomplished and popular surgeon, sketched more than 150 scenes of a pristine Canada of dense forests, clear lakes and rough-edged beauty during his nine-year posting all of which form an important part of Canadas pre-photographic visual history. In this, the first book on Dartnell, his vibrant depictions of rural Quebec and Ontario, Montreal, Quebec City, Penetanguishene, London, and Port Talbot are examined in great detail. Dartnells work offers rare and insightful glimpses of both the life of a surgeon in the early nineteenth century and the fledgling communities in which he served. among the rare scenes portrayed by Dartnell lare the first known depictions of St. Marys, Ontario, and maple-sugaring near Penetanguishene. Of the dozens of sketches reproduced in the book, many have been culled from private collections and never before displayed publicly.

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For millennia, the land now called Turkey has been at the crossroads of history. A bridge between Europe and Asia, between West and East, between Christianity and Islam, the peninsula also known as Anatolia, the place where the sun rises, is one of the oldest continually inhabited regions on the planet.

In this unique blend of memoir and travel literature, Ustun Bilgen-Reinart explores the people, politics, and passions of her native country, whisking the reader on a journey through time, memory, and space. She searches deep into the roots of her own ancestry and uncovers a family secret, breaks taboos in a nation that still takes tradition very seriously, and navigates through dangerous territory that sees her investigating brothels in Ankara, probing honour murders in Sanliurfa, encountering Kurds in the remote southeast, and witnessing the rape of the earth by a gold mining company in Bergama.

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Poisoned Chalice chronicles the fateful end of the federal Progressive Conservative government in Ottawa. The Progressive Conservative Party sought to remake itself by choosing the first woman prime minister in Canadian history, but failed to heed the lessons of Meech or Charlottetown. Their strategy nearly worked. By the time the election was called, the Tories were neck and neck with Jean Chretiens Liberals. Then it all fell apart. This book, published exactly one year after the event, tells how and why it happened.

It gives a day-by-day account of an election campaign seemingly doomed to failure. It covers the strategy, tactics and political machinations that drove the Conservative campaign from the point of view of someone "on the bus." Read the strategy memos given to Kim Campbell. Listen in on her election-night phone call to Jean Chretien. Relive Kim Campbells campaigh from one end of the country to the other.

More than just that, Poisoned Chalice asks fundamental questions about how one of the founding political parties of Canada could come to such an ignominious state. Does the Progressive Conservative Party have a future? Has it been overtaken for good by Reform? This book takes the reader back to the seeds of the Tories defeat, from the constitutional debate and referendum, to the Conservative leadership race that never was, to Kim Campbells shining summer, to the electoral devastation of just two seats.

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When The Ph.D. Trap was first published in 1987, it hit academe like a bombshell. Wilfred Cude dared to pull back the veil of graduate school life to expose the harsh realities of modern advanced study. Using statistics, academic history, and diverse intellectual traditions, Cude revealed the Ph.D. program in most disciplines to be savage, mechanical, and cruel - an exploitative construct that often frustrates legitimate intellectual inquiry, shatters viable career expectations, and mangles personal and professional relations.

In the years since, an outpouring of books, articles, and statistical data delineating serious weaknesses in contemporary higher education has provided a wealth of evidence supporting Cudes original thesis.

The Ph.D. Trap Revisited amplifies Cudes arguments, with a synthesis and analysis of new data and information. Topics examined include the grad school numbers game, the rogue professor, muddles in methodology, the perils of apprenticeship, ethics and economics, existing alternatives, and recommendations for change.

In an age of increasingly unchecked proliferation of the Ph.D. degree throughout academic institutions in the western world, Cudes work is a tonic.

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In the fall of 1956, the world was on the brink of war. Egyptian President Gamel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, and Britain, France, and Israel attacked him. Russia supported Nasser, and Soviet Premier Khrushchev threatened nuclear holocaust if the United States became militarily involved. Soon, the matter became a major problem for the United Nations.

Fortunately, because of the efforts of Lester Pearson, then Canadas Minister of External Affairs, the crisis was defused. Pearson proposed a U.N. peacekeeping force be sent to Egypt to separate the warring factions there and keep the peace. Because his idea was adopted, Pearson helped save the world from war. For his outstanding statesmanship, Pearson won the Nobel Prize for Peace, the only Canadian ever to do so. This book, written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the event, is about the Suez and about Pearsons work during a tension-filled time in the twentieth century.

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High gas prices arent the end of the world- but they may be the beginning of the end. This, at least, is the feeling of many who shudder at the staggering power oil-rich countries have over the worlds political affairs.

In Petrotyranny, John Bacher uncovers the frightening facts of the worlds oil industry. He reveals that the worst dictatorships control six times the reserves that are under democratic control, and explores the potential for global conflict that exists as the demand for energy increases and the oil supply decreases. What kind of power will these dictatorships possess in the future? How many wars will be fought over the ever-shrinking supply of oil?

Bacher takes an optimistic approach, viewing the problem as a challenge: the worlds democracies need to devise a creative response to avoid the looming crisis. That is, start replacing fossil-fuel burning with renewable energy - and start the process now.

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The Personal Journal of an Ordinary Person

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An ordinary person, Katharine Brennan calls herself. An ordinary person perhaps, but with an extraordinary gift for turning the prosaic into poetry, and for distilling the moments of joy in he often painful days.

I write from the inside of myself; I save the spoken word for acquaintances. We are privileged to share Katharines very personal journal; she teaches us as much about the meaning of courage, and poignantly reminds us of all that life holds.

Interspersed with her own writings are brief sayings that appealed to Katharine, words of wit and wisdom from such thinkers as Dolly Parton, George Gurdjieff, William Blake, her mother, her husband, Carl Jung, and a novel called Dudley found lying in the washroom.

Losing her sigh, she sees the beauty of life clearly. Confined to a wheelchair and with her leg amputated, her world opens. In facing her approaching death, Katharine finds pleasure in the ordinary; sunrises and summer storms, conversation with friends and strangers, the satisfaction of chores and crafts. Through pain and depression her joie de vivre shines.

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Katharine Taylor Brennan, Elizabeth Parsons Kirchner

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Referendums and a More Democratic Canada

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A mood of anger with the political system has been stirring across Canada; yet rather than turning away from the system, many Canadians are actually seeking a greater say in matters that affect them. they want to become more effective participants in the political process.

In this timely book, Patrick Boyer examines the important role that direct democracy through the occasional use of referendums, plebiscites, and initiatives can play in concert with our existing institutions of representative democracy.

This concept is not alien to our country, says Boyer, pointing to the two national plebiscites (on prohibition of alcohol in 1898 and conscription for overseas military service in 1942), some sixty provincial plebiscites (on everything from sovereignty-association to abortion, medicare to womens suffrage, prohibition to ownership of power companies), and several thousand at the municipal level.

Direct voting is an important instrument in a truly democratic society, Boyer argues, and it has a more important role in the current reformation of Canada than some in the comfortable growing governing classes want to admit. In addition to clarifying an issue, it is an educational tool, as the plebiscite campaign becomes a national teach-in. Canadians can become participants, rather than mere spectators, in the major changes and transcending issues that affect the future of our country.

The Peoples Mandate is a helpful guide to understanding the distinctions between plebiscites and referendums in a purely Canadian context. It addresses some of the concerns about this unparliamentary practice, and makes a powerful and logical statement about democracy. In sum, Boyer believes it is essential to govern with the trust of the people.