Michael Adams, president of Environics polling, argues that Canada and the United States are diverging: Americans are growing more socially conservative and deferential toward authority figures, whereas Canadians are becoming more tolerant, open to risk, and questioning of governing institutions.

His skates were too small. Or they didn't match. Or they were that ultimate humiliation for a boy trying to play hockey--girls' white figure skates. Add to young Bruce McCall's shabby equipment his pencil-thin wrists, weak ankles, and, as he puts it, "a fruit bat's metabolism with a tree sloth's reflexes," and you'll understand why he failed so dismally in the cold, rough world of neighborhood hockey in Toronto. Bruce's catastrophic career as a rink rat epitomizes the youth he recounts in this funny, moving, sometimes disturbing memoir. In fact, Thin Ice examines a boyhood so filled with failure and disappointment that the comedy and insight its author/survivor wrests from it--like his subsequent career as one of America's most admired humorists and illustrators--seem like miracles. Bruce McCall's father, T.C., was an inaccessible tyrant. Bruce's mother, Peg, drank to blunt the effect of her husband's rages and to dodge the duties of taking care of six children. Still, Bruce did know some moments of pleasure as a child, especially in the small town of Simcoe, before T.C. moved his family to the dreary outskirts of Toronto: The Second World War offered its awesome matériel and its heroic men, milk bottles grew top hats of cream, and grapes hung free for the stealing in Mrs. Klein's backyard. But his parents' demons took their toll on Bruce, and the move to Toronto set the stage for academic and social disasters: He flunked out of high school and took dead-end graphic-design jobs, all the while envying the full-color culture and high-octane energy of Canada's muscular neighbor to the south. That envy, combined with Bruce's passion for reading and drawing--one of the few positive bequests from T.C. and Peg McCall--became his refuge and then his salvation. His precocious reverence for The New Yorker magazine led him to invent entire comic worlds of artistic and literary creation. Ultimately, he read, wrote, and drew himself out of pennilessness and despair. Bruce McCall may not have been destined to glide around Madison Square Garden holding the Stanley Cup aloft, but as Thin Ice demonstrates, perseverance and talent can turn crummy ice skates--and even dashed hopes--into dreams come true.

"From the pressures of development, technological advances, globalization and climate change to social and cultural life, this book attempts to define the nature of competing demands and assess their impact on the environment. These essays provide a detailed examination of ocean and coastal management in the Canadian north, exploring a wide range of issues critical to environmental stewardship, and breaking the ice to connect academics, government managers, policy-makers, aboriginal groups and industry." --Book Jacket.

Canada has produced many successful proponents of the genre known as heavy metal. Drawing on interviews with the original artists of the 1980s, this book provides a new perspective on the dreams of musicians shooting for an American ideal of success ... and ultimately discovering a uniquely Canadian voice in the process.

A dramatic Arctic adventure set during Sir John Franklin's doomed search for the Northwest Passage George Chambers is a fourteen-year-old aboard HMS Erebus, one of two ships under the command of Sir John Franklin on his quest to discover the Northwest Passage. But when the Erebus and Terror are trapped in crushing ice, 129 men of the crew die from cold, scurvy, and starvation. Only two remain alive when George begins to recount his story: himself and Commander James Fitzjames. As his strength dwindles and starvation weakens him, George recalls the events that led him to Canada's desolate North, and the expedition's failure -- including gravediggers, a close call with a polar bear, standing up against sailors threatening mutiny, and his own impending death. George does not know whether the story he tells will be all that survives of Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition.

From bestselling author James Raffan comes an enlightening and original story about a polar bear’s precarious existence in the changing Arctic, reminiscent of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce. Nanurjuk, “the bear-spirited one,” is hunting for seals on Hudson Bay, where ice never lasts more than one season. For her and her young, everything is in flux. From the top of the world, Hudson Bay looks like an enormous paw print on the torso of the continent, and through a vast network of lakes and rivers, this bay connects to oceans across the globe. Here, at the heart of everything, walks Nanurjuk, or Nanu, one polar bear among the six thousand that traverse the 1.23 million square kilometers of ice and snow covering the bay. For millennia, Nanu’s ancestors have roamed this great expanse, living, evolving, and surviving alongside human beings in one of the most challenging and unforgiving habitats on earth. But that world is changing. In the Arctic’s lands and waters, oil has been extracted—and spilled. As global temperatures have risen, the sea ice that Nanu and her young need to hunt seal and fish has melted, forcing them to wait on land where the delicate balance between them and their two-legged neighbors has now shifted. This is the icescape that author and geographer James Raffan invites us to inhabit in Ice Walker. In precise and provocative prose, he brings readers inside Nanu’s world as she treks uncertainly around the heart of Hudson Bay, searching for nourishment for the children that grow inside her. She stops at nothing to protect her cubs from the dangers she can see—other bears, wolves, whales, human beings—and those she cannot. By focusing his lens on this bear family, Raffan closes the gap between humans and bears, showing us how, like the water of the Hudson Bay, our existence—and our future—is tied to Nanu’s. He asks us to consider what might be done about this fragile world before it is gone for good. Masterful, vivid, and haunting, Ice Walker is an utterly unique piece of creative nonfiction and a deeply affecting call to action.

An interesting and educational look at the science behind Canada's winter weather! Using easy-to-understand language and full colour photos and diagrams of various weather phenomena, Snow and Ice: Canadian Winter Weather explains simple weather concepts as they relate to unpredictable Canadian winters. Children will learn how snow is formed, why we have blizzards and ice storms, and what Chinooks are.Also included are extreme and unusual weather conditions, and the havoc they can sometimes wreak on Canadiancommunities.This informative book is sure to appeal to young nature lovers from coast to coast, and children will learn how the weather directly affects their lives. Snow and Ice: Canadian Winter Weather is perfect for home and curriculum use. The Canada Close Up books are about science and nature, and are directly related to school curriculum and the interests of younger readers.