Things were very different in 1939 — a pivotal year when Canada wavered on the doorstep of a clouded future. Some years are more spectacular than others, and 1939 was no exception. Canada was a different place: steak was twenty-nine cents a pound and a brand-new Ford coupe could be bought for just $856. It was a year when the king and queen toured Canada and wowed to use a showbiz term everyone from Toronto and Vancouver to Gogama and Craigellachie. It was also a year when Canada wavered on the doorstep of a clouded future: isolation and neutrality or the continued embrace of the British Empire? The onset of war and the Royal Visit settled all that as Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King beat back external and internal threats to keep the tapestry of national unity from unraveling. Through Canada on the Doorstep you’ll discover the births, deaths, storms, international intrigue, and politics that made 1939 so memorable.

“It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer.” So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years, and so begins the history of residential schools prepared by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Between 2008 and 2015, the TRC provided opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to share their experiences of residential schools and released several reports based on 7000 survivor statements and five million documents from government, churches, and schools, as well as a solid grounding in secondary sources. A Knock on the Door, published in collaboration with the National Research Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, gathers material from the several reports the TRC has produced to present the essential history and legacy of residential schools in a concise and accessible package that includes new materials to help inform and contextualize the journey to reconciliation that Canadians are now embarked upon. Survivor and former National Chief of the Assembly First Nations, Phil Fontaine, provides a Foreword, and an Afterword introduces the holdings and opportunities of the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, home to the archive of recordings, and documents collected by the TRC. As Aimée Craft writes in the Afterword, knowing the historical backdrop of residential schooling and its legacy is essential to the work of reconciliation. In the past, agents of the Canadian state knocked on the doors of Indigenous families to take the children to school. Now, the Survivors have shared their truths and knocked back. It is time for Canadians to open the door to mutual understanding, respect, and reconciliation.

Through the diary of 10-year-old Victoria Cope, we learn about the arrival of ragged Mary Anna, one of the thousands of impoverished British children who were sent to Canada at the beginning of the century. Mary Anna joins the Cope family as a servant and is treated well, but she has to cope with the initial apprehension of the family members and the loss of her brother, Jasper, who was placed with another family. Victoria vows to help Mary Anna find her brother, so they can be a family once again.

From the moment he became U.S. ambassador to Canada in 1993, James J. Blanchard was determined to make a difference. He succeeded - to hte benefit of both countries. "Behind the Embassy Door is an insider's view of politics and diplomacy at one of the most crucial periods in the history of U.S.-Canada relations. The North American Free Trade Agreement, negotiated against a background of fierce controversy, was agreed to but not yet ratified and a newly elected Liberal government had promised to renegotiate the deal. At the same time, the separatist government in Quebec was pushing the country to the brink of dissolution with a referendum on sovereignty. This book gives fascinating insight into the role of the U.S. ambassador at a time when seemingly minor remarks and gestures could prove decisive. This is an extraordinary account of how international relations are conducted at the highest level. It is also a candid account of the everyday life of an ambassador abroad. Blanchard takes us behind the scenes with a number of Canadian and American politicians and public figures, from Prime Minister Jean Chretien to President Clinton, and many of their senior cabinet members and advisers. Blanchard describes the coast-to-coast trip across Canada that he undertook shortly after his arrival. And he tells about visits to Ottawa by the president, Vice-President Gore, Madeleine Albright, and many others. He recalls how the president's mother charmed a thousand women and how Hillary Clinton skated on the famed Rideau Canal. This book offers an unprecedented and frequently surprising look at the intimate everyday workings of a relationship that is unique among nations.

Now in its first American edition, Dionne Brand’s groundbreaking A Map to the Door of No Return has emerged as a modern classic, a highly influential exploration of “being” in the Black Diaspora. Since its first publication in 2001, Dionne Brand’s groundbreaking exploration of being in the Black Diaspora, A Map to the Door of No Return, has emerged as a modern classic. The door, in Brand’s iconic schema, represents the point of rupture where the ancestors of the Black Diaspora departed one world for another: the place where all names were forgotten, and all beginnings recast. “This door,” writes Brand, “is not mere physicality. It is a spiritual location . . . Since leaving was never voluntary, return was, and still may be, an intention, however deeply buried. There is as it says no way in; no return.” Through shards of history, memoir, lyrical investigation, and the unwritten experience of so many descendants of those who passed through the door, Brand constructs a map of this indelible region, culminating in an enduring expression, both definitive and seeking, of what it is to live, think, and create in the wake of colonization. With a new preface by the author, and an afterword by Saidiya Hartman.

In this instant national bestseller, comedy superstar Mike Myers writes from the (true patriot) heart about his 53-year relationship with his beloved Canada. Mike Myers is a world-renowned actor, director and writer, and the man behind some of the most memorable comic characters of our time. But as he says: "no description of me is truly complete without saying I'm a Canadian." He has often winked and nodded to Canada in his outrageously accomplished body of work, but now he turns the spotlight full-beam on his homeland. His hilarious and heartfelt new book is part memoir, part history and pure entertainment. It is Mike Myers' funny and thoughtful analysis of what makes Canada Canada, Canadians Canadians and what being Canadian has always meant to him. His relationship with his home and native land continues to deepen and grow, he says. In fact, American friends have actually accused him of enjoying being Canadian—and he's happy to plead guilty as charged. A true patriot who happens to be an expatriate, Myers is in a unique position to explore Canada from within and without. With this, his first book, Mike brings his love for Canada to the fore at a time when the country is once again looking ahead with hope and national pride. Canada is a wholly subjective account of Mike's Canadian experience. Mike writes, "Some might say, 'Why didn't you include this or that?' I say there are 35 million stories waiting to be told in this country, and my book is only one of them." This beautifully designed book is illustrated in colour (and not color) throughout, and its visual treasures include personal photographs and Canadiana from the author's own collection. Published in the lead-up to the 2017 sesquicentennial, this is Mike Myers' birthday gift to his fellow Canadians. Or as he puts it: "In 1967, Canada turned one hundred. Canadians all across the country made Centennial projects. This book is my Centennial Project. I'm handing it in a little late. . . . Sorry."

There s a crocodile in the closet. Don t go inside! Let s put him in the attic, then run downstairs and hide!