Record numbers of Canadian youths are taking up basketball, but the sport languishes in the shadow of hockey. From the sport's beginning to the era of Steve Nash, this book chronicles basketball's struggle to overcome its history as the poor cousin of Canadian sports.

The story of Canada’s other game from its invention by a Canadian to its current struggle for popularity. Basketball, the only major world sport undeniably invented by a Canadian, has ironically failed to win Canadians’ hearts more than a century after its creation. James Naismith’s brainchild is a popular recreational pastime in his homeland, but players with bigger dreams had better take their talents south of the border. Canadian hoops has languished in the seemingly eternal shadow of hockey, with its cannibalization of air time, advertising dollars, and corporate capital. Faced with limited opportunities at home, as many as 50 teenagers flock to U.S. prep schools and colleges every year to chase their dreams of college stardom and, much less likely, a shot at glory in the NBA. Against all odds, a skinny kid from Victoria named Steve Nash managed to reach the pinnacle of the sport, with a whirling-dervish style that earned him two MVP awards in the world’s greatest league. Today, a new generation of Canadians stand poised to follow in Nash’s path. But will their success spark a renaissance back home? This book chronicles basketball’s struggle to overcome its history as a poor cousin in a hockey-mad nation.

Contributors include Julian Ammirante (Laurentian University at Georgian), Jason Blake (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Robert Dennis (Queen's University), Jamie Dopp (University of Victoria), Russell Field (University of Manitoba), Greg Gillespie (Brock University), Richard Harrison (Mount Royal College), Craig Hyatt (Brock University), Brian Kennedy (Pasadena City College), Karen E.H. Skinazi (University of Alberta), and Julie Stevens (Brock University).

Opening at the 2004 Olympic baseball tournament, where the unheralded Canadian team came within an errant throw of the gold medal game, the author recounts Canada's rich baseball history, from 1838 to 2004, when the top rookie in both major leagues hailed form the Great White North.

In October 1983 Ken Dryden gave us what was called the best non-fiction book ever written about hockey: The Game. In that same month Roy MacGregor published what was hailed as the best novel ever written about hockey: The Last Season. These two writers teamed up to write another extraordinary book. Inspired by Ken Dryden’s major CBC-TV series on hockey, Home Game delves into hockey in all its incarnations, from life in a small hockey community and the dreams of amateurs determined to reach the NHL to the reminiscences of players involved in the 1972 Canada-Soviet series. By exploring hockey’s significance to our nation, Dryden and MacGregor help to define what it means to be Canadian. On publication, Home Game shot to the top of the bestseller lists, establishing itself as a must-read for every hockey fan. The lavish book, with nearly 100 full-colour photographs, continues to win over Canadians.

Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 is a serious contemplation of what it means to engage in major world conflicts, and the price we pay when we do. The First World War was Canada's baptism of fire, or at least the only one that people now remember. (Montrealers in 1776 or Torontonians in 1814 would have taken a different view.) From 1914 to 1918, after a century of peace, Canadians were plunged back into the old world of great power rivalries and great wars. So was everybody else, but Canadians were volunteers. We didn't have to fight, but we chose to, out of loyalty to ideas and institutions that today many of us no longer believe in. And we have been doing the same thing ever since, although we haven't quite given up on the latest set of ideas and institutions yet. In Canada in the Great Power Game, Gwynne Dyer moves back and forth between the seminal event, the First World War, and all the later conflicts that Canada chose to fight in. He draws parallels between these conflicts, with the same idealism among the young soldiers, and the same deeply conflicted emotions among the survivors, surfacing time and again in every war right down to Afghanistan. And in each case, the same arguments pro and con arise—mostly from people who are a long, safe way from the killing grounds—for every one of those "wars of choice." Echoing throughout the book are the voices of the people who lived through the wars: the veterans, the politicians, the historians, the eyewitnesses. And Dyer takes a number of so-called excursions from his historical account, in which he revisits the events and puts them in context, pausing to ask such questions as "What if we hadn't fought Hitler?" and "Is war written in our genes?" This entertaining and provocative book casts an unsparing eye over what happens when Canada and the great powers get in the war business, illuminating much about how we see ourselves on the world stage.

A debut middle grade novel about throwing things out -- and letting people in. Family Game Night tackles a tough issue with a light, accessible touch and writing that sparkles with heart. Annabelle has a secret . . . a secret so big she won't allow friends within five miles of her home. Her mom collects things. Their house is overflowing with stuff. It gives Annabelle's sister nightmares, her brother spends as much time as he can at friends' houses, and her dad buries himself in his work.So when a stack of newspapers falls on Annabelle's sister, it sparks a catastrophic fight between their parents--one that might tear them all apart--and Annabelle starts to think that things at home finally need to change. Is it possible for her to clean up the family's mess? Or are they really, truly broken?Mary E. Lambert's moving and heart-breakingly funny debut novel about the things we hold dear--and the things we let go--will resonate with anyone whose life has ever felt just a little too messy.