Historically Canadians have considered themselves to be more or less free of racial prejudice. Although this conception has been challenged in recent years, it has not been completely dispelled. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the tenacious hold that white supremacy had on our legal system in the first half of this century, and underscores the damaging legacy of inequality that continues today. Backhouse presents detailed narratives of six court cases, each giving evidence of blatant racism created and enforced through law. The cases focus on Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese-Canadian, and African-Canadian individuals, taking us from the criminal prosecution of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of the 'Ku Klux Klan of Kanada.' From thousands of possibilities, Backhouse has selected studies that constitute central moments in the legal history of race in Canada. Her selection also considers a wide range of legal forums, including administrative rulings by municipal councils, criminal trials before police magistrates, and criminal and civil cases heard by the highest courts in the provinces and by the Supreme Court of Canada. The extensive and detailed documentation presented here leaves no doubt that the Canadian legal system played a dominant role in creating and preserving racial discrimination. A central message of this book is that racism is deeply embedded in Canadian history despite Canada's reputation as a raceless society. Winner of the Joseph Brant Award, presented by the Ontario Historical Society

Based on hundreds of interviews with Manitoba farm men and women, Making Ends Meet reconstructs the common history shared by modern farm women as well as by their mothers and grandmothers. It explores women's changing roles on the farm, from the early days of the Red River settlement to the twentieth-century farm community. The women's own stories reveal their ingenuity and tenacity in "making ends meet" through economies, shared, labour, and generation of new resource income as varied as raising poultry and custom woodworking. These stories prove that the contributions of farm women have been vital in establishing and maintaining the family farm, and are critical to its continued survival.

In the spring of 1881, William Bell and his son-in-law Walter leave their families in Pickering, Ontario, and head west in hopes of securing land in what was then the North-West Territories. At fifty-six William is determined to keep a promise made to his dead wife, Annie, that they find land and settle where they can make a life for themselves on their own terms, a place where their family can forge a future beholden to none. And so it is that the two make their way first to Winnipeg, then on to Portage la Prairie-where the railroad ends-passing north of Brandon on foot and out into the vast unbroken heartland of the continent.