From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, in the midst of the Cold War and second-wave feminism, the RCMP security service – prompted by fears of left-wing and communist subversion – monitored and infiltrated the women’s liberation movement in Canada and Quebec. Just Watch Us investigates why and how this movement was targeted, weighing carefully the presumed threat its left-wing ties presented to the Canadian government against the defiant challenge its campaign for gender equality posed to Canadian society. Based on a close reading of thousands of pages of RCMP documents declassified under Canada’s Access to Information Act and the corresponding Privacy Act, Just Watch Us demonstrates that the security service’s longstanding anti-Communist focus distorted its threat assessment of feminist organizing. Combining gender analysis and critical approaches to state surveillance, Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt consider the machinations of the RCMP, including its bureaucratic evolution, intelligence-gathering operations, and impact, as well as the evolution of the women’s liberation movement from its broad transnational influences to its elusive quest for unity among women across lines of ideology and identity. Significantly, the authors also grapple with the historiographical, methodological, and ethical difficulties of working with declassified security documents and sensitive information. A sharp-eyed inquiry into spy policies and tactics in Cold War Canada, Just Watch Us speaks to the serious political implications of state surveillance for social justice activism in liberal democracies.

black and white photosThe battle for Vimy Ridge one hundred years ago has been characterized as a defining moment in Canadian history. The idea of thousands of Canadian young men dying together in the mud and tangled wire of northern France was, and still is, considered by many as nation-building.Tom Goodman generally accepted this view until he discovered a rich trove of letters between his grandmother and Archie Polson, the uncle he has never met. Reading through the exchanges, Goodman came to realize that war is sometimes about winning, but it is always about loss. He has now collected many of these letters, along with his own contextual narrative, so that we can see the true cost of war to a family and a country.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Named Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, History Today and The Hill Times A gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the engineering triumph that created a nation: the Canadian Pacific Railway The sharp decline of the demand for fur in the late nineteenth century could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson’s Bay Company, but an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies. With over 3,000 kilometres of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the Canadian Pacific Railway would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces. The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. In Dominion, Stephen R. Bown widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His portrayal of the powerful forces that were moulding the world during this time provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada’s creation as an independent state.

The life story of Mary Elizabeth LeBlanc in Jackie Muise's Island Girl is compelling and moving, not because she was highly unusual, but because she experienced, suffered, survived, and triumphed over challenges commonly faced by ordinary people during her era. She did so with inspiring fortitude and grace. Orphaned at an early age on PEI, she lives first with lightkeepers at Souris East Lighthouse, then with a St. Georges farming couple, Dolph and Jeannette Gallant, who become her beloved lifelong parents. With wartime, Mary is transplanted to Nova Scotia, where Dolph works in the Pictou shipyards building cargo ships, and where she marries Pictou native Fred Leblanc, who becomes a soldier. Afflicted and critically ill with tuberculosis, Mary dwells at length and gives birth in the Kentville sanitorium. Prevailing, she devotes herself to the roles, sometimes draining, often fulfilling, of a military wife and mother. During postings in Germany and New Brunswick, she copes with and finally confronts her husband's alcoholism, while nurturing children through their struggles and victories. When we arrive at the end of Mary's long life and story, we deeply admire and miss her as if she were our own cherished and extraordinary relative. We agree with the Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis that "There are no ordinary people."

Introducing the works of a major Chinese writer—liberal, cosmopolitan, and lyrically exotic—once banned but now embraced, and newly "discovered" in the West. Xu Xu 徐訏 (1908-1980) was one of the most widely read Chinese authors of the 1930s to 1960s. His popular urban gothic tales, his exotic spy fiction, and his quasi-existentialist love stories full of nostalgia and melancholy offer today’s readers an unusual glimpse into China’s turbulent twentieth century. These translations--spanning a period of some thirty years, from 1937 until 1965--bring to life some of Xu Xu’s most representative short fictions from prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Afterword illustrates that Xu Xu’s idealistic tendencies in defiance of the politicization of art exemplify his affinity with European romanticism and link his work to a global literary modernity.

“Essential reading for understanding not just Chinese American history but American history—and the American present.” —Celeste Ng, #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere * TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 * San Francisco Chronicle's Favorite Nonfiction * Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2023 * Library Journal Best Memoir and Biography of 2023 * One of Elle's Best Memoirs of 2023 (So Far) * An ALA Notable Book * “The Angela’s Ashes for Chinese Americans.” —Miwa Messer, Poured Over podcast As the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family’s origins to be shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents’ stories didn’t match the history she read at school. Mott Street traces Chin’s quest to understand her Chinese American family’s story. Over decades of painstaking research, she finds not only her father but also the building that provided a refuge for them all. Breaking the silence surrounding her family’s past meant confronting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades. Chin traces the story of the pioneering family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, crossing an ocean to make their way in the American West of the mid-nineteenth century. She tells of their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and of the brutal racism of frontier towns, then follows their paths to New York City. In New York’s Chinatown she discovers a single building on Mott Street where so many of her ancestors would live, begin families, and craft new identities. She follows the men and women who became merchants, “paper son” refugees, activists, and heads of the Chinese tong, piecing together how they bore and resisted the weight of the Exclusion laws. She soon realizes that exclusion is not simply a political condition but also a personal one. Gorgeously written, deeply researched, and tremendously resonant, Mott Street uncovers a legacy of exclusion and resilience that speaks to the American experience, past and present.

Heralded as a literary masterpiece and a best-seller in the Chinese-speaking world, The Great Flowing River is a personal account of the history of modern China and Taiwan unlike any other. In this eloquent autobiography, the noted scholar, writer, and teacher Chi Pang-yuan recounts her youth in mainland China and adulthood in Taiwan. Chi’s remarkable life, told in rich and striking detail, humanizes the eventful and turbulent times in which she lived. The Great Flowing River begins as a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of China’s war with Japan. Chi depicts her childhood in pre-occupation Manchuria and gives an eyewitness account of life in China during the war with Japan. She tells the tale of her youthful romance with a dashing pilot that ends tragically when he is shot down in the last days of the war. The book describes the deepening political divide in China and her choice to take a job in Taiwan, where she would remain after the Communist victory. Chi details her growth as an educator, scholar, and promoter of Chinese literature in translation and her realization that despite her roots in China, she has found a home in Taiwan, giving an immersive account of the postwar history of Taiwan from a mainlander’s perspective. A novelistic, epoch-defining narrative, The Great Flowing River unites the personal and intimate with the grand sweep of history.