Canadian History

Follow in the footsteps of Canadian historical icons and discover their inspiring stories that changed the world! Fascinating excerpts from their work are included. Inside, you will find a biography section for each figure, the challenges they faced, and stories of how they overcame them. You will discover significant events that shaped them and the political and social background at the time.

On September 4, 1944, Antwerp, Europe’s largest port, fell to the Second British Army and it seemed the war would soon be won. But Antwerp was of little value unless the West Scheldt Estuary linking it to the North Sea was also in Allied hands. In his greatest blunder of the war, Field Marshal Montgomery turned his back on the port, leaving the First Canadian Army to fight its way up the long coastal flank. By the time the Canadians and others serving with them reached the area, it had been transformed into a fortress manned by troops ordered to fight to the death.

The ninth book in the Canadian Battle Series, Breakout from Juno, is the first dramatic chronicling of Canada's pivotal role throughout the entire Normandy Campaign following the D-Day landings.

While researching why Freud failed to win a Nobel Prize at the Nobel Archives in Sweden, a psychiatrist makes an unusual discovery. Among the piles of papers in the "Crackpot" file are letters addressed to the executor of Alfred Nobel's will, written by several notable Nobel laureates - including Rudyard Kipling and Marie Curie - each offering an explanation of why and how Stonehenge was constructed. Diligent research uncovers that Alfred Nobel added a secret codicil to his will, a prize for the Nobel laureate who solves the mystery of Stonehenge.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times best sellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the podcast Revisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage, and his trademark insight to weave together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in Central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.

Passionnant voyage dans l’aventure québécoise, ce livre nous invite à traverser quatre siècles en dix escales: jours de colère ou de liesse, de défaite ou de victoire, de recul ou de progrès, dates fatidiques qui continuent aujourd’hui de définir le Québec. Chacun avec sa voix propre et à la lumière de sa spécialité, les auteurs éclairent ces tournants décisifs du long chemin parcouru par les Québécoises et les Québécois.

In Mossad, authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions in the agency's 60-year history.

For 113 terrifying days in 1940, Nazi Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, threw everything it had at Great Britain in hopes of early victory in World War II. The task of defending southern England from airborne attack fell to pilots in the Royal Air Force, supplemented in their darkest hour by more than 100 flyers from Canada. These Canadians, some from famous families, some straight off the farm, served in forty-seven different Battle of Britain squadrons.

After a hard experience looking for a complete modern tool to study for his Canadian citizenship test, Pavel Perez, instead, made one for himself and to help others, too. In this very personal book, Pavel shows some tips on how to be prepared to pass the official Canadian citizenship test in less than five minutes without stress.

Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled is a stirring call to arms to put truth over the flawed concept of reconciliation, and to build a new, respectful relationship between the nation of Canada and Indigenous peoples.

For two years the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world. The physician and medical historian Jacalyn Duffin presents a global history of the virus, with a focus on Canada. Duffin describes the frightening appearance of the virus and its identification by scientists in China; subsequent outbreaks on cruise ships; the relentless spread to Europe, the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere; and the immediate attempts to confront it. COVID-19 next explores the scientific history of infections generally, and the discovery of coronaviruses in particular.

Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military.

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book, Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.

Part memoir, part history, part political manifesto, Seeking Social Democracy offers the first full-length treatment of Ed Broadbent's ideas and remarkable seven-decade engagement in public life. In dialogue with three collaborators from different generations, Broadbent leads listeners through a life spent fighting for equality in Parliament and beyond: exploring the formation of his social democratic ideals, his engagement on the international stage, and his relationships with historical figures from Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro to Tommy Douglas, Rene Levesque, and Willy Brandt.

Bill Morneau’s experience as Canada’s finance minister crystalized his vision for the country’s potential for growth and prosperity. Where To from Here looks backward with coolness and candor and forward with a fresh vision of all that Canada can—and must—become. In his own persuasive voice, Bill Morneau paints a positive picture, tracing his widely lauded entry into the political arena, the arc of his career in politics, major accomplishments and missed opportunities, his surprising exit, and a host of revealing episodes between the events.

Cheated is a gripping story of single-minded politicians, uncompromising Indian Affairs officials, grasping government appointees, and well-connected Liberal speculators, set against a backdrop of politics, power, patronage, and profit. The Laurier government's settlement of western Canada can never be looked at the same way again.

Modern medical science has finally caught up to what traditional healing systems have known for centuries. Many traditional healing techniques and medicines are often assumed to be archaic, outdated, or unscientific compared to modern Western medicine. Nicole Redvers, a naturopathic physician and member of the Deninu K'ue First Nation, analyzes modern Western medical practices using evidence-informed Indigenous healing practices and traditions from around the world - from sweat lodges and fermented foods to Ayurvedic doshas and meditation.

From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history's greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken.

Lawyer, activist, and former Chatelaine legal columnist Linda Silver Dranoff details her trailblazing journey from a traditional 1950s childhood to the battlegrounds of the courts of law where she and a generation of women lawyers, supporting a larger feminist movement, championed the rights of Canadian women and families.

For over 50,000 years, the Great Hunt has shaped human existence, creating a vital spiritual reality where people, animals, and the land share intimate bonds. Author Larry Frolick takes the listener deep into one of the last refuges of hunting societies: Canada’s far north. Based on his experiences travelling with First Nations Elders in remote communities across the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, this vivid narrative combines accounts of daily life, unpublished archival records, First Nations' stories and Traditional Knowledge with personal observation....