LITMIR.BIZ

A new edition of the classic novel by Douglas LePan. Returned from the ravages of war, met with a city that offers him only despair, a young man finds himself caught between two opposing worlds – the ordered but empty everyday life of “schedules and obligations,” and the hellish chaos of the city’s underside, a dark world of brutality and vice. Gripped with a restless passion for perfection, haunted by a brief and idealized experience of love, the hero of this poetic, experimental novel lives out in a modern context that most universal of myths: the descent into the underworld to experience initiations and ordeals, and the return with new understanding to the upper world.

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55th anniversary edition of great Canadian writer Hugh Hood’s first short story collection Hood was celebrated at the 2015 IFOA with a reading by the Montreal Story Tellers group he helped found Hood’s writings present a view of modern Canadian life that elevates everyday lives Stories deal with characters and situations where ordinary life embodies religious, philosophical, and allegorical themes Based on the original 1962 Ryerson Press edition Author co-founded the legendary Montreal Story Tellers group and was awarded the Order of Canada in 1988

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Based on the true story of an Irish family with seven sons and one daughter immigrating to Biddulph Township near London, Ontario, in 1844, The Donnellys tells the tale of mystery and truths stranger than fiction. It is the story of a secret society and a massacre that shocked the Canadian public, a story overlooked by the artistic community until Reaney’s play elevated the events to the level of legend. First published in 1975, this script takes its place among other true Canadian classics on university and college course listings and in the hearts of drama lovers everywhere. The Donnellys is a trilogy comprised of Sticks & Stones, St. Nicholas Hotel and Handcuffs, three tense and mythic tragedies that garnered critical praise at the 1973 Tarragon Theatre opening and continue to acquire accolades from professors, actors and artistic directors across the country. As with the drama of Yeats, Eliot, O’Neill, Brecht and Beckett, this rendering of a generation of Irish settlers and their brutal murder at the hands of more than thirty vigilante killers is controversial and exciting to this day. Foreword, Afterword and Chronology by James Noonan.

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Half-Mohawk, half-English author Pauline Johnson astounded Canada with her unique poetry, prose, and presentations. Pauline Johnson was an unusual and unique presence on the literary scene during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Part Mohawk and part European, she was a compelling female voice in the midst of an almost entirely male writing community. Having discovered her talent for public recitation of poetry, Johnson relied on her ancestry and gender to establish an international reputation for her stage performances, during which she appeared in European and native costume. These poems were later collected under the title of Flint and Feather (1912) and form the source of the selections appearing in this volume. Later, suffering from ill health, Pauline Johnson retired from the stage and devoted herself to the writing of prose, collected in Legends of Vancouver , The Moccasin Maker (1913), and The Shagganappi (1913), gleanings from which form part of this collection.

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Arthur James Marshall Smith prize-winning poet, essayist, influential anthologist, and critic died in 1980. His last book, The Classic Shade: Selected Poems, on which Selected Writings is based, stands as his final intention in the world of literature.To this long out of print book the editor has added original material by Smith in which he defined and advanced modernism in Canadian writing. This edition also includes annotation, an extended introduction, and a bibliography.

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In the early 1850s, white American abolitionist Benjamin Drew was commissioned to travel to Canada West (now Ontario) to interview escaped slaves from the United States. At the time the population of Canada West was just short of a million and about 30,000 black people lived in the colony, most of whom were escaped slaves from south of the border. One of the people Drew interviewed was Harriet Tubman, who was then based in St. Catharines but made several trips to the U.S. South to lead slaves to freedom in Canada. In the course of his journeys in Canada, Drew visited Chatham, Toronto, Galt, Hamilton, London, Dresden, Windsor, and a number of other communities. Originally published in 1856, Drew’s book is the only collection of first-hand interviews of fugitive slaves in Canada ever done. It is an invaluable record of early black Canadian experience.

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Elizabeth Simcoe’s diary, describing Canada from 1791 to 1796, is history written as it was being made. Created largely while she was seated in canoes and bateaux, the diary documents great events in a familiar way and opens our eyes to a side of Canadian history that is too little shown. During her time in Upper Canada (now Ontario), Mrs. Simcoe encountered fascinating figures, such a explorer, Alexander Mackenzie, and Mohawk Chief, Joseph Brant. She took particular interest in the First Nations people, the social customs of the early settlers, and the flora and fauna of a land that contained a mere 10, 000 non-Natives in 1791. The realm she observed so vividly was quite alien to a woman used to a world of ball gowns, servants, and luxury in England, but the lieutenant-governor’s wife was made of stern stuff and embraced her new environment with relish, leaving us with an account instilled with excitement and delight at everything she witnessed.

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B.C. journalist Stephen Hume has said that fur trader and explorer Simon Fraser should be celebrated as the founder of British Columbia. Certainly, the achievements of the Scottish-descended United Empire Loyalist adventurer were impressive. During three extraordinary years, 1805-1808, Fraser undertook the third major expedition (after Alexander Mackenzie’s and Lewis and Clark’s) across North America, culminating in his famous journey down the river in British Columbia that now bears his name. Employed by the Montreal-based North West Company, Fraser was responsible for building many of British Columbia’s first trading posts. His exploratory efforts helped lead to Canada’s boundary later being declared at the 49th parallel. In this new volume, librarian and archivist W. Kaye Lamb provides a detailed introduction as well as illuminating annotations to Fraser’s journals, which were originally published by Macmillan of Canada in 1960.

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In a country in which poetry has been largely private and apologetic, Robin Skelton played the part of poet with grand style: flowing beard, mane of white hair, rings on every finger, huge amulet around his neck, all topped off with a black hat that looked as if it came from a Venetian gondolier but was really picked up at the re-enactment of a Cariboo Gold Rush-era general store in Barkerville, B.C. In this selection of his best verse there are poems of «high» and «low» art, spells and prayers, meditations, shemanic maps, and, in the centre of the book, «messages,» those strange, inspired «gifts» at the core of Skelton’s art. In making the selection for this volume, editor Harold Rhenisch, himself an accomplished poet, has held to the image that Skelton’s themes repeat like the ripples of water spreading out from a pebble dropped into a pool, and has attempted to bring together the best ripple from each dropped pebble.

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In The Firebrand, William Kilbourn brings to life the rebel Canadian hero William Lyon Mackenzie. A skilled historian and an entertaining writer, Kilbourn reveals Mackenzie’s complex character: able political editor, shrewd recorder of his times, efficient first mayor of Toronto, and gadfly of the House of Assembly. Kilbourn vividly recreates the ill-fated Mackenzie-led march on Toronto during the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, an uprising of brave but comical farmers unprepared to meet musket and cannon, and deftly portrays the rebellion’s aftermath and Mackenzies subsequent escape and exile. A reprint of William Mackenzie’s own account of the Upper Canada Rebellion is featured. This touching, frequently hilarious book was originally published by Clarke, Irwin in 1956 and remained in print through numerous reprintings and editions for several decades, garnering praise such as «The Firebrand is a major step on the path to nationhood» (Globe and Mail).

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