Search results for ""Douglas McIntyre""

In a series of playful and startling prose meditations, celebrated writer Lorna Crozier brings her rapt attention to the small matter of household objects: everything from doorknobs, washing machines, rakes, and zippers to the kitchen sink. Operating as a sort of literary detective, she examines the mystery of the everyday, seeking the essence of each object. She offers tantalizing glimpses of the household's inhabitants, too, probing hearts, brains, noses, and navels. Longing, exuberance, and grief color her reflections, which at times take on the tenor of folktales or parables. Each of the short portraits in The Book of Marvels stands alone, but the connections are intricate; as in life, each object gains meaning from its juxtaposition with others. Crozier approaches her investigations with a childlike curiosity, an adult bemusement, and an unfailing sense of metaphor and mischief. With both charm and mordant wit, she animates the panoply of wonders to be found everywhere around us and inside us.

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Michael Audain and Yoshiko Kurosawa are two of Canada's best-known art patrons: their donations are held not only by many private corporations but by many museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Canada, and Vancouver Art Gallery. The collection contains works by a range of North America's most acclaimed artists, including Diego Rivera, Emily Carr and Brian Jungen. This is the first public exhibition of the privately held works in this collection. FEATURED WORKS Mid-nineteenth-century masks by Haida, Nuxalk, Salish, Tlingit and Tsimshian Contemporary works by such First Nations artists as Robert Davidson, Reg Davidson, Beau Dick, Richard Hunt, Brian Jungen, Marianne Nicolson and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Paintings by Emily Carr, B.C. Binning and E.J. Hughes, and contemporary works by Roy Arden, Gathie Falk, Rodney Graham, Angela Grossman, Ken Lum, Takao Tanabe and Etienne Zack. Mexican modernist works by Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo and others.

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As a poet and citizen deeply concerned by the Oka Crisis, the Idle No More protests, and Canada’s ongoing failure to resolve First Nations issues, Montreal author Mark Abley has long been haunted by the figure of Duncan Campbell Scott, known both as the architect of Canada’s most destructive Aboriginal policies and as one of the nation’s major poets. Who was this enigmatic figure who could compose a sonnet to an “Onondaga Madonna” one moment and promote a “final solution” to the “Indian problem” the next? In this passionate, intelligent and highly readable inquiry into the state of Canada’s troubled Aboriginal relations, Abley alternates between analysis of current events and an imagined debate with the spirit of Duncan Campbell Scott, whose defense of the Indian Residential School and belief in assimilation illuminate the historical roots underlying today’s First Nations’ struggles.

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Wolves were once common throughout North America and Eurasia. But by the early twentieth century, bounties and organized hunts had drastically reduced their numbers. Today, the wolf is returning to its ancestral territories, and the “coywolf”—a smaller, bolder wolf-coyote hybrid—is becoming more common. In Return of the Wolf, author Paula Wild gathers first-hand accounts of encounters with wolves and consults with wildlife experts for suggestions on how minimize conflict, respond to aggressive wolves and coexist with the apex predator. Wild explores the latest theories on how wolves became dogs, the evolving strategies to prevent livestock predation, and why Eurasian wolves seem more aggressive toward humans than their North American cousins. She also addresses the many misconceptions about wolves: for example, that they howl when hungry, kill for pleasure and always live in packs. What is true is that a wolf possesses a howl as unique as a human fingerprint and can trot eight kilometres per hour for most of the day or night in search of prey while using earth’s magnetic field to find its way. Some scientists consider wolves’ complex social structures and family bonds closer to humans’ than those of primates. In a skillful blend of natural history, Indigenous stories and interviews with scientists and conservationists, Wild examines our evolving relationship with wolves and how society’s attitudes affect the populations, behaviour and conservation of wolves today. As a highly social, intelligent animal, the wolf is proving adept at navigating the challenges of an ever-changing landscape. But their fate remains uncertain. Wolves are adapting to humans; can humans adapt to wolves?

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The story of I Canadian Corps’s crossing of the Emilia-Romagna plain, in the thirteenth instalment of the bestselling Canadian Battle Series.The Canadians called it the Promised Land. In late September 1944, the Emilia-Romagna plain before I Canadian Corps stretched to the far horizon—a deceptively wide-open space where the tanks could run free. Throughout British Eighth Army, hopes ran high that once it entered the plain, the Germans could be driven from Italy. As soon as the advance began, however, the plain’s true nature was revealed: the land was criss-crossed by rivers, canals and drainage ditches over which all bridges had been demolished. With higher command urging haste, the Canadians entered a long and nightmarish series of battles to win crossings over each waterway, whose high banks provided the Germans with perfect defensive positions. Early fall rains caused rivers to spill their banks and transformed the countryside into the worst quagmire the soldiers had ever seen. More than five months of battle followed, with weeks of hard fighting required to advance from one river to the next. Each month, conditions only worsened, and the casualty rates rose appallingly. As their comrades fell one by one, most soldiers sought merely to survive. Doing that much required every measure of stamina, courage and fighting skill they possessed. The fifth and final Canadian Battle Series volume set in Italy, The River Battles tells the story of this campaign’s last and hardest months. In riveting detail and with his trademark “you-are-there” style, Mark Zuehlke shines a light on this forgotten chapter of Canada’s World War II experience.

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