
Written in his mother’s unique voice, John Leigh Walters pushes the boundaries of memoir in A Very Capable Life, the extraordinary journey of a seemingly ordinary woman. Zarah Petri was a child when her family left Hungary to establish a new life in Canada in the 1920s. With courage and innovation, Zarah and her family survived the Depression even if it meant breaking the law to do so. In cel…

History of Mme. la marquise de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. n6e Poisson, wife of M. le Normand d'Etioles. — Binet, a relative of hers, procures her for the king. — Uneasiness of Boyer and of the pious party. — Two parties were produced at the court, that of the favorites and that of the dauphin. — Their reciprocal views and interests. — Portrait of M. d'Etioles, husband of the fav…

A Woman of Valour is the biography of Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle, a French-Canadian woman who found love with a priest thirty-three years her senior. Against all social convention, they lived, produced three children, and built a life together after fleeing their village. However, after several years together, Bouchard’s husband ultimately chose to return to the priesthood, abandoning his …

Making Game is a mixed-genre composition in which the author reflects on the philosophical and ethical implications of hunting wild game. This engaging essay is informed by the author’s significant background of scholarly engagement with the phenomenological tradition in modern philosophy.

Xwelíqwiya is the life story of Rena Point Bolton, a Stó:lō matriarch, artist, and craftswoman. Proceeding by way of conversational vignettes, the beginning chapters recount Point Bolton’s early years on the banks of the Fraser River during the Depression. While at the time the Stó:lō, or Xwélmexw, as they call themselves today, kept secret their ways of life to avoid persecution by the…

In 1906, Nello Vernon-Wood (1882–1978) reinvented himself as Tex Wood, Banff hunting guide and writer of “yarns of the wilderness by a competent outdoorsman.” His homespun stories of a vanishing era, in such periodicals as The Sportsman, Hunting and Fishing, and the Canadian Alpine Journal, have much to tell us about the west as envisioned by those who wanted to leave the industrialized w…

From 1919 to 1970, Olaf Hanson was a trapper, fur trader, prospector, game guardian, fisherman, and road blasting expert in northeastern Saskatchewan. He told his life story to popular Saskatchewan author A. L. Karras, who wrote this historical memoir in the 1980s. In an uncompromising, straightforward style, Karras and Hanson reveal the geography, wildlife, and natural history of the region as…

An avid high school debater and enthusiastic student body president, Craig Smith seemed destined for a life in public service from an early age. As a sought-after speechwriter, Smith had a front-row seat at some of the most important events of the twentieth century, meeting with Robert Kennedy and Richard Nixon, advising Governor Ronald Reagan, writing for President Ford, serving as a campaign …

He returned to Gleichen late in life—to the home left to him by his mother—and it was there that he began to reconnect with Blackfoot language and culture and to write his story. Although the terrific adversity Bear Chief faced in his childhood made an indelible mark on his life, his unyielding spirit is evident throughout his story.

Maurice Yacowar challenges genre and form in Roy & Me, a cross between memoir and fiction, truth and distortion. It is the exploration of Yacowar’s relationship with Roy Farran—soldier, politician, author, mentor—and his conflict with Farran’s anti-Semitic past. Best known for his service with the British Special Air Service during World War II, Roy Farran served as a politician in the …