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For many, being a Toronto Maple Leafs fan has become a curse from cradle to grave. False hope, hollow promises, and a mind-numbing lack of success - these words describe the Toronto Maple Leafs and the hockey club’s inexplicable mediocrity over much of the past decade. Author Peter Robinson has attended some 100 games over the past six seasons and has little to show for it except an unquenched thirst that keeps him coming back. Why does a team that hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, long before many of its followers were even born, have such a hold on its fans?

A collection of the best journalism from Canada’s wars, from the time of the Vikings to the war in Afghanistan. Fighting Words is a collection of the very best war journalism created by or about Canadians at war.

2013 Hamilton Arts Council Literary Award — Winner, Non-Fiction The miracle of a new baby turned into a nightmare … There is something about the loss of a child that everyone takes to heart. A lot of suffering happens in this world, but when it involves a child, it touches everyone all the more and it is tolerated all the less. Empty Cradle is the writer’s personal recollection of the time leading up to and surrounding the abduction of her newborn infant, just days before Christmas.

A vocal coach who has been in the vanguard of classical music in Canada for more than six decades. Stuart Hamilton is a well-known Canadian musician who has been in the forefront of music in Canada for more than 60 years. Here, in this memoir, he recounts his sometimes hectic assault on the Canadian music world. Along the way, Hamilton encountered, as a vocal coach and accompanist, most of the great Canadian singers of the last half of the 20th century, and some international ones as well. For 27 years Hamilton was an erudite and funny personality on CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera.

When Alice M. Kilgour donated her family farm to the City of Toronto in 1928, intending it for use as a public park, no one could have imagined what lay ahead. Ownership of the land was transferred to the Canadian government in 1943. By 1948, Sunnybrook Hospital opened its doors and became the largest veterans’ hospital in Canada. More than 60 years later, Sunnybrook stands as an important symbol of Canada’s gratitude toward its war veterans.

Once people encounter the natural world and become aware of its intricacy, fragility, beauty, and significance, they will recognize the need for conservation. The fascinating development of natural history studies in North America is portrayed through the life stories of 22 naturalists.

The essence of a vibrant, growing, and changing Calgary is captured over the life of its development. Calgary is a typical boom-and-bust town that was first based on ranching and farming, then oil and gas, and now energy. And energy is what its citizens have, whether for skiing, work, or construction. It is a city that leaps ahead eagerly to new futures and rarely looks back., but Calgary can also be an unsentimental city, discarding its ideas, plans, and buildings with ease.

A compelling look at tobacco’s uses and abuses from its Native origins to today’s controversies. When Europeans discovered tobacco among Amerindians in the New World, it became a long-sought panacea of panaceas, the critical ingredient in enemas, ointments, syrups, and powders employed to treat everything from syphilis to cancer.

A charming tale of history, creativity, natural inspiration, and a love of gardening. In 1913, Howard Dunington-Grubb and his wife, Lorrie, bought a small plot of land near Sheridan, Ontario, for the cultivation of ornamental plants. Local farmers thought they were crazy. But Howard and Lorrie, landscape architects recently arrived from England, were visionaries who dreamed of creating magnificent gardens in the colonial wasteland. Realizing that Canada had no nurseries that produced the plants they needed, they started one of their own.

The colourful story of Don Harron’s 77-year career in the entertainment business. After 15 books about somebody else (mostly alter ego Charlie Farquharson) plus one book by his drag-queen character, Charlie’s rich city cousin Valerie Rosedale, Don Harron now presents the story of his 77-year stint in the entertainment business.