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"I’ve got to stop being so nice." How often has Dr. Evelyn Sommers heard that from her clients over the years? The Tyranny of Niceness identifies and confronts our most fundamental social dysfunction - niceness. For over 15 years, Sommers, a Toronto psychologist, has treated many twisted lives created by being nice. She interweaves the case histories of her clients with her own observations to present a frightening, yet hopeful, picture of a society that promotes silence and obedience over individuality and honesty.

Immigrants and immigration have always been central to Canadians’ perception of themselves as a country and as a society. In this crisply written history, Valerie Knowles describes the different kinds of immigrants who have settled in Canada, and the immigration policies that have helped to define the character of Canadian immigrants over the centuries. Key policymakers and moulders of public opinion figure prominently in this colourful story, as does the role played by racism.

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.

In 1878, Glasgow shoemaker William Quarrier founded an organization that offered help to the thousands of desperate, poverty-stricken children in Glasgow’s infamous slums. A few years later Quarrier’s Village was opened, providing a refuge for the abandoned and the orphaned in the rolling fields of Renfrewshire. Since these beginnings, Quarriers has cared for more than 40,000 children in need.

When The Ph.D. Trap was first published in 1987, it hit academe like a bombshell. Wilfred Cude dared to pull back the veil of graduate school life to expose the harsh realities of modern advanced study. Using statistics, academic history, and diverse intellectual traditions, Cude revealed the Ph.D. program in most disciplines to be savage, mechanical, and cruel - an exploitative construct that often frustrates legitimate intellectual inquiry, shatters viable career expectations, and mangles personal and professional relations.

The late twentieth century witnessed massive human rights violations. What can to done to stop them? How can the root causes be addressed? The issue of human rights has become the secular religion of our time. Yet violations continue to occur in a gross and flagrant manner. Author David Matas examines examples of human rights violations and suggests what individuals, private organizations, governments, and the UN can do about this worldwide problem.

This book unmasks one of the greatest human interest stories in Canadian history: the emigration of tens of thousands of children from Britain, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, to become home children in Canada. Through first-hand accounts and archived materials, Corbett sensitively and accurately records the pilgrimage of the children who, against great odds, proved that Canada was the promised land.

Macdonald Institute traces the evolution of a small post-secondary institution specializing in the education of rural Ontario women into a world-respected, co-educational college at the University of Guelph. Built in 1903 with funds from Sir William Macdonald of Montreal, Macdonald Institute focused originally on the teaching of Domestic Science to rural women. "Mac" has evolved to meet the changing needs of women, the Canadian family and society in general.

The Little Immigrants is a tale of compassion and courage and a vivid account of a deep and moving part of Canadian heritage. In the early years after Confederation, the rising nation needed workers that could take advantage of the abundant resources. Until the time of the Depression, 100,000 impoverished children from the British Isles were sent overseas by well-meaning philanthropists to solve the colony’s farm-labour shortage. They were known as the "home children," and they were lonely and frightened youngsters to whom a new life in Canada meant only hardship and abuse.

Begun in 1891, the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto is the largest child welfare agency in North America. It has played a leading roll as an advocate of children’s welfare; it has been instrumental in influencing child welfare practice not only in Ontario but all of Canada and elsewhere. With an emphasis on the post-World War II period, A Legacy of Caring examines the political, social, and economic factors that led to changes within the society itself as well as developments in legislation and social policy.