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On the ghastly battlefields of the First World War, Jimmie Johnston drove teams or pack horses carrying ammunition and hauling guns to the front lines. One night, Johnston was hauling guns back from the front line. Suddenly, in the darkness and pouring rain, he, his team, the wagon, and the guns pitched into an old trench. After disentangling the horses from their harness, Johnston found a trenching tool, dug away the side of the trench, and led the horses out of what had become a sea of mud.

One Friday, Walter Dohaney, novelist M.T. (Jean) Dohaney's husband, went out as usual to play hockey with his friends. She never saw him alive again. Without warning, Jean was plunged into the most painful and disorienting experience of her life. Faced with a tumult of emotions and sudden responsibilities, she turned to her writing for solace and began a journal. In her journal, Dohaney's sharp sense of humour and her impatience with conventional pieties lay bare the depth of her bereavement, yet at the same time they express the life force within her.

When Victor Hugo died in 1885, the world was shocked to discover that he had a lone survivor: his daughter Adèle, incarcerated in an asylum for insane gentlewomen. Adèle Hugo was an accomplished, intelligent, and ambitious young woman whose potential shrank with every year she spent under her tyrannical father’s roof. At thirty-three, she fell desperately in love with an English soldier who quickly lost interest in everything about her except her money. Her obsession with him proved her undoing.

Born in 1889, Gertrude Harding spent a boistrous childhood on a Welsford, New Brunswick, farm. She travelled to Hawaii to live with her sister, and, when her sister moved to London in 1912, Harding went with her. One day, from the top of a London bus, she saw a parade of women carrying large white posters. Attended by a policeman, they walked in single file on the street close to the curb as passersby stared and shouted rude remarks. It was a poster-parade of Militant Suffragettes demanding votes for women; after more than two decades of mild action, the Suffragettes were on the warpath.

At his death in 1985, Alden Nowlan stood in the first rank of Canadian writers. Today, his poetry is beloved by Maritimers and popular across Canada and in the US as well. If I Could Turn and Meet Myself tells his life story, from his birth to a 14-year-old mother in 1933 through his impoverished childhood, his disturbed adolescence, his newspaper career, his struggle with cancer, and his tenure as writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick. Nowlan founded his success and peace of mind on his belief that he was a composite of many selves.

Goose Lane Editions has released a biography that reveals the private world of one of Canada’s most fascinating politicians. Almost four years after stepping down as Premier of New Brunswick, Frank McKenna is as much on the minds of political watchers across Canada as ever. The question today, however, is will he or won’t he get back into the political ring. While the guessing game continues, Philip Lee’s new book Frank: The Life and Politics of Frank McKenna provides fresh insights into the man and his politics.

Generations of practical and ingenious Maritimers have given the word great things. Since the mid-nineteenth century, scientists have fanned out into the world from colleges and universities that are among the oldest in North America. Great Maritime Achievers in Science and Technology brings together the achievements of more than 30 of these trail-blazing scientists and inventors, many of whom gained national and international prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.

43 Americans have held the job of President of the United States. Each has a story, be it one of vision, accomplishment, conflict, scandal, triumph or tragedy. And each story is at the center of the national story, a part of what we all experience. History buffs find endless fascination—and a greater understanding of America today—in the colorful personalities and momentous events that surround the Oval Office. If you want the complete take on U. S. presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush, you’ll appreciate U.S. Presidents For Dummies.

Genius demystified, the Dummies way! In 1905, Albert Einstein revolutionized modern physics with his theory of relativity. He went on to become a twentieth-century icon-a man whose name and face are synonymous with "genius." Now, at last, ordinary readers can explore Einstein's life and work in this new For Dummies guide. Physicist Carlos Calle chronicles Einstein's career and explains his work-including the theories of special and general relativity-in language that anyone can understand.

Not only professional soldiers but also citizens serving as militiamen participated in the War of 1812. The militia’s contribution to the War of 1812 is not well understood. Even now, 200 years later, we don’t know how many Upper Canadian militia men died defending their home.York’s Sacrifice profiles 39 men who lost their lives during the war. They include 19 residents of the Town of York, five residents of York County, and 11 residents of Halton, Peel, and Wentworth Counties.