Biographies and autobiographies
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Abstract
By every principle of war, every shred of military logic, logistics support to Canada’s Task Force Orion in Afghanistan should have collapsed in July 2006. There are few countries that offer a greater challenge to logistics than Afghanistan, and yet Canadian soldiers lived through an enormous test on this deadly international stage - a monumental accomplishment. Canadian combat operations were widespread across southern Afghanistan in 2006, and logistics soldiers worked in quiet desperation to keep the battle group moving.
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Abstract
One of Canada’s best-known and most-honoured biographers turns to the raw material of his own life in Writing History. A university professor, prolific scholar, public intellectual, and frank critic of the world he has known, Michael Bliss draws on extensive personal diaries to describe a life that has taken him from small-town Ontario in the 1950s to international recognition for his books in Canadian and medical history.
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Abstract
In an age when "survival" shows permeate the media, noted northern traveller Hap Wilson shares accounts of his lifelong involvement with wilderness living within the Canadian Shield. Wilson knows better than most how to live in the woods. As park ranger, canoe guide, outfitter, trail builder, and environmental activist, he learned from firsthand experience that nature can neither be beaten or tamed. Trails and Tribulations takes the reader on a journey with the author through natural settings ranging from austere to mysterious and breathtaking.
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Abstract
Imagine you’re one of India’s most decorated athletes, a country of more than a billion people. You were largely responsible for your homeland’s first Olympic gold medal as an independent nation after a violent, murderous Partition, yet you walk the streets anonymously, and your contributions have been all but forgotten. What if your statistics, awards, and accolades spoke for themselves, but no one was speaking for you? In November of 2014, Canadian journalist Patrick Blennerhassett set out for India.
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Abstract
On October 8, 2013, Nova Scotia’s NDP government went down to a devastating election defeat. Premier Darrell Dexter lost his own seat, and the party held the dubious distinction of being the first one-term majority government in over 100 years. In this new memoir, former NDP finance minister and MLA Graham Steele tries to make sense of the election result and shares what he’s learned from a fifteen-year career in provincial politics. In his trademark candid style, Steele pulls no punches in assessing what’s right—and what’s often wrong—with our current political system.
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Abstract
Originally published in 1973 and now a Nimbus Classic, Woman of Labrador is Elizabeth Goudie’s enduring and candid story of her pioneering life as a trapper’s wife in the early 1900s. She was left alone much of the year to rear eight children while her husband worked the traplines, providing furs for their meager income. Independent and resourceful, Elizabeth fulfilled multiple roles as homemaker , doctor, cook, hunter, shoemaker, and seamstress for her growing family, who provided companionship during long winters of isolation and her husband’s absence.
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Abstract
From a small-town law office in Nova Scotia to the pressure-cooker boardrooms of London, England, where he was Margaret Thatcher's "privatization ace," lawyer and businessman Sir Graham Day has earned an international reputation as a tough-minded but charming negotiator.After a rocky educational start in Halifax, Day found his motivation at Dalhousie Law School and established the contacts and experiences that would guide him through the world of global business.
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Abstract
His was a life worth living, a story worth telling. So Jim Spatz describes the story of his father, Simon Spatz, in the introduction to this fascinating biography of the high-profile Jewish Nova Scotian businessman (1913–2007). In Simon Spatz, former journalism professor Michael Cobdon tells the remarkable story of a man who not only survived but thrived against all odds.
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Abstract
Pat Connolly spent more than sixty years talking of, writing about, and analyzing sports in radio, television, and print media in Nova Scotia and central Canada. His clear, sharp voice was known to thousands as the consummate sportscaster and play-by-play man. Pat’s eclectic life encompassed journalism, politics, community work, and an abiding dedication to family. Told with characteristic wit and honesty, Play by Play is Pat’s memoir of a life well-lived. Includes 30 photographs.
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Abstract
A miserly miller with a stash of gold, an island with an ever-changing list alias, some sly smugglers who nevertheless remember to send a thank you note, a stern schoolmaster who couldn’t tell time, and a thief with two left feet are just some of the shady individuals who grace the pages of Scamps and Scoundrels. Riotous, and witty, Bob Kroll writes these tales of infamy in a delightfully folksy style, bringing to life snippets of the Maritimes’ somewhat less glorious history.