NNELS Upgrade

An exploration of the unique and unusual places in Ontario that are steeped in history and folklore. Using updated and archival material from Discover Ontario, a popular radio show that ran from 1987 until 2004, author Terry Boyle invites you to explore the hidden, unusual, and unknown sites and stories from around Ontario. Revisit an era of mobsters and rum-runners during the years of prohibition. Traverse the deadly waves of the Hudson Bay and visit the watery graves of shipwrecks scattered among the province’s waterways and coastlines.

This special bundle contains both of James Ross’ essential companion volumes to the great Canadian tradition of life at the cottage. Who doesn’t remember sitting in a frigid lake, trying to help a youngster get up on water skis for the first time, launching a boat while the whole world seems to be watching, or getting caught up in a nest of wasps? These collections of stories, elegantly organized into four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, and winter), will make readers laugh, cry, and long to be at the cottage a "must have" for every cottage bookshelf.

More tales of family fun and run-ins with nature at the cottage. In the sequel to Cottage Daze, James Ross is back with more tales from the family cottage. Organized by nature’s changing seasons and containing sections covering nature, family, activity, and the cottage, Ross combines wry humour with a genuine love for adventure and respect for the natural world — although the local wild animal population can try his patience.

Poison Ivy Acres, 250 acres of wilderness in Renfrew County, Ontario, long dedicated to the preservation of natural habitat, has been home to nature writer Carol Bennett McCuaig for many years. Her keen powers of observation, coupled with her insights into wildlife behaviour and her evocative writing style, have produced this captivating collection of stories.

What starts as a simple fishing trip becomes a cathartic experience in the untamed wilderness of Ontario’s northwestern canoe country. A nine-day fishing trip turns into a profound life-altering event and marks the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the untamed wilderness of Canoe Country in northwestern Ontario.

The comfort food of cottage life books — satisfying, unforgettable, and inevitably nostalgic. Cottage Daze celebrates life at the cottage where the cottage is the main character, and family, friends, pets, and fellow cottagers are the supporting cast.

Gavin Hamilton Green was well-known to Goderich visitors as the "racy, entertaining and genial proprietor" of Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. His writings describe the colourful, sometimes wily ways of pioneer history in Colborne Township and Huron County. Green supplies a large repertoire of witty anecdotes, which together with several illustrations of old-timers and old places, give his book the true atmosphere of the times to which they relate. The reader is carried from chuckles to tears as events unfold in his witty saga in which he alternates from participant to observer.

"Beneath the deadly dull history of Ontario lies a myriad of fascinating, but little-known stories. Did you know: Sir John A. Macdonald was born in an Ontario town, not in Scotland? Karl Marx was once a visitor to Toronto? The famous poet W.B. Yeats graced the town of Captainstone, Ontario, with a visit in 1933? There was an active volcano in Ontario in 1886? "The book is accompanied by an important caveat: All of these stories are fictitious. "’The book is rather hard to characterize,’ said MacGillivary, a professor at the University of Waterloo.

Helpers and heroes shine brightest in darkness. Disaster Heroes recounts the stories of ordinary men, women, and children who have done extraordinary things to help respond, rebuild, and recover from catastrophes around the world. Did you know it was an American from Pennsylvania who ultimately saved the lives of 33 Chilean miners in 2010? Or that the state of Louisiana donated a fire truck, the Spirit of Louisiana, to FDNY following 9/11, all because of a spur-of-the-moment outburst from one Louisiana man?