Biographies and autobiographies
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Abstract
As Bob and Mildred Lee, they amazed audiences with their death-defying motorcycle act. In reality they were Bob and Mildred Restall, parents of three, who balanced their glamorous show-business career with a happy, stable home life. In October 1959, the Restalls embarked on the ultimate family adventure, as Bob led his family to the east coast of Canada to dig for the famous treasure of Oak Island. For nearly six years they lived without telephone, hydro, or running water while newspapers and magazines chronicled their attempts to solve the mystery of the Money Pit.
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Abstract
Barney Danson began as a twenty-one-year-old sergeant in the Canadian army and rose to the lofty heights of parliamentary secretary to Pierre Trudeau and, eventually, Minister of National Defence. In these positions, he gained insights into previously unknown facts about this remarkable prime minister, and he gives an insider's view of Canadian politicians and world leaders.
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Abstract
This is the story of a young man’s journey through World War II. It covers a wide cross section of the strengths and weaknesses of young men not attuned to killing, and not mentally prepared to face the horror of seeing their close friends die violent deaths in battle.
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Abstract
Born in London, England, of Cornish stock, David Watmough arrived on Canada’s West Coast in 1961 and quickly became a fixture on the Canadian cultural scene. Now in his eighth decade, Watmough, often spoken of as this country’s senior gay male fiction writer, has decided to commit his memories to paper. Given the autobiographical nature of his fiction, the prolific raconteur has opted for a novel approach to his own life by telling his story through his encounters with the numerous people he has met, befriended, loved, and jousted with over the years.
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Abstract
In 1933, a young Canadian woman rejected the expectations of society and her upper-class family and became a crew member aboard one of the last great four-masted sailing vessels that still plied the ocean.It was not an easy task. Young Annette had to fight pressures from her family, rejection from schools of navigation, and doubts from ship owners.
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Abstract
At the age of 37, Bill Harshaw was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. The news changed his life forever,bringing forth a saga that will give hope to not only Parkinsonians, but to people with chronic disease everywhere. My Second Life is not a detailed road map or a set of instructions.
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Abstract
Music Makers examines and celebrates the extraordinary lives of composer Harry Freedman and his partner, soloist Mary Morrison.Harry, with roots in jazz and popular music, was a member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 25 years. Canada’s Composer of the Year in 1979, he has written an enormous repertoire that celebrates Canada and is sung and played around the world.After a stellar career in Canada as a popular singer and opera diva, Mary became an esteemed exponent of Canadian vocal works.
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Creator
Simcoe, Elizabeth Posthuma
Abstract
Elizabeth Simcoe's diary, describing Canada from 1791 to 1796, is history written as it was being made. Created largely while she was seated in canoes and bateaux, the diary documents great events in a familiar way and opens our eyes to a side of Canadian history that is too little shown. During her time in Upper Canada (now Ontario), Mrs. Simcoe encountered fascinating figures, such a explorer, Alexander Mackenzie, and Mohawk Chief, Joseph Brant.
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Abstract
Short-listed for the 2003 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction A world exists on the nighttime streets that the average person cannot envision. Taxi driver Peter McSherry recounts tales of his thirty years of experience driving cabs at night on the hard-bitten streets of Canada’s largest city. Drunks, punks, con artists, hookers, pimps, drug addicts, drug pushers, thugs, nymphomaniacs, snakes, politicians, celebrities . . . he’s experienced them all. McSherry serves up his stories with forthrightness, humour, and the occasional dash of cynicism.
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Abstract
Margaret Laurence: The Making of a Writer is an engaging narrative that contains new and important findings about Laurence's life and career. This biography reveals the challenges, successes, and failures of the long apprenticeship that preceded the publication of the The Stone Angel, Laurence's first commercially successful novel. Donez Xiques demonstrates the importance of Margaret Laurence's early work as a journalist in her development as a writer and covers her return to Canada from Africa in the late 1950s.