This volume comprises a reprinting and gloss of the original text of the 1933 Communist play Eight Men Speak. The play was banned by the Toronto police after its first performance, banned by the Winnipeg police shortly thereafter and subsequently banned by the Canadian Post Office. The play can be considered as one stage–the published text–of a meta-text that culminated in 1934 at Maple Leaf Gardens when the (then illegal) Communist Party of Canada celebrated the release of its le...

Committing Theatre offers the first full-length historical study of political intervention theatre and theatrical spectatorship in English Canada. Building on twenty years of research and engagement in the field, this book’s historical narrative frames close-up examples of how theatre artists have intervened in and engaged with political struggle from the mid-19th century to the present. Lumber-camp mock trials, Mayday parades and street protests, the Workers Theatre Movement, agi...

Based on the true story of an Irish family with seven sons and one daughter immigrating to Biddulph Township near London, Ontario, in 1844, The Donnellys tells the tale of mystery and truths stranger than fiction. It is the story of a secret society and a massacre that shocked the Canadian public, a story overlooked by the artistic community until Reaney's play elevated the events to the level of legend. First published in 1975, this script takes its place among other true Canadian classic...

In Reliving the Trenches, three plays written by returned soldiers who served in the Great War with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium appear in print for the first time. With a critical introduction that references the authors' service files to establish the plays as memoirs, these plays are an important addition to Canadian literature of the Great War.Important but overlooked war memoirs that relive trench life and warfare as experien...

Voyageur Classics is a series of special versions of Canadian classics, with added material and new introductions. In this bundle we find five classic works of twentieth century fiction, drama and poetry, a period when Canada’s literary identity was shaped. Originally published in 1962, The Silence on the Shore is considered by many critics to be renowned Hugh Garner’s best, most ambitious novel. Originally published in 1967, Combat Journal for Place d’Armes was initially...

Since its inception in 1974, Canadian Theatre Review has been one of the most important publishers of new Canadian plays. With a script in each issue, CTR has introduced new writers and advocated new approaches to Canadian drama.This volume brings together fifteen of the most significant plays published in CTR between 1974 and 1991. Most have been out of print since their appearance in the journal. They include recognized classics that have transformed Ca...

The massacre of the Donnellys by their fellow church members has fascinated the public in the English-speaking world for well over a hundred years. Contained in this book are intriguing new photographs never before published and significant new information, which will pique the interest even of those who have been familiar for years with this bit of North American folk history with Irish roots.

The Donnelly Album By now everyone in Canada knows at least one version of the brutal slaying of members of the Donnelly family on the night of February 3, 1880. The Donnelly Album tells in compelling detail the story of the Donnellys—James and Johannah and their seven sons and one daughter. Arriving in Canada from Tipperary, Ireland, in the 1840s, the family settled in the boisterous Irish pioneer community in Biddulph Township near London, Ontario. For the next thirty years, their activi...

Ontario is rich in ghost towns, communities that were once thriving but which have been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. Nine villages -- including silver camps, fishing ports, crossroads hamlets, and farming settlements -- come alive on the pages of this book. The term 'ghost town' invariably conjures up images of fog-shrouded cemeteries, buildings with sinister visages, and of course, restless spirits of the dead. While often this is merely our imagination at play, in some...

Jason Stevens is an angry 15-year-old when his parents decide to move from Toronto to Lucan, Ontario, site of the notorious 1880 massacre of the Irish-Canadian Donnelly family. In the big city, Jason's spate of petty thievery earned him a sentence of community service under the tutelege of his grandfather, an eccentric retired school teacher, who is building a museum devoted to the history of Lucan.Now even unhappier than he was in Toronto, Jason falls in with a gang of youth calle...

Crimes of passion, brutal slayings, infanticide, and revenge: here are eight gruesome and often tragic stories of women accused of murder. Many are little known or long forgotten, such as Mary Osborn, the first woman to be hanged in Upper Canada, executed for poisoning her disappointing husband. Read about the crimes and subsequent trials of Mary and seven other women in this collection of dramatic tales drawn from Ontario's colourful history.

"From an early age, lying came easily to her. Everything she did was a performance, a role she played to create an illusion." - From the story of Evelyn Dick. Six chilling stories of notorious Ontario murders are recounted in this spine-tingling collection. From the pretty but dangerous Evelyn Dick to the mysterious murder of one of the Fathers of Confederation, Thomas D'Darcy McGee, these stories will keep you on the edge of your seat.