The compelling biography of former British Columbia cabinet minister Bob Williams weaves his political and economical insights with the story of his unconventional life.In Using Power Well, former provincial politician Bob Williams tells his atypical life story: beginning with his childhood in the working-class east end of Vancouver, Williams goes on to describe his early years as a planner in Delta, BC, his political life on Vancouver City Council and in ...

This groundbreaking book brings to life a forgotten chapter in the history of Canada and Russia – the journey of 4,200 Canadian soldiers from Victoria to Vladivostok in 1918 to help defeat Bolshevism. Combining military and labour history with the social history of BC, Quebec, and Russia, Benjamin Isitt examines how the Siberian Expedition exacerbated tensions within Canadian society at a time when a radicalized working class, many French-Canadians, and even the soldiers themselves objecte...

From strikes at Vancouver Island coal fields in the early twentieth century to recent confrontations involving assertions of Indigenous rights, British Columbia has a long history of clashes between protesters and established interests. Protest, Property Rights, and the Law in British Columbia investigates legal responses to those protests stretching back over more than a century.Benjamin Isitt draws on case studies that illuminate both continuity and change in the regulat...

In October 1890, Eugene T. Kingsley’s life changed irrevocably when he was injured in a fall between two rail cars while working as a brakeman on the Northern Pacific Railway. Following the amputation of both his legs, Kingsley became radicalized and joined the Socialist Labor Party in San Francisco. His activism eventually brought him to Vancouver, B.C. where he founded the Socialist Party of Canada. A self-described “uncompromising enemy of class rule and class robbery,” Kingsley wrote p...

Eugene T. Kingsley led an extraordinary life. Born in mid-nineteenth-century New York,y 1890 he was a railway brakeman in Montana. An accident left him a double amputee and politically radicalized, and his socialist activism that followed took him north of the border where he eventually was considered by the government to be “one of the most dangerous men in Canada”.Able to Lead traces Kingsley’s political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the ...

Disabling Barriers analyzes issues relating to disability at different moments in Canadian and American history. In this volume, legal scholars, historians, and disability-rights activists demonstrate that disabled people can change their social status by transforming the political and legal discourse surrounding disablement.Employing tools from the fields of law and history, this original contribution explores how disabled people have been portrayed and treated in a varie...

Militant Minority tells the compelling story of British Columbia workers who sustained a left tradition during the bleakest days of the Cold War. Through their continuing activism on issues from the politics of timber licenses to global questions of war and peace, these workers bridged the transition from an Old to a New Left.In the late 1950s, half of B.C.'s workers belonged to unions, but the promise of postwar collective bargaining spawned disillusionment tied to inflat...

Disability exists in the shadows of public awareness and at the periphery of policy making. People with disabilities are, in many respects, missing from the theories and practices of social rights, political participation, employment, and civic membership. Absent Citizens brings to light these chronic deficiencies in Canadian society and emphasizes the effects that these omissions have on the lives of citizens with disabilities.Drawing together elements from feminist studi...

Finally, after over 30 years of hagiographies, comes a book that sets the record straight and tells us the truth about Pierre Elliott Trudeau.In this unprecedented and meticulously researched sweep of the record, Globe and Mail bestselling author Bob Plamondon challenges the conventional wisdom that Trudeau was a great prime minister. With new revelations, fresh insights, and in-depth analysis, Plamondon reveals that the man did not measure up to the myth.While no one dispu...

WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY MAX HASTINGSWINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2001WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL TILTMAN PRIZE 2002WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2003'A ground-breaking book . . . The story of Europe's diplomatic meltdown has never been better told' Spectator'Enjoyable and illuminating . . . MacMillan is that wonderful combination - an academic and...

This magnificent second volume, written with exclusive access to Trudeau’s private papers and letters, completes what the Globe and Mail called “the most illuminating Trudeau portrait yet written” — sweeping us from sixties’ Trudeaumania to his final days when he debated his faith.His life is one of Canada’s most engrossing stories. John English reveals how for Trudeau style was as important as substance, and how the controversial public figure intertwined with the charism...

Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 is a serious contemplation of what it means to engage in major world conflicts, and the price we pay when we do.The First World War was Canada's baptism of fire, or at least the only one that people now remember. (Montrealers in 1776 or Torontonians in 1814 would have taken a different view.) From 1914 to 1918, after a century of peace, Canadians were plunged back into the old world of great power rivalries and grea...