The War of 1812 comes to life through the eyes of a young Canadian boy.It's 1812. War has begun, and thirteen-year-old Alexander (Sandy) MacKay is jealous when his older brother Angus goes off with their father to fight the Americans attacking the Niagara region. Too young to know the darker side of battle, he resents being left to shoulder the work on his family's farm.Itching to get in on the action, he sneaks away from home and heads to Lundy's Lane to join up with the ...

Twelve original holiday stories from the top children's writers in the country!What an incredible gift book for Dear Canada fans! The twelve stories in this treasury are set around Christmas time and feature the young girls from a dozen previous Dear Canada books. Readers will be thrilled to reconnect with their favourites and get a glimpse of each character's life a year or so after the events in the actual diary are over. Anyone new to the Dear Canada series will be intr...

With over 400,000 books already in print, the Dear Canada series has fast become the book series for children.Each fictional diary invites readers into the world of a girl living through a particular period in Canada's past. Gillian Chan's latest addition illustrates the effect the Chinese Head Tax has on one young girl and her family. Mei-ling and her father are struggling to pay the head tax that will allow her mother and brother, who are still living in China, to come to Canada....

A captivating and rarely told World War II story: that of the Canadian troops sent to defend Hong Kong from the invading Japanese.Nineteen-year-old Jack Finnigan is a born troublemaker. He has grown up defying authority and leaves his small town to enlist in the Royal Rifles, expecting adventure . . . and not afraid of danger. Little does he know what awaits across the Pacific, where his untested regiment is being sent to defend the vulnerable British colony of Hon...

This novel centers on the unlikely friendship between two boys, Jacob Mueller and Mike McCallum. Jacob seems to be from a different world. After mystifying experts and doctors, who finally decide that he is an elective mute, Jacob ends up in a juvenile group home, isolated and withdrawn, the butt of teasing by the other kids. Mike exists in his own private hell. Scarred physically and emotionally after the murder of his younger brother, his one aim is to survive the system until he is lega...

The War of 1812 comes to life through the eyes of a young Canadian boy.It's 1812. War has begun, and thirteen-year-old Alexander (Sandy) MacKay is jealous when his older brother Angus goes off with their father to fight the Americans attacking the Niagara region. Too young to know the darker side of battle, he resents being left to shoulder the work on his family's farm.Itching to get in on the action, he sneaks away from home and heads to Lundy's Lane to join up with the local militia. Bu...

The heart-wrenching story of one girl's experience at a Ukrainian internment camp in Quebec during World War IAnya's family emigrates from the Ukraine hoping for a fresh start and a new life in Canada. Soon after they cram into a tiny apartment in Montreal, WWI is declared. Because their district was annexed by Austria — now at war with the Commonwealth — many Ukrainians in Canada are declared "enemy aliens" and sent to internment camps. Anya and her famil...

A young girl survives the deadliest landslide in Canadian history — but a family secret could call into question everything she thought she knew about her life before the disaster.After her father dies, Abby and her family move west to live with relatives who run a hotel in the mining town of Frank, Alberta. Abby keeps busy helping out at the hotel, being chief caregiver to her little brother with Down Syndrome, and learning Morse Code at the telegraph office....

The harsh conditions of an internment camp become a reality for a young Japanese-Canadian girl.It is 1941 and Mary Kobayashi, a Canadian-born Japanese girl enjoys her life in Vancouver. She likes school, she likes her friends, and she yearns above all else to own a bicycle. Although WWII is raging elsewhere in the world, it hasn't really impacted her life in B.C.Then on December 7, 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. . . and everything changes....

In the midst of the Irish famine, Johanna flees one disaster — only to land in another.After a massive potato famine strikes Ireland, thirteen-year-old Johanna Leary flees to Canada with her family.But typhus and other illnesses plague the "coffin ships," so named for the staggering number of immigrants who died enroute. One by one Johanna loses the members of her family — first her baby brother on the journey over, then her mother in the Grosse Is...

A young girl watches as the Métis life she knows is threatened by conflict and the men in her family are called to action by Louis Riel, the charismatic leader of the North West Resistance.Tension grips Batoche, Saskatchewan in 1885. Many Métis moved here after the 1870 Riel Rebellion in Manitoba left them disallusioned. But life in Batoche is difficult. The buffalo on which the Métis depended for generations have been hunted almost to extinction, and the coming of white settlers poses a t...

A young girl living at three Hudson's Bay Company posts yearns for more adventure and freedom than the rules of mid-1800s HBC society allow.Motherless for years, and now orphaned when a hunting accident takes her father's life, Jenna Sinclair is in the care of her prim Aunt Grace, who always finds fault with Jenna's high spirits and tendency to break rules. Jenna finds kindred spirits in her Grandmother, one of the Home Guard Cree who lives near Fort Edmon...