In Pursuit of Tomorrow is the stunning new biography of an innovator, engineer, explorer, and relentless dreamer.Sandford Fleming directed the building of the intercontinental then the transcontinental railway; reset the world's clocks with the adoption of global time zones; championed an undersea cable linking the British empire and a bias-free cable news network; founded an institute to stir imaginations and forge progress; laid out roads, towns, and waterfronts;...

The Hill Times: Best Books of 2017As Sir John A. Macdonald intended, the federal government must be recognized as the nation’s voice.Power. It is the capacity to inspire while encouraging and enabling change, and it matters. When handled in a positive way, power is the key to the state’s ability to strengthen the nation and improve lives. But state power, John Boyko argues forcefully, works best when concentrated on a federal level, as Sir John A. ...

To understand Canada one must understand racism, for Canada was born and grew as a racist state. Race riots, segregated schools, racially-based union membership, mass deportations of innocent people, the state sanctioned kidnapping of children, a conscious attempt at cultural genocide and much more have shaped Canada's history. Last Steps to Freedom: The Evolution of Canadian Racism encourages Canadians to look truthfully at their past, admit mistakes, atone for crimes and applaud...

Born in the prairies, from the ravages of the Depression, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation was a new political party that offered a socialist vision and idealistic belief that Canada could rebuild itself to become better and more fair than ever before. The CCF grew to the point that, by 1943, a national poll found that it was Canada's most popular party. But it's success bred fear among those on the political right, including Big Business, the progressive Conservative Party, and rel...

Forty-five years after the fall of Saigon, John Boyko brings to light the little-known story of Canada's involvement in the American War in Vietnam.Through the lens of six remarkable people, some well-known, others obscure, bestselling historian John Boyko recounts Canada's often-overlooked involvement in that conflict as peacemaker, combatant, and provider of weapons and sanctuary.When Brigadier General Sherwood Lett arrived in Vietnam ove...

Forty-five years after the fall of Saigon, John Boyko brings to light the little-known story of Canada's involvement in the American War in Vietnam.Through the lens of six remarkable people, some well-known, others obscure, bestselling historian John Boyko recounts Canada's often-overlooked involvement in that conflict as peacemaker, combatant, and provider of weapons and sanctuary.When Brigadier General Sherwood Lett arrived in Vietnam ove...

A sly, insightful and wonderfully original book from one of Canada's most popular political analysts, Chantal Hébert, and one of Quebec's top political broadcasters, Jean Lapierre.Only the most fearless of political journalists would dare to open the old wounds of the 1995 Quebec referendum, a still-murky episode in Canadian history that continues to defy our understanding. The referendum brought one of the world's most successful democracies to the brink of the unk...

For almost its entire history, Canada has been run by the political, media and business elites of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. But in the past few years, these groups have lost their power—and most of them still do not realize it’s gone. The Laurentian Consensus, the term John Ibbitson has coined for the dusty liberal elite, has been replaced by a new, powerful coalition based in the West and supported by immigrant voters in Ontario. How did this happen?Most people are unaware tha...

Most of us know bits and pieces of our history but would like to be more sure of how it all fits together. The trick is to find a history that is so absorbing you will want to read it from beginning to end. With this book, Desmond Morton, one of Canada’s most noted and highly respected historians, shows how the choices we can make at the dawn of the 21st century have been shaped by history.Morton is keenly aware of the links connecting our present, our past, and our future, and in ...

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...

My Years as Prime Minister is Jean Chrétien’s own story, told with insight and humour, of his ten years at 24 Sussex Drive as Canada’s twentieth prime minister.By the time he left office, Jean Chrétien had been in politics for forty years – and his experience is evident on every page of his important, engaging memoir. Chrétien loves to tell a good tale – and he does so here in the same honest, plain-spoken style of Straight from the Heart, his earl...

The oil sands. Global warming. The National Energy Program. Though these seem like modern Canadian subjects, author Mary Janigan reveals them to be a legacy of longstanding regional rivalry. Something of a "Third Solitude" since entering Confederation, the West has long been overshadowed by Canada's other great national debate: but as the conflict over natural resources and their effect on climate change heats up, 150 years of antipathy are coming to a head. Janigan takes readers back to a...