Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin written by John Ralston Saul and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada has no better interpreter than brilliant writer and thinker John Ralston Saul. Here he argues that modern Canada did not begin in 1867; rather its foundation was laid years earlier by two visionary men, Louis-Hipplyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. Opposites in temperament and driven by intense experiences of love and tragedy, together they developed principles and programs that would help unite the country. After the 1841 union the two leaders of Lower and Upper Canada worked to create a reformist movement for responsible government run by elected citizens instead of a colonial governor. During the “Great Ministry” of 1848-51, despite violent opposition, they set about creating a more equitable nation. They revamped judicial institutions, established a public education system, made bilingualism official, and designed a network of public roads. Writing with verve and deep convictions, Saul restores these two extraordinary Canadians to rightful prominence.
Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert written by John Ralston Saul and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada has no better interpreter than prolific writer and thinker John Ralston Saul. Here he argues that Canada did not begin in 1867; indeed, its foundation was laid by two visionary men, Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. The two leaders of Lower and Upper Canada, respectively, worked together after the 1841 Union to lead a reformist movement for responsible government run by elected citizens instead of a colonial governor. But it was during the "Great Ministry" of 1848—51 that the two politicians implemented laws that created a more equitable country. They revamped judicial institutions, created a public education system, made bilingualism official, designed a network of public roads, began a public postal system, and reformed municipal governance. Faced with opposition, and even violence, the two men— polar opposites in temperament—united behind a set of principles and programs that formed modern Canada. Writing with verve and deep conviction, Saul restores these two extraordinary Canadians to rightful prominence.
Download or read book Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine et Robert Baldwin written by John Ralston Saul and published by . This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Big Bear written by Rudy Wiebe and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2008-12-02 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big Bear (1825–1888) was a Plains Cree chief in Saskatchewan at a time when aboriginals were confronted with the disappearance of the buffalo and waves of European settlers that seemed destined to destroy the Indian way of life. In 1876 he refused to sign Treaty No. 6, until 1882, when his people were starving. Big Bear advocated negotiation over violence, but when the federal government refused to negotiate with aboriginal leaders, some of his followers killed 9 people at Frog Lake in 1885. Big Bear himself was arrested and imprisoned. Rudy Wiebe, author of a Governor General’s Award–winning novel about Big Bear, revisits the life of the eloquent statesman, one of Canada’s most important aboriginal leaders.
Download or read book The Comeback written by John Ralston Saul and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once again, John Ralston Saul presents the story of Canada’s past so that we may better understand its present – and imagine a better future. Historic moments are always uncomfortable, Saul writes in this impassioned argument, calling on all of us to embrace and support the comeback of Aboriginal peoples. This, he says, is the great issue of our time – the most important missing piece in the building of Canada. The events that began late in 2012 with the Idle No More movement were not just a rough patch in Aboriginal relations with the rest of Canada. What is happening today between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals is not about guilt or sympathy or failure or romanticization of the past. It is about citizens’ rights. It is about rebuilding relationships that were central to the creation of Canada. These relationships are just as important to its continued existence. The centrality of Aboriginal issues and peoples has the potential to open up a more creative way of imagining ourselves and a more honest narrative for Canada. Wide in scope but piercing in detail, The Comeback presents a powerful portrait of modern Aboriginal life in Canada, in contrast with the perceived failings so often portrayed in politics and in media. Saul illustrates his arguments by compiling a remarkable selection of letters, speeches and writings by Aboriginal leaders and thinkers, showcasing the extraordinarily rich, moving and stable indigenous point of view across the centuries.
Download or read book A Fair Country written by John Ralston Saul and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this startlingly original vision of Canada, renowned thinker John Ralston Saul argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by Aboriginal ideas: Egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all Aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. An obstacle to our progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future.
Download or read book Ordinary Russians written by Barry Broadfoot and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barry Broadfoot’s Ordinary Russians artfully recounts the author’s 1987 month-long trip to the Soviet Union. Skillfully combining his own impressions with the storied experiences of Russians from all walks of life, including a trapper, a policewoman, a poet, and fishermen, Broadfoot presents a society in the midst of rapid change.
Download or read book When the Gods Changed written by Peter C. Newman and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter C. Newman, Canada's most "cussed and discussed" political journalist, on the death spiral of the Liberal Party. The May 2, 2011 federal election turned Canadian governance upside down and inside out. In his newest and possibly most controversial book, bestselling author Peter C. Newman argues that the Harper majority will alter Canada so much that we may have to change the country's name. But the most lasting impact of the Tory win will be the demise of the Liberal Party, which ruled Canada for seven of the last ten decades and literally made the country what it is. Newman chronicles, in bloody detail, the de-construction of the Grits' once unassailable fortress and anatomizes the ways in which the arrogance embedded in the Liberal genetic code slowly poisoned the party's progressive impulses. When the Gods Changed is the saga of a political self-immolation unequalled in Canadian history. It took Michael Ignatieff to light the match.
Download or read book The Unconscious Civilization written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Voltaire's Bastards comes a philosophical examination of how corporatism has become so deeply ingrained into our society, how it's destroying democracy, and how we can fight against it. In this intellectual tour de force John Ralston Saul argues that our society is only superficially based on the individual and democracy, and the West now toils unconsciously in the grip of a stifling “corporatist” structure that serves the needs of business managers and technocrats as it promotes the segmentation of society into competing interest groups and ethnic blocks.
Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Norman Bethune written by Adrienne Clarkson and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honoured as a hero in China, Ontario-born Norman Bethune was a surgeon, medical innovator, and charismatic political activist who deployed his skills on the battlefields of Spain and China in the 1930s. His prodigious energy included inventing surgical instruments, mobile blood-transfusion units, teaching, and advocating for social justice at home and abroad. Adrienne Clarkson, a Chinese Canadian, has always been fascinated by the dynamic man who married his social conscience to his medical mission. Reviled as a Communist by some, revered as a humanitarian by others, Bethune was a complicated, inspirational figure who lived and loved on a large canvas.
Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont written by Joseph Boyden and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louis Riel is regarded by some as a hero and visionary, by others as a madman and misguided religious zealot. The Métis leader who fought for the rights of his people against an encroaching tide of white settlers helped establish the province of Manitoba before escaping to the United States. Gabriel Dumont was a successful hunter and Métis chief, a man tested by warfare, a pragmatist who differed from the devout Riel. Giller Prize—winning novelist Joseph Boyden argues that Dumont, part of a delegation that had sought out Riel in exile, may not have foreseen the impact on the Métis cause of bringing Riel home. While making rational demands of Sir John A. Macdonald's government, Riel seemed increasingly overtaken by a messianic mission. His execution in 1885 by the Canadian government still reverberates today. Boyden provides fresh, controversial insight into these two seminal Canadian figures and how they shaped the country.
Download or read book Getting it Wrong written by Paul Romney and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative book explains how divergent views of Canada's past have sown dissension between Qu?b?cois and other Canadians, disclosing a lost middle ground between the Canadian nationalist and Qu?bec nationalist visions of Canadian history.
Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Lucy Maud Montgomery written by Jane Urquhart and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While her beloved fictional characters inhabited a world where love and community could overcome most tribulations, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s own life was marked by inescapable grief and loneliness. Raised virtually as an orphan by grandparents unable to give her much affection, Montgomery was nevertheless an optimistic and enthusiastic young woman, able to delight in her literary success and in the company of her wider family and friends. But after marrying a clergyman beset by a debilitating mental illness, she struggled to maintain appearances. Even as she sustained her prolific output of fiction and won adoring fans worldwide, depression slowly engulfed her. Jane Urquhart explores the fascinating contradictions embodied by this enduring artist in whose fiction the imagination lights a way through the darkness, but in whose life the creeping shadows would ultimately shut out everything but the work.
Download or read book John Ralston Saul Reimagines Canada 4 Book Bundle written by John Ralston Saul and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 1241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada has no greater interpreter and champion than John Ralston Saul, who for years has been challenging our common notions of Canada. These four books examine our history and myths, our relationships and modern reality, and together brilliantly portray a unique and remarkable country. Reflections of a Siamese Twin In Reflections of a Siamese Twin, Saul turns his eye to an examination of Canada itself. Caught up in crises—political, economic, and social—Canada continues to flounder, unable to solve or even really identify its problems. Instead, we assert absolute differences between ourselves: we are English or we are French; Natives or Europeans; early immigrants or newly arrived; from the east or from the west. Or we bow to ideologies and deny all differences in the name of nationalism, unity, or equality. In a startling exercise in reorientation, John Ralston Saul makes sense of Canadian myths—real, false, denied—and reconciles them with the reality of today’s politics, culture, and economics. A Fair Country In this startlingly original vision of Canada, John Ralston Saul argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by Aboriginal ideas: Egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all Aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. An obstacle to our progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn’t believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future. The Comeback Historic moments are always uncomfortable, Saul writes in this impassioned argument, calling on all of us to embrace and support the comeback of Aboriginal peoples. This, he says, is the great issue of our time—the most important missing piece in the building of Canada. The events that began late in 2012 with the Idle No More movement were not just a rough patch in Aboriginal relations with the rest of Canada. What is happening between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals is not about guilt or sympathy or failure or romanticization of the past. It is about citizens’ rights. It is about rebuilding relationships that were central to the creation of Canada. These relationships are just as important to its continued existence. Wide in scope but piercing in detail, The Comeback presents a powerful portrait of modern Aboriginal life in Canada illustrated by a remarkable selection of letters, speeches, and writings by Aboriginal leaders and thinkers, showcasing the extraordinarily rich, moving, and stable indigenous point of view across the centuries. Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin Here, Saul argues that modern Canada did not begin in 1867; rather its foundation was laid years earlier by two visionary men, Louis-Hipplyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. Opposites in temperament and driven by intense experiences of love and tragedy, together they developed principles and programs that would help unite the country. After the 1841 union, the two leaders of Lower and Upper Canada worked to create a reformist movement for responsible government run by elected citizens instead of a colonial governor. During the “Great Ministry” of 1848 to 1851—despite violent opposition—they set about creating a more equitable nation. They revamped judicial institutions, established a public education system, made bilingualism official, and designed a network of public roads. Writing with verve and deep convictions, Saul restores these two extraordinary Canadians to rightful prominence.
Download or read book Maurice Richard written by Charles Foran and published by Viking. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in 1921 into a working-class family, Maurice Richard came of age as a French Canadian and athlete during an era when the majority population of Quebec slumbered. A proud, reticent man, Richard aspired only to score goals and win championships for the Montreal Canadiens. But he represented far more than a high-scoring forward who filled seats in NHL arenas. Beginning with his 50-goal, 50-game season in 1944-45 and through his battles with the league over bigotry toward French-Canadian players, Richard's on-ice ferocity and off-ice dignity echoed the change in Quebec. The March 1955 "Richard Riot," in which fans went on a rampage to protest his suspension, contained the seeds of transformation. By the time Richard retired in 1960, Quebec had begun to reinvent itself as a modern, secular society. Author Charles Foran argues that the province's passionate identification with Richard's success and struggles emboldened its people and changed Canada irrevocably.
Download or read book Voltaire s Bastards written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new Introduction by the author, this “erudite and brilliantly readable book” (The Observer, London) expertly dissects the political, economic, and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise. With a new introduction by the author, this “erudite and brilliantly readable book” (The Observer, London) astutely dissects the political, economic and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise. The Western world is full of paradoxes. We talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet we’ve never been under more pressure to conform. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about invasive government, yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are deteriorating. All these problems, John Ralston Saul argues, are largely the result of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the past 400 years, our “rational elites” have turned the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts—“Voltaire’s bastards”—whose cult of scientific management is empty of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose ordinary citizens are increasingly excluded from the decision-making process. In this wide-ranging anatomy of modern society and its origins—whose “pages explode with insight, style and intellectual rigor” (Camille Paglia, The Washington Post)—Saul presents a shattering critique of the political, economic and cultural establishments of the West.
Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Emily Carr written by Lewis Desoto and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mad, bad, and dangerous to know is how Victorian society dismissed Emily Carr. Lewis DeSoto, a painter and novelist, sees Emily Carr as a woman in search of God, freedom, and the essence of art. Her quest to be an independent woman and a modern artist takes her from the studios of Paris to deep inside the remote Native villages of the West Coast forests. It is a lifetime journey of almost mythic proportions in which she struggles to define not only herself but also her country. A creator of extraordinary power, a seeker of mystical truth, a woman of unusual courage, Carr is revealed as one of those unique individuals who articulate the symbols and images by which Canada knows itself.
