Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Rene Levesque written by Daniel Poliquin and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Straightforward and unprepossessing, René Lévesque was the most unlikely leader. Yet his charisma affected even those who disliked his political aims. Born into a Quebec dominated by the Catholic Church, rural values, and anglophone control of business, he was part of the 1960s Quiet Revolution that saw the province become a secular society bent on economic success—and political independence. A journalist, war reporter, and television host, Lévesque channelled his communication skills into a political career that encompassed the most tumultuous periods in Canadian history. And in 1980, as founder of the Parti Québécois, he held a referendum that permanently altered the country’s political landscape. Acclaimed novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin offers a unique portrait of Lévesque the man and politician, at once affectionate, critical, and incisive.

Download or read book Marshall McLuhan written by Douglas Coupland and published by Atlas and Company. This book was released on 2010-11-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the life and career of the social theorist best known for the quotation, "The medium is the message, " who helped shape the culture of the 1960s and predicted the future of television and the rise of the Internet.

Download or read book Ren L vesque written by Daniel Poliquin and published by Viking. This book was released on 2009 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was the most unlikely leader: straightforward, uninterested in personal wealth, unprepossessing. Yet his charisma affected even those who disliked his political aim to achieve independence for Quebec. Rene Levesque was born into a Quebec dominated by the Catholic Church, rural values, and Anglophone control of business. He was part of the 1960s Quiet Revolution that saw the province become a secular society bent on economic success and, for some, political independence. A journalist, war reporter, and television host, Levesque channelled his communication skills into a political career that encompassed the most tumultuous periods in Canadian history. As founder of the Parti Quebecois, he held a close referendum in 1980 that proved wrenching for Canadian unity and permanently altered the country's political landscape. Acclaimed novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin offers a unique portrait of Levesque the man and politician, at once affectionate, critical, and incisive."

Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Wilfrid Laurier written by Andre Pratte and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilfrid Laurier is acknowledged as a great prime minister, a superb orator, and a survivor. But he has become more myth than man. André Pratte, chief editorial writer of Quebec’s La Presse, uncovers Laurier’s complexity amid the charged political circumstances of the early 20th century. Laurier tried to unite a newborn country that found itself grappling with the thorny questions of minority rights, regional tensions, and its role in the world. Pratte skilfully reveals a Laurier who did not have to create a special political strategy in order to deal with the realities of Canada. Growing up in French- and English-Canadian cultures, he himself was a mirror of that complexity. Pratte’s Laurier affirms our long and stable history, while recognizing that events are never predictable, and that dialogue, tolerance, and compromise are always necessary.

Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Lester B Pearson written by Andrew Cohen and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2008-12-02 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his 2 terms as prime minister, from 1963–1968, Lester B. Pearson oversaw the revamping of Canada through the introduction of Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, the Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the Auto Pact, and the new Maple Leaf flag. Pearson came to power after an impressive career as a diplomat, where he played a vital role in the creation of NATO and the United Nations, later serving as president of its General Assembly. He put Canada on the world stage when he won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his handling of the Suez Crisis, during which he brokered the formation of a UN peacekeeping force. Author Andrew Cohen, whose books have focused on Canada’s place in the world, is the perfect author to assess Pearson’s legacy.

Download or read book Ren L vesque and the Parti Qu b cois in Power written by Graham Fraser and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2001 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of one of the most charismatic politicians that Quebec - and Canada - has ever known. Graham Fraser paints a vivid portrait of one of the most dynamic political figures of the 20th century, Rene Levesque, describes the origins of the Parti Quebecois and gives a graphic account of key events that still resonate in Canadian political life: Quebec's language law, the 1980 referendum and the patriation of the constitution. This second edition contains a new preface in which Fraser completes the story of the last months of the Parti Quebecois government and the period leading up to Levesque's death in 1987, detailing how Levesque's leadership continues to mark his successors.

Download or read book 1967 the Last Good Year written by Pierre Berton and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Canadians over the age of forty can forget the feeling of joy and celebration that washed over the country during Canada's centennial year. We were, Pierre Berton reminds us, a nation in love with itself, basking in the warm glow of international applause brought on by the unexpected success of Expo 67 and pumped up by the year-long birthday party that had us all warbling "Ca-na-da, as Bobby Gimby and his gaggle of small children pranced down the byways of the nation. It was a turning-point year, a watershed year--a year of beginnings as well as endings. One royal commission finally came to a close with a warning about the need for a new approach to Quebec. Another was launched to investigate, for the first time, the status of Canadian women. New attitudes to divorce and homosexuality were enshrined in law. A charismatic figure, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, made clear that the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation. The seeds of Women's Lib, Gay Pride, and even Red Power, were sown in the centennial year. (Of all the pavilions on the Expo site, Berton singles out the Indian pavilion as having the greatest impact.) The country was in a ferment that year. Canadians worried about the Americanization of every institution from the political convention to "Hockey Night in Canada. People talked about the Generation Gap as thousands of flower children held love-ins in city parks. The government tried to respond by launching the Company of Young Canadians, a project that was less than successful. The most significant event of 1967 was Charles de Gaulle's notorious "Vive le Quebec libre!" speech in Montreal. It gave the burgeoning separatist movement a new legitimacy, enhanced by Rene Levesque's departure from the Liberal party later that year. Throughout the book, the author gives us insightful profiles of some of the significant figures of 1967: the centennial activists Judy LaMarsh and John Fisher; the Expo entrepreneurs, Philippe de Gaspe Beaubien and Edward Churchill; Walter Gordon, the fervent nationalist, and his rival, Mitchell Sharp; Lester Pearson and his "bete noire, John Diefenbaker; the three "men of the world" who helped make Canada internationally famous: Marshall McLuhan, Glenn Gould, and Roy Thomson; hippie leaders like David dePoe, American draft dodgers like Mark Satin, women's activists like Doris Anderson and Laura Sabia, youth workers like Barbara Hall, radicals like Pierre Vallieres (author of "White Niggers of America) and such dedicated nationalists as Madame Chaput Rolland and Andre Laurendeau. In spite of the feeling of exultation that marked the centennial year, an opposite sentiment runs through the book like dark thread: the growing fear that the country was facing its gravest crisis. Berton points out that we are far better off today than we were in 1967. "Then why all the hand wringing?" he asks. Because of "the very real fear that the country we celebrated so joyously thirty years ago is in the process of falling apart. "In that sense, 1967 was the last good year before all Canadians began to be concerned about the future of our country."

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 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 Black Bird written by Michel Basilieres and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With comic brilliance and a delight in the macabre, Michel Basilières holds a fun-house mirror up to a defining moment in Canadian history and reveals, among other things, a family having a very bad year. Holed up in a shambling house at the base of Mount Royal is the family Desouche: three generations of English- and French-Canadians caught in the gears of a national emergency. Their world is dark and hard, but alive with hope and expectation. When one of the eldest, an Anglo Montrealer, dies at the hand of one of the youngest, a militant separatist, so begins a year of turmoil and change that culminates in the October Crisis. Grave-robbing Grandfather consorts with prostitutes and mad scientists, loses an eye and gains a new vision. His disenchanted wife bonds with his canny pet crow. Mother sleeps her grief away through the seasons, while Father ineffectively schemes to get rich quick. Meanwhile, their twin children, Marie and Jean-Baptiste, find their personal ambitions clashing with their public actions as they derail each other at every turn. In this wholly original novel alive with misfortune and magic, Michel Basilières uncovers a Montreal not seen in any other English-Canadian novel: a forgotten blue-collar neighbourhood in between the two solitudes. Gothic, outrageous, yet tender and wise, Black Bird is as liberating as the dreams of its wayward characters, and as gripping as the insurgencies that split its heart.

Download or read book October Crisis 1970 written by William Tetley and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first-hand account of a seminal Canadian crisis challenges the notion that civil rights and political liberties were unjustifiably restricted.

Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Tommy Douglas written by Vincent Lam and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once voted the greatest Canadian of all time, Tommy Douglas was a prairie politician who believed in democratic socialism, the crucial role of civil rights, and the great potential of cooperation for the common good. He is best known as the “Father of Medicare.” Born in 1904, Douglas was a championship boxer and a Baptist minister who later exchanged his pulpit for a political platform. A powerful orator and tireless activist, he sat first as a federal MP and then served for 17 years as premier of Saskatchewan, where he introduced the universal health-insurance system that would eventually be adopted across Canada. As leader of the national NDP, he was a staunch advocate of programs such as the Canada Pension Plan and was often the conscience of Parliament on matters of civil liberties. In the process, he made democratic socialism a part of mainstream Canadian political life. Giller Prize–winning author Vincent Lam, an emergency physician who works on the front lines of the health-care system, brings a novelist's eye to the life of one of Canada's greats.

Download or read book Memoirs written by René Lévesque and published by McClelland and Stewart. This book was released on 1986 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoirs of René Lévesque, who was the Prime Minister of Quebec, Canada from 1976 to 1985.

Download or read book Extraordinary Canadians Tommy Douglas written by Vincent Lam and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once voted the greatest Canadian of all time, Tommy Douglas was a prairie politician who believed in democratic socialism, the crucial role of civil rights, and the great potential of cooperation for the common good. He is best known as the “Father of Medicare.” Born in 1904, Douglas was a championship boxer and a Baptist minister who later exchanged his pulpit for a political platform. A powerful orator and tireless activist, he sat first as a federal MP and then served for 17 years as premier of Saskatchewan, where he introduced the universal health-insurance system that would eventually be adopted across Canada. As leader of the national NDP, he was a staunch advocate of programs such as the Canada Pension Plan and was often the conscience of Parliament on matters of civil liberties. In the process, he made democratic socialism a part of mainstream Canadian political life. Giller Prize–winning author Vincent Lam, an emergency physician who works on the front lines of the health-care system, brings a novelist's eye to the life of one of Canada's greats.

Download or read book An Independent Qu bec written by Jacques Parizeau and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on his rich experience in public service and teaching, Jacques Parizeau, former premier of Quebec, explains in these pages how the idea of an independent Quebec first took root and evolved. This is the first book of Parizeau's political writing to be translated into English, and it provides lively commentary on the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, on the the author's career as finance minister under Premier René Lévesque, and on his own administration in the mid-1990s. Parizeau also examines Quebec's current economic, political, social and cultural situation and reviews options for future development.

Download or read book Jeanne Chevalier Fille Du Roi written by Lynne C Levesque Ed D and published by Shadow Press. This book was released on 2016-11-24 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June, 1671 Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier left France to find a new life in Quebec, as a Fille du Roi (King's Daughter) sent by Louis XIV to help settle the new colony. Arriving two months later, this remarkable woman went on to marry and then outlive three husbands and survive the births of nine children and the deaths of six of them. Impoverished by her first husband, she worked with the second to establish one of the largest landholdings in the region. Her marriage with the third one brought an almost fairy tale ending to her life. Despite an incredible number of challenges, dangers and sorrows, Jeanne was able to create a life for herself and her children that she could never have imagined if she had stayed in France. When she died at the age of 73 in 1716, she left a long line of descendants, including Rene Levesgue, the 23rd Premier of Quebec, the American writer Jack Kerouac, and the author's father. Written by her eighth great grand-daughter 300 years after her death, Jeanne Chevalier Fille du Roi is an engaging story, full of facts, mysteries and unknowns. It's a story of endings and new beginnings. And it's a story of much courage, stamina, will and many choices. Factually and contextually based, it also provides glimpses into everyday life in 17th and early 18th century Quebec as well as many insights into the creation of the unique Quebecois heritage.

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.