For Canada History Week, we’ve compiled a reading list that spans the diverse spectrum of Canada’s narrative. From novels that breathe life into bygone eras to plays that echo with the voices of the past, humour-grounded memoirs that lighten the historical load to heart-wrenching novels that resonate with the intergenerational experience of living in this country, here are nine incredible reads.
HISTORY
A Different Track: Hospital Trains of the Second World War by Alexandra Kitty (Heritage House Publishing)
The railroad played an integral role in the Second World War, bringing food, munitions, and essential supplies, transporting troops, and functioning as a means of travel for those fleeing persecution as well as for civilians headed to their deaths. Yet one kind of train improved the chances of survival every time they rolled through the battle-worn towns and cities of the European theatre of war, no matter which side you belonged: hospital trains, which wound their way across the scarred landscapes of war-weary Europe treating patients from all sides of the conflict.
A Different Track looks at the largely unknown history of these hospital trains. From the employees who ran the trains to the factories that manufactured them, this endlessly fascinating book looks at how these trains—and the women who worked on them as nurses and staff—quietly altered the fortunes of the world.
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The Notorious Georges: Crime and Community in British Columbia’s Northern Interior, 1905–25 by Jonathan Swainger (University of British Columbia Press)
Boozy and boisterous, The Georges—the communities of South Fort George and Fort George that ultimately became Prince George—have had a seedy reputation since before the First World War. Branded Canada’s “most dangerous city” more than once, we have to ask: Is Prince George really such a bad lad?
The Notorious Georges takes another look at British Columbia’s northern interior, exploring how the local pursuit of respectability collided with caricatures of a riotously ill-mannered settlement frontier in its early years. Anxious that the Georges were being overlooked by the provincial government and venture capitalists, municipal leaders blamed Indigenous and mixed-heritage people, non-preferred immigrants, and transient labourers for local crime. In this lively account of a city’s birth and coming of age, however, Jonathan Swainger combs through police and legal records, government publications, and media commentary to paint a more holistic picture of the particular alchemy of community identity and reputation that make up Prince George, BC. Engaging and thoroughly researched, The Notorious Georges sheds light on small-town disaffection and unease within a diminished place in modern Canada.
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Capturing the Summit: Hamilton Mack Laing and the Mount Logan Expedition of 1925 by Trevor Marc Hughes (Ronsdale Press)
During four months alone in the remote windswept wilderness, adventurer and ecologist Hamilton Mack Laing spent his days deeply immersed in observing the natural world of the Chitina River valley. He endures dust storms, befriends a family of ravens and fearlessly tracks elusive bears, and—despite escalating tempers and rivalries—joins his fellow mountaineers as they soldier across the frozen landscape.
In the only book devoted to this gruelling expedition to the summit of Mount Logan, Trevor Marc Hughes employs diary entries from Laing’s expedition team, written nearly 100 years ago, to give the reader a visceral, tactile, and cinematic experience of the first ascent of the tallest mountain in Canada. Highlighted with archival photos, the result is a remarkable book written “with a strong sense of the epic,” says the Miramichi Reader, “that at times leaves one holding one’s breath with anticipation or fear, at times wanting to clap and cheer for the participants out loud, and at times smiling or even chuckling at an event that feels well-deserved, or shows the resourceful strategies used to circumvent a potential downfall or to amuse the person or persons involved.”
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MEMOIR
Gaman – Perseverance by Art Miki (Talonbooks)
This revealing memoir by the former president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians describes the long journey towards resolution for the historic injustice that deprived Japanese Canadians of their basic human rights during and after World War II. Gaman – Perseverance details the intense negotiations that took place in the 1980s between the Government of Canada and the NAJC—negotiations that would result in the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement of September 1988 and the historic acknowledgment by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that Canada had wronged its own citizens.
Art Miki vividly recollects his past experiences and family history, revealing the beliefs and attitudes that shaped his life’s journey as a youth in British Columbia, an educator in Manitoba, and a community leader across Canada. He shares personal reflections on the Japanese Canadian Redress Campaign and the many endeavours and challenges that followed, his involvement with Indigenous communities and the dispute that would lead to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, his foray into politics during the 1990s, and his role as a Canadian citizenship judge. Gaman – Perseverance provides a unique, intimate glimpse into Miki’s involvement with the Japanese community and the projects that embody meaningful historical preservation.
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When Trains Ruled the Rockies: My Life at the Banff Railway Station by Terry Gainer (Rocky Mountain Books)
Drawn from Terry Gainer’s personal memories and experiences from his years living and working at the legendary Banff Railway Station, this entertaining memoir and important historical record beckons the reader into the golden age of railway travel in the mountains of western Canada.
Complete with a selection of archival photographs, When Trains Ruled the Rockies documents life at the Banff Railway Station and traces the huge role the station played in the local community. The author’s own story of growing up at the station winds a thread through the narrative and brings into clear focus Terry’s lifelong passion for passenger trains—at one time the most dominant means of transportation for Canadians, but sadly an experience now fading into history.
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From Bear Rock Mountain: The Life and Times of a Dene Residential School Survivor by Antoine Bear Rock Mountain (Touchwood Editions)
In 1949, Antoine Mountain was born on the land near Radelie Koe, Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories. At the tender age of seven, he was stolen away from his home and sent to a residential school 300 kilometres away and run by the Roman Catholic Church in collusion with the Government of Canada. Over the next twelve years, the three residential schools Mountain was forced to attend systematically worked to erase his language and culture—the very roots of his identity.
Later reconnecting to that which had been taken from him, Mountain had a disturbing and painful revelation of the bitter depths of colonialism and its legacy of cultural genocide: that Canada has its own holocaust. As a celebrated artist and social activist today, he shares From Bear Rock Mountain—a moving, personal story of healing and the reclamation of his Dene identity.
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FICTION
Reuniting With Strangers by Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio (Douglas & McIntyre)
When five-year-old Monolith is taken from the Philippines to live with his mother in Canada, he immediately lashes out. Unable or unwilling to speak, he attacks his mother and destroys his new home. Everyone wants to know why, and everyone has a theory. Unlike the solid certainty his name suggests, however, the answer isn’t so simple.
Inspired by the work of Souvankham Thammavongsa, Catherine Hernandez and Wayson Choy, this unforgettable novel follows the reunification of Filipino caregiver families over one Canadian winter—and the mysterious progress of Monolith, who appears and disappears in their lives.
From a cliffside town in the Tagaytay highlands of the Philippines, to the Filipino communities in the desert of Osoyoos, the Arctic world of Iqaluit, the suburbs of southern Ontario, Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges, and Toronto’s Little Manila, Reuniting With Strangers “is an absorbing portrait of not only multiple generations of the Filipino-Canadian community,” writes Quill & Quire, “but of the simultaneity of grief and joy when building a life in a new country.”
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ARTS & LETTERS
The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin & Kitimat: Two Plays for Workers by Elaine Ávila (Talonbooks)
From the acclaimed author of Fado: The Saddest Music in the World comes a collection of two unique labour plays based on two events in Canadian history. The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin recreates the events surrounding the mysterious death of Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, who led a strike at a Canadian zinc smelter in Trail, British Columbia that brought a World War I British war machine to a halt. Kitimat, on the other hand, follows residents of an industry town in the glorious BC wilderness as they struggle to decide between economic prosperity and environmental protection when they must vote yes or no to a proposed oil pipeline.
These two plays walk us through the history—and present!—of labour rights in the nation, all while remaining grounded in the origins of two Canadian firsts: the beginning of the eight-hour workday, and the first Canadian town to vote on Big Oil.
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Every Child Matters by Phyllis Webstad (Medicine Wheel Publishing)
This “brilliantly illustrated and meticulously written narrative” unpacks the meaning behind the phrase Every Child Matters through the words of Phyllis Webstad, the founder of Orange Shirt Day. With sharp and heartfelt insight into this movement, Webstad honours the history and resilience of Indigenous Peoples, as well as all the residential school survivors, intergenerational descendants, and the children who didn’t make it home.
A staple of Canadian history and education, this must-read book reminds us of one simple but crucial truth: that the child inside every one of us matters.
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