In The Ward

From the 1870s to the 1950s, waves of immigrants to Toronto – Irish, Jewish, Chinese and Italian, among others – landed in ‘The Ward’ in the centre of downtown. Deemed a slum, the area was crammed with derelict housing and ‘ethnic’ businesses; it was razed in the 1950s to make way for a grand civic plaza and modern city hall. Archival photos and contributions from a wide variety of voices finally tell the story of this complex neighbourhood and the lessons it offers about immigration and poverty in big cities. Contributors include historians, politicians, architects and descendents of Ward res­idents on subjects such as playgrounds, tuberculosis, bootlegging and Chinese laundries. With essays by Howard Akler, Denise Balkissoon, Steve Bulger, Jim Burant, Arlene Chan, Alina Chatterjee, Cathy Crowe, Richard Dennis, Ruth Frager, Richard Harris, Gaetan Heroux, Edward Keenan, Bruce Kidd, Mark Kingwell, Jack Lipinsky, John Lorinc, Shawn Micallef, Howard Moscoe, Laurie Monsebraaten, Terry Murray, Ratna Omidvar, Stephen Otto, Vincenzo Pietropaolo, Michael Posner, Michael Redhill, Victor Russell, Ellen Scheinberg, Sandra Shaul, Myer Siemiatycki, Mariana Valverde, Thelma Wheatley, Kristyn Wong­-Tam and Paul Yee, among others.

Jordana Frankel’s thrilling and imaginative YA dystopian novel The Ward is set in a near-future New York City. A catastrophic flood has washed out Manhattan, leaving the rivers polluted, and entire neighborhoods underwater. Some areas are quarantined because of an outbreak of a deadly disease. The illness, known as the Blight, is killing sixteen-year-old Ren’s sister. Desperate to save her sister’s life, Ren agrees to lead a secret mission from the government to search for a cure. But her quest leads to a confounding mystery beneath the water and an unlikely friendship with a passionate scientist. Readers who love speculative fiction and crave action-packed stories similar to Veronica Roth’s Divergent will find The Ward absolutely unputdownable.

An archaeological dig uncovers the secret history of Toronto’s long-forgotten first immigrant neighbourhood. In early 2015, a team of archaeologists began digging test trenches on a non-descript parking lot next to Toronto City Hall -- a site designated to become a major new court house. What they discovered was the rich buried history of an enclave that was part of The Ward -- that dense, poor, but vibrant 'arrival city' that took shape between the 1840s and the 1950s. Home to waves of immigrants and refugees -- Irish, African-Americans, Italians, eastern European Jews, and Chinese -- The Ward was stigmatized for decades by Toronto's politicians and residents, and eventually razed to make way for New City Hall. The archaeologists who excavated the lot, led by co-editor Holly Martelle, discovered almost half a million artifacts -- a spectacular collection of household items, tools, toys, shoes, musical instruments, bottles, industrial objects, food scraps, luxury items, and even a pre-contact Indigenous projectile point. Martelle's team also unearthed the foundations of a nineteenth-century Black church, a Russian synagogue, early-twentieth-century factories, cisterns, privies, wooden drains, and even row houses built by formerly enslaved African Americans. Following on the heels of the immensely popular The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood, which told the stories of some of the people who lived there, The Ward Uncovered digs up the tales of things, using these well-preserved artifacts to tell a different set of stories about life in this long-forgotten and much-maligned neighbourhood.

"AGO curator Andrew Hunter's subjective exploration of the historical Toronto neighbourhood, the Ward, and parts of the Canadian Arctic, as inspired by the work of iconic Canadian painter Lawren S. Harris. Includes photographs by Arthur Goss, Lawren S. Harris and others; reproductions of paintings by Lawren S. Harris, and documentation of contemporary artworks by Tin Can Forest, Anique Jordan, Nina Bunjevac, and Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier."--

What could be more American than Columbus Day? Or the Washington Redskins? For Native Americans, they are bitter reminders that they live in a world where their identity is still fodder for white society. "The law has always been used as toilet paper by the status quo where American Indians are concerned," writes Ward Churchill in Acts of Rebellion, a collection of his most important writings from the past twenty years. Vocal and incisive, Churchill stands at the forefront of American Indian concerns, from land issues to the American Indian Movement, from government repression to the history of genocide. Churchill, one of the most respected writers on Native American issues, lends a strong and radical voice to the American Indian cause. Acts ofRebellion shows how the most basic civil rights' laws put into place to aid all Americans failed miserably, and continue to fail, when put into practice for our indigenous brothers and sisters. Seeking to convey what has been done to Native North America, Churchill skillfully dissects Native Americans' struggles for property and freedom, their resistance and repression, cultural issues, and radical Indian ideologies.

Presented for the first time in this beautiful, genre-crossing collection is Lawren Harris’s original book of poems and 16 color images of the artist’s early urban painting. In 1922, while the Group of Seven was emerging as a national phenomenon, Harris published his only book of poems—Contrasts—the first modernist exploration of Canadian urban space in verse. He also wandered the streets of Toronto, sketching and creating a powerful set of city paintings. With a 14-page walking tour of Toronto that includes historical and biographical tidbits, this book contains sections of further readings in relation to Harris, the Group of Seven, Toronto and the Ward, and other Toronto walks, more than 65 questions for discussion, and a complete listing of the paintings that provides details on size, medium, and current location. Unlike any other book on Harris, this edition offers a new view of Harris’s career before the Group of Seven while presenting an exciting window into city life at the turn of the century.

The second thought-provoking, stunningly written tale of horror from S. L. Grey Lisa is a plastic surgery addict with severe self-esteem issues. The only hospital that will let her go under the knife is New Hope: a grimy, grey-walled facility dubbed "No Hope" by its patients. Farrell is a celebrity photographer. His last memory is a fight with his fashion-model girlfriend and now he's woken up in No Hope, alone. Needle marks criss-cross his arms, a sinister nurse keeps tampering with his drip, and he's woken up blind. Panicked and disorientated, Farrell persuades Lisa to help him escape, but the hospital's dimly lit corridors only take them deeper underground, into a twisted mirror world staffed by dead-eyed nurses and doped-up orderlies. Down in the Modification Ward, Lisa can finally have the face she wants—but at a price that will haunt them both forever.

Here, Paige is immersed in a dream reality called 'the Journey'. If patients finish the Journey, then they can go home. Secrets are exposed as Paige bonds with other teens who don't belong. The Journey is meant to be a cure - but Paige soon discovers dark forces within the hospital, and that the dream reality is the stuff of nightmares. Paige and her friends have limited chances to show progress, before it's too late. Can they escape the ward? And can Paige find reasons to live? Within the Ward is a novel that explores mental health and it's stigmatisation, particularly in youths. It encourages readers to challenge their preconceived notions of what mental health is and what it looks like, to create a better understanding of the diversity of mental health.