Marion Dewar

Marion Dewar could never ignore a person who was begging in the street. Along with money, she would offer words of encouragement and friendship. Perhaps it was her training as a nurse, her devout Catholic upbringing, or maybe it was simply because she was a genuinely compassionate woman. As mayor of Ottawa from 1978-1985, Marion Dewar worked tirelessly to bring about non-profit housing, better public transportation, support and encouragement for the arts, for peace, and for women's rights. She advocated for visible minorities, gays and lesbians, and was the driving force behind the initiative to bring 4,000 boat people to Ottawa from Vietnam and Southeast Asia. She was a prominent member of the New Democratic Party and sat as a Member of Parliament in 1987-1988 - all while raising four children. Accompanied by archival and personal photos, an intriguing look at a woman who took action when it counted most.

The NDP was close to collapse after its disastrous showing in the 1993 federal election. How did a party that once had significant support among voters fall so badly? What are the prospects for the NDP's return as a major presence in federal politics? Journalist Ian McLeod approaches these questions as a party insider who believes that the NDP continues to have a constructive role to play in Canadian politics. His story of the party's decline has been pieced together from interviews with a wide range of key advisors, strategists, former MPs and party members. First published in 1994, Under Siege is an in-depth account of a significant passage in the history of democratic socialism in Canada.

Although Judith McKenzie deals with Jewett's childhood and university years, much of this insightful story is devoted to her public life as a Member of Parliament for the federal Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party and as a university president. President of Simon Fraser University from 1974 to 1978, she was the first woman to be appointed president of a public coeducational post-secondary institution in Canada. Jewett faced many challenges in her life, as a woman, an academic, a nationalist, and a social reformer. With tenacity and perseverance she overcame a number of social and gender barriers in place in Canada, becoming an important role model to a generation of younger women At the end of her life, she faced her greatest challenge - cancer - and fought this with her characteristic good humour, courage, and dignity.

"My nurse hands once did more useful things. They immunized the fat, healthy thighs of infants, they carefully measured cardiac drugs to administer to young heart patients, they bathed both the elderly lady after her surgery and the 24-year-old Italian-Canadian woman after her death. My hands once mixed linseed poultices, rubbed twenty backs a night before darkness fell and, by flashlight, checked intravenous drips, catheters, and other tubing. They made hot milk in the middle of the night and then, later at home, soothed a child with too-frequent earaches. These are good uses for hands. Now they carry a black bag into streets, alleyways, and ravines. The bandages I carry no longer cover the wounds of my patients. My vitamins will not prevent the white plague of tuberculosis from taking another victim. The granola bars I carry cannot begin to feed the hunger I meet. I cannot even help someone achieve one peaceful night of safety and sleep. Only roofs will do that. And I am not a carpenter." There is no right to shelter or housing in Canada. Over the past three decades, a series of federal governments cut funding for social programs and eliminated our national housing program, leaving hundreds of thousands of people victim to the tsunami of homelessness that was declared a national disaster twenty years ago. No one knows this reality better than Cathy Crowe, who witnessed the explosion of homelessness across Canada while working as a Street Nurse. This fallout was accompanied by great suffering, inhumane shelter conditions, new disease outbreaks, and clusters of homeless deaths. It is a reality that spans across the entire country. In A Knapsack Full of Dreams, Cathy Crowe details her lifelong commitment as a nurse and social justice activist—particularly her thirty years as a Street Nurse—with passion, grace, and fortitude. Presented through the lens of someone dedicated to the power and beauty of film, A Knapsack Full of Dreams will move you, then inspire you to act.

Just as they do on those television cooking contests when the bell rings and the contestants’ hands go up, at four o’clock on Friday afternoon, the column is filed—ready or not—to the columnist’s horror, discomfort, or self-satisfaction. Regardless, one exigent and unrelenting thought remains: what you wish you’d said. Such is the life of a weekly newspaper columnist. Unable to ignore the urge any longer, in What I Wish I Said: Confessions of a Columnist, author Jaime Watt has collected forty-eight of his most eye-opening, illuminating, and provocative Toronto Star columns and with humour, candour, and wit, he’s responded to each with what he wishes he’d said. The collection also features contributions from former senator and columnist André Pratte and from journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star Michael Cooke. Widely regarded as Canada’s leading high-stakes communications strategist and the architect of groundbreaking campaigns that transformed politics with their boldness and creativity, Watt brings his insight to bear on some of the most vexing and consequential issues in Canadian life by reappraising his past work. Across six topical subject areas—civil liberties and human rights, portraits of leaders, the Liberal Party in power, the Conservative Party in opposition, the Donald Trump presidency, and the COVID-19 crisis—this subtle yet accessible collection offers a distinctive look at recent times. Whether he got it right or wrong, Watt pulls no punches when it comes to critiquing—and at times lambasting—his past columns. Revisiting his best and worst takes, Watt and his co-author Breen Wilkinson look at what might have been said in the columns he has been writing for more than seven years. And as he does, Watt challenges with new perspectives and ideas, inviting readers to consider what they wish they might have said, to consider how their points of views, and even their values, may have changed with time.

Bytown's early years - as military outpost and lumber town - did not presage greatness. Yet this rough little town (renamed Ottawa in 1855) did not remain insignificant, for geography and politics soon combined to place it at centrestage as Canada's national capital. Ottawa's fascinating story is recounted with skill and wit in John H. Taylor's Ottawa: An Illustrated History. Taylor tells this story in all its variations - the life of the French and the English, the poor and the rich; the politics of city hall and Parliament Hill; the social lives of Ottawans. Crisp and colourful, Ottawa: An Illustrated History focuses on the history of the city's relationship with its landlord - the federal government - but it also does more. It weaves together, for the first time, all the complex strands that over the years have shaped Ottawa's identity. Ottawa: An Illustrated History is handsomely illustrated by 150 historical photographs and by a dozen original maps depicting the city's geographical evolution.

“This is the roadmap out of climate crisis that Canadians have been waiting for.” — Naomi Klein, activist and New York Times bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine • One of Canada’s top policy analysts provides the first full-scale blueprint for meeting our climate change commitments • Contains the results of a national poll on Canadians’ attitudes to the climate crisis • Shows that radical transformative climate action can be done, while producing jobs and reducing inequality as we retool how we live and work. • Deeply researched and targeted specifically to Canada and Canadians while providing a model that other countries could follow Canada needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to prevent a catastrophic 1.5 degree increase in the earth’s average temperature — assumed by many scientists to be a critical “danger line” for the planet and human life as we know it. It’s 2020, and Canada is not on track to meet our targets. To do so, we’ll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because we’ve done it before. During the Second World War, Canadian citizens and government remade the economy by retooling factories, transforming their workforce, and making the war effort a common cause for all Canadians to contribute to. Klein demonstrates how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed today for Canada’s own Green New Deal. He shares how we can create jobs and reduce inequality while tackling our climate obligations for a climate neutral—or even climate zero—future. From enlisting broad public support for new economic models, to job creation through investment in green infrastructure, Klein shows us a bold, practical policy plan for Canada’s sustainable future. More than this: A Good War offers a remarkably hopeful message for how we can meet the defining challenge of our lives. COVID-19 has brought a previously unthinkable pace of change to the world—one which demonstrates our ability to adapt rapidly when we’re at risk. Many recent changes are what Klein proposes in these very pages. The world can, actually, turn on a dime if necessary. This is the blueprint for how to do it.