Memoirs Of Members

From "the Kid" on the Varsity Blues football team to "the Chief" at Osgoode Hall, R. Roy McMurtry has had a remarkably varied and influential career. As reformist attorney general of Ontario, one of the architects of the agreement that brought about the patriation of the Canadian Constitution, high commissioner to the United Kingdom, and chief justice of Ontario, he made a large and enduring contribution to Canadian law, politics, and life. These memoirs cover all these facets of his remarkable career, as well as his law practice, his work on various commissions of inquiry, and his reflections on family, sport, and art. This volume is both an account of his life in public service and a portrait of a humane, humorous, still optimistic, and always decent man.

In a political career spanning more than eighteen years, Peter Costello, Australia's longest serving Treasurer, steered the Government through some of its greatest economic and political challenges, paying off Government debt, introducing the GST and fighting five elections. The Costello Memoirs charts the victories and defeats in one man's very public life.

"Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras (30 June 1755 ? 29 January 1829) was a French politician of the French Revolution, and the main executive leader of the Directory regime of 1795?1799....Owing to his intimate relations with Joséphine de Beauharnais, Barras helped to facilitate a marriage between her and Bonaparte. Some of his contemporaries alleged that this was the reason behind Barras' nomination of Bonaparte to the command of the army of Italy early in the year 1796. Bonaparte's success gave to the Directory an unprecedented stability, and when, in the summer of 1797, the royalist and surviving Girondist opposition again met the government with resistance, Bonaparte sent General Augereau, a Jacobin, to repress their movement in the Coup of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797)."--Wikipedia.

The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies “Golem Girl is luminous; a profound portrait of the artist as a young—and mature—woman; an unflinching social history of disability over the last six decades; and a hymn to life, love, family, and spirit.”—David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas WINNER OF THE BARBELLION PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS What do we sacrifice in the pursuit of normalcy? And what becomes possible when we embrace monstrosity? Can we envision a world that sees impossible creatures? In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured. Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark—it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits—inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she’s been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal. Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human. “Not your typical memoir about ‘what it’s like to be disabled in a non-disabled world’ . . . Lehrer tells her stories about becoming the monster she was always meant to be: glorious, defiant, unbound, and voracious. Read it!”—Alice Wong, founder and director, Disability Visibility Project