My Stories My Times Volume 2

Following on the heels of his bestselling collection of political reminiscences, former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien still has a few more stories to tell. With anecdotes and reflections both serious and light-hearted, My Stories, My Times, Volume 2 is a unique window on our country from one of its greatest statesmen and patriots. With a career that spanned decades and an active retirement after that, it should come as no surprise that Jean Chrétien’s illuminating, perceptive and often humorous stories could not be contained in just one book. This collection of essays features his trademark candour and ever-sharp political acumen, with plenty of wit to accompany the wisdom. With a delightful randomness, he remembers events and personalities that shaped our nation in a multitude of ways, and offers his views on international current events, including Canada-China relations, Brexit, and interprovincial dealings. Jean Chrétien’s stories serve to remind us that there is more to unite than divide us as a country, and that we have institutions we can take enormous pride in and values we must strive to maintain and keep building upon. Above all, these stories illustrate Jean Chrétien’s firm belief that we must never cease searching for common ground despite our differences.

My Years as Prime Minister is Jean Chrétien’s own story, told with insight and humour, of his ten years at 24 Sussex Drive as Canada’s twentieth prime minister. By the time he left office, Jean Chrétien had been in politics for forty years – and his experience is evident on every page of his important, engaging memoir. Chrétien loves to tell a good tale – and he does so here in the same honest, plain-spoken style of Straight from the Heart, his earlier bestselling account of his years as a Cabinet minister. He gives us a self-portrait of a working prime minister – the passionate Canadian renowned for finishing every speech with Vive le Canada! Chrétien knows how government works, and his political instincts are sharp. Through the decade 1993 to 2003 we watch as he wins three majority elections as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Finding the country in a dreadful state, dangerously in debt and bitterly divided, he describes how his government wiped out the deficit in just four years, helped to defeat the separatists in the cliffhanger Quebec referendum, passed the Clarity Act, and set out to fulfill the economic and social promises his party made in its famous Red Books. He reveals how and why he kept the country out of the war in Iraq – a defining moment for many Canadians; led Team Canada on whirlwind trade missions around the world; and participated in a host of major international summits. Along with his astute comments on politics and government, he gives candid portraits of a broad cast of characters. Over a beer, Tony Blair confides his hesitation about taking Britain into the Iraq War; in the corridors of the United Nations, Bill Clinton offers to speak to Quebecers on behalf of Canadian unity; while at home, Chrétien reveals the events leading up to the departure of his finance minister, Paul Martin. He recounts the dramatic night in which his quick-thinking wife, Aline, saved him from an assassination attempt at 24 Sussex Drive; and, with lively humour, he describes how he and Clinton successfully escaped from their own bodyguards – to the consternation of all. Even in the highest office in the land, Jean Chrétien never lost his connection with ordinary Canadians. He is as warm and funny in his recollections as in person, at once combative and cool-headed, a man full of vitality and charm. Above all, from start to finish, his love for his country and his passion to keep it united run clear and deep.

Seven exciting new plays for young people written specifically in response to a world in the midst of a pandemic, accompanied by a handbook from Wonder Fools with guidance for staging the plays, and other creative responses, either online or live in the space. Commissioned as part of Wonder Fools' national participatory project Positive Stories for Negative Times: Season 2, these plays offer a variety of stories, styles and forms for ages between 6 and 25. Spyrates 2 (Spies vs Pirates): Journey to the Forbidden Island by Robbie Gordon & Jack Nuse Featuring spies, pirates, robots, talking animals and everything in between, 'Spyrates' is an interactive, playful and imaginative adventure story. Ages 6+ At First I Was Afraid... (I Was Petrified!) by Douglas Maxwell A feel-good comedy drama about a girl who keeps a diary of all her anxieties; but as she moves from Primary School to Secondary, from normal life to Lockdown, all of her worries appear to come true. Ages 11 + The Raven by Hannah Lavery A play full of adventure and an exploration of what shapes and what divides us, exploring issues of blended families, bullying, overeating, depression and isolation. Ages 11 + Thanks For Nothing by The PappyShow This not a play, but a process. It explores what it means to be thankful in this world we live in today. It's a mix of games, challenges and exercises for you to tell your own stories, in your own way. Ages 11 + Revolting by Bryony Kimmings A series of tasks and actions that make a narrative to be performed with props. We are agents of the revolution. How do we revolt? How do we not get into trouble? Where do we get power, and then how do we use it for good? Ages 13 + The Skirt by Ellen Bannerman An absurdist feminist fable for the next generation of feminists. Ages 16+ Write To Rave: Step Pon by Debris Stevenson A play about the political power of a rave. Who has the right to rave, to dance and move freely? What is it to feel truly free in your own skin? It tells the story a queer group of humans trying their best to rave whilst the world tries it's best to stop them. Ages 18 + The accompanying handbook includes an exploration of Wonder Fools' theatre-making process, step-by-step guidance in how to produce the plays either online or live in the space, and bespoke exercises and instructions in how to approach directing each play.

Section 33 – what is commonly referred to as the notwithstanding clause (NWC) – was written into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to allow Parliament and the provinces to provisionally override certain Charter rights. The Notwithstanding Clause and the Canadian Charter examines the NWC from all angles and perspectives, considering who should have the last word on matters of rights and justice – the legislatures or the unelected judiciary – and what balance liberal democracy requires. In the case of Quebec, the use of the clause has been justified as necessary to preserve the province’s culture and promote its identity as a nation. Yet Quebec’s pre-emptive and sweeping invocation of the clause also challenges the scope of judicial review and citizens’ recourse to it, and it tests the assumption that a dialogue between the judiciary and the legislature is always preferable in instances in which the legislative branch decides to suspend the operation of certain Charter rights and freedoms. By virtue of its contested purposes, interpretations, operation, and applications, the NWC represents and, to an extent, defines both the character and the very real vulnerabilities of liberal constitutionalism in Canada. The significance, effects, and legitimacy of the NWC have been vigorously debated within scholarship and among politicians and activists since the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982. In The Notwithstanding Clause and the Canadian Charter leading scholars, jurists, and policy experts elucidate and prescribe reforms to the application of this consequential clause about which so much is written, and around which there is relatively little consensus.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption "features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human" (The Chicago Tribune). Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. “Pitch perfect.... Darkly, rippingly funny.... Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” —The New York Times Book Review

The Long-Awaited, Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time—Now a New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller. In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

A glimpse into a beloved novelist’s inner world, shaped by family, art, and literature. In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud’s own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature. In twenty-six intimate, brilliant, and funny essays, Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of “a single successful sentence.” Together, these essays show the inner workings of a dazzling literary mind. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again "an absolute master storyteller" (Rebecca Carroll, Los Angeles Times).

As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator François – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.