Open Doors

Why is leadership not diverse and what can be done about it? Opening Doors to Diversity in Leadership provides evidence and options for businesses to build a more diverse workforce, leadership team and corporate culture.

'Rankin is a master story-teller ... I read this in one sitting' Guardian Mike Mackenzie is a self-made man with too much time on his hands and a bit of the devil in his soul. He is looking for something to liven up the days and settles on a plot to rip-off one of the most high-profile targets in the capital - the National Gallery of Scotland. So, together with two close friends from the art world, he devises a plan to lift some of the most valuable artwork around. But of course, the real trick is to rob the place - whilst persuading the world that no crime was ever committed...

"There was nothing but parties in Hogan's Alley," a black musician named Austin Phillips reminisced in 1977, "Night time, anytime, and Sundays all day. You could go by at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning and you could hear the juke boxes going, you hear somebody hammering on the piano, playing the guitar, or hear somebody fighting." The black ghetto of Hogan's Alley was just one of the ethnic neighbourhoods that made the historic Strathcona district the most cosmopolitan and colourful quarter in Vancouver for over a hundred years. Home to Chinatown, Japantown, the Loggers' Skid Row and Little Italy among others, it had been the city's first residential neighbourhood but became the refuge of the city's working and immigrant classes when better-off Vancouverites migrated westward around 1900. By the 1950s planners had declared it a slum slated for demolition, but in the 1960s residents united in a spirited defense that guaranteed Strathcona's survival and revolutionized city planning across Canada. It had long been known that some of Vancouver's best stories lurked behind the closed doors of the Strathcona district (rock legend Jimi Hendrix spent part of his childhood living there with his grandmother, who is interviewed in this book.) Between 1977 and 1978, Strathcona writers Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter undertook to open those doors and collect 50 oral histories representing the best of the stories. First published in 1979 as a double issue of the journal Sound Heritage, Opening Doors has been celebrated as one of the best books about Vancouver you couldn't obtain for love nor money. To help mark Vancouver's 125th Anniversary, Harbour is republishing this underground classic as a Raincoast Monograph richly illustrated with vintage photographs.

See how one school district made cultural proficiency real—and how you can too! This book tells the story of Ventura Unified School District's successful implementation of cultural proficiency, which opened long-closed doors for marginalized students and returned gains on every key success metric. Most importantly, it will empower you to do the same for your school or district. Resources include: A method for evaluating the impact of educational decisions on students' access to learning A clearly outlined three-year implementation plan for making your school culturally proficient A content-rich companion website that includes templates and forms for implementing the book’s suggestions

Family is complicated. Love isn’t. Acclaimed artist Elaine Gordon can’t believe her loving husband is gone. After a lifetime spent utterly devoted to her soul mate and their marriage, Elaine is now tetherless, faced with widowhood and all the decisions that come with it, not least of which is what to do with her rambling, now-empty family home. Anxious to console their mother in her time of grief, Elaine’s four grown children urge her to put everything on hold and spend some healing time with them. But visiting each unique and complicated child opens Elaine’s eyes to the fact that the children she raised have become adults she hardly knows: Sarah, who abandoned Western life for an orthodox enclave in Jerusalem; Lisa, Sarah’s accomplished twin and polar opposite, who will do anything for a child of her own; Peter, trapped in a hollow marriage in California; and Denis, the youngest, who just wants Elaine to accept his gay lifestyle. As Elaine tries to bridge the physical and emotional miles, her eyes are opened to the startling truths of her own family, and what she must do to come to terms with her kids’ lives—and a future that’s completely, wonderfully…hers.

In his letter to his protégé, Timothy, Paul says, "I have fought the good fight." In Arabic, those last three words are translated jihad. In Secret Believers, readers are introduced to Brother Andrew's protégé in the Muslim world, Butros. In this riveting true story of the Middle Eastern Church struggling to come to grips with hostile governments, terrorist acts, and an influx of Muslims coming to Christ, readers will meet a group of men and women they never knew existed. The names and places have been changed to protect the real people in the real places. But the stories are true. In his most incredible and eye-opening book to date, Brother Andrew invites you to meet: • Ahmed, a young Muslim terrified by nightmares until he is introduced to Isa (Jesus) • Mustafa, a former leader in a fundamentalist Muslim movement that persecuted Christians • Salima, a privileged young Muslim woman who is held captive by her family when they find a Bible in her possession • Abuna, a priest faced with an aging congregation and constant threats to his beloved church • and many more. Secret Believers not only gives readers a glimpse of the lives of these courageous believers, it also proposes four practical initiatives for Christians in the West to help these persecuted brothers and sisters. It calls us to join this new kind of jihad, leaving vengeance behind in favor of forgiveness, radical love, and unyielding prayer.

Since 1998, Open Door has been introducing readers new and old to some of Ireland's finest writers. In this our first collection of stories, we have gathered a range of voices to suit every taste. With themes ranging from family and friendship to ageing, love and childhood, there is something for everyone. So come on in! Book jacket.

From the award-winning, groundbreaking author of A Brief History of Anxiety...Yours and Mine comes a touching, exhilarating, challenging exploration of the inexplicable gleamings of another world many of us experience, in life, in grief, and near death. Sparked by extraordinary experiences that occurred in her family when her father and her sister both died in 2008, Patricia Pearson was launched on a journey of investigation into what she calls "a curious sort of modern underground--a world beneath the secular world, inhabited by ordinary human beings having extraordinary experiences that they aren't, on the whole, willing to disclose." Roughly half the bereaved population, about 20% of those near death who recover, and an unreported number of the dying witness or experience a sensed presence, the mystery of near-death awareness, and, if they are not in horrible pain or medicated into unconsciousness, rationally inexplicable feelings of transcendence and grace as they depart on the journey from which none of us return. Pearson brings us effortlessly into her illuminating quest for answers, inspiring us to own up to experiences we may never have shared with anyone. Secular or religious, all of us wonder deeply about these things if we let ourselves, and also about the medical, social and psychological implications of understanding what it means to pass through heaven's door.