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In the Upper Country / by Thomas, Kai,author.;
"Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist and activist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by veterans of the War of 1812 and refugees from the slave-owning states of the American south--whose agents do not always stay on their side of the border. One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned. But Cash doesn't want to confess--instead she proposes a barter: A story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of life stories that reveal the interwoven history of Canada and the United States; of Indigenous peoples from a wide swath of what is called North America and the Black men and women brought here into slavery and their free descendents on both sides of the border. As Cash's time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed, not only about the complicated tapestry of her people's ancestry, but also of her own family history. And it seems that Cash may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny. Moving from Virginia to Kentucky, from Montreal to Indigenous communities on the shores of the Great Lakes and Black communties in southern Ontario and a fictionalized version of Owen Sound, these two women's life stories weave together love, tragedy, and survival, to map their own unexpected interconnections onto the history of North America in an entirely new and resonant way."--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Slavery;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Original highways : travelling the great rivers of Canada / by MacGregor, Roy,1948-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Expanding on his landmark Globe and Mail series in which he documented his travels down 16 of Canada's great rivers, Roy MacGregor tells the story of our country through the stories of its original highways, and how they sustain our spirit, identity and economy--past, present and future. No country is more blessed with fresh water than Canada. From the mouth of the Fraser River in BC, to the Bow in Alberta, the Red in Manitoba, the Gatineau, the Saint John and the most historic of all Canada's rivers, the St. Lawrence, our beloved chronicler of Canadian life, Roy MacGregor, has paddled, sailed and traversed their lengths, learned their stories and secrets, and the tales of centuries lived on their rapids and riverbanks. He raises lost tales, like that of the Great Tax Revolt of the Gatineau River, and reconsiders histories like that of the Irish would-be settlers who died on Grosse Ile and the incredible resilience of settlers in the Red River Valley. Along the Grand, the Ottawa and others, he meets the successful conservationists behind the resuscitation of polluted wetlands, including even Toronto's Don, the most abused river in Canada (where he witnesses families of mink, returned to play on its banks). Long before our national railroad was built, our rivers held Canada together; in these sixteen portraits, filled with yesterday's adventures and tomorrow's promise, MacGregor weaves together a story of Canada and its ongoing relationship with its most precious resource."--
Subjects: MacGregor, Roy, 1948-; Rivers; Rivers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Chugga-chugga choo-choo / by Lewis, Kevin; Kirk, Daniel;
A rhyming story about a freight train's day, from loading freight in the morning to retiring to the roundhouse after the day's work is done.
Subjects: Railroads; Narrative poetry;
© c1999., Hyperion Books for Children,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Trains, boats and planes / by Robinson, Michelle(Michelle Jane),1977-; Tuya, Jez.;
Here is a colourful rhyming story following trains, boats, and planes in their busy day. But where are they all going? Join three busy transport vehicles as they speed their doggy passengers to the Big Festival! The running isn't smooth, and there's a rainstorm on the way.
Subjects: Picture books.; Airplanes; Railroad trains; Boats and boating; Transportation;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Freedom ship : the uncharted history of escaping slavery by sea / by Rediker, Marcus,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A definitive, sweeping account of the Underground Railroad's long-overlooked maritime origins, from a pre-eminent scholar of Atlantic history and the award-winning author of The Slave Ship As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellum South, finding safe harbor along a network of passageways across North America now known as the Underground Railroad. Yet imagery of fugitives ushered clandestinely from safe house to safe house fails to capture the full breadth of these harrowing journeys: many escapes took place not by land but by sea. Deeply researched and grippingly told, Freedom Ship offers a groundbreaking new look into the secret world of stowaways and the vessels that carried them to freedom across the North and into Canada. Sprawling through the intricate riverways of the Carolinas to the banks of the Chesapeake Bay to Boston's harbors, these tales illuminate the little-known stories of freedom seekers who turned their sights to the sea-among them the legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, one of the Underground Railroad's most famous architects. Marcus Rediker, one of the leading scholars of maritime history, puts his command of archival research on full display in this luminous portrait of the Atlantic waterfront as a place of conspiracy, mutiny, and liberation. Freedom Ship is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the complete story of one of North America's most significant historical moments"--
Subjects: Antislavery movements; Fugitive slaves; Stowaways; Underground Railroad;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Tales of an unsung sourdough : the extraordinary Klondike adventures of Johnny Lind / by Lind, Philip B.,1943-author.; Brehl, Robert,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.In the mid-1880s, Johnny Lind, a teenager from Pond Mills, Ontario, struck out for adventure and wealth. After a decade working as a railroader in the United States, Johnny headed north, to Yukon and Alaska, and he was mining gold nearby when the Klondike Gold Rush began. As a "sourdough," albeit an unsung one--the nickname for miners who had survived an entire winter in the North--Lind's story goes largely unrecognized in the lore of the era, his understated demeanor overshadowed by the larger-than-life characters that dominate the history books. But he kept journals recording his adventures in the Klondike, and these form an invaluable personal record. His stories shed light on the people and events of the gold rush, from the perspective of an everyman who wound up striking it rich. Here, Johnny Lind's grandson Phil Lind shares his grandfather's fascinating story, along with his love of the Klondike, the history of the gold rush, the colourful players in that famed period, and the peoples and land affected by the legendary stampede for wealth.
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Lind, Johnny (Gold miner); Gold miners;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The train / by Callaghan, Jodie,1984-; Lesley, Georgia.;
Author Jodie Callaghan worked as a journalist at the time of the Canadian government's apology for the residential school system. She took inspiration for this book from her conversations with survivors--including her own grandmother's experience at Indian day school, and memories shared with her by a man she interviewed by the train tracks that transported children to residential school in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Jodie's story for The Train was first recognized as the winner of the Mi'gmaq Writer's Award in 2009, a contest organized by the Mi'gmawei Mawiomi Secretariat to encourage and develop Mi'gmaq storytellers.LSC
Subjects: Grandparent and child; Separation (Psychology); Off-reservation boarding schools; Indians of North America; Railroad trains;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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October : the story of the Russian Revolution / by Miéville, China,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Acclaimed fantasy author China Mieville plunges us into the year the world was turned upside down The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions? This is the story of the extraordinary months between those upheavals, in February and October, of the forces and individuals who made 1917 so epochal a year, of their intrigues, negotiations, conflicts and catastrophes. From familiar names like Lenin and Trotsky to their opponents Kornilov and Kerensky; from the byzantine squabbles of urban activists to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire; from the revolutionary railroad Sublime to the ciphers and static of coup by telegram; from grand sweep to forgotten detail. Historians have debated the revolution for a hundred years, its portents and possibilities: the mass of literature can be daunting. But here is a book for those new to the events, told not only in their historical import but in all their passion and drama and strangeness. Because as well as a political event of profound and ongoing consequence, Mieville reveals the Russian Revolution as a breathtaking story"--
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Strangers in the land : exclusion, belonging, and the epic story of the Chinese in America / by Luo, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From New Yorker editor and writer Michael Luo, a vivid, urgent history of two centuries of Chinese exclusion and the birth of anti-Asian feeling in America. In 1889, when the Supreme Court upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act-a measure barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States that remained in effect for more than fifty years -- Justice Stephen Johnson Field characterized the Chinese as a people "residing apart by themselves." They were, Field concluded, "strangers in the land." Today, there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States, yet this label still hovers over Asian Americans. In Strangers in the Land, Luo traces anti-Asian feeling in America to the first wave of immigrants from China in the mid-nineteenth-century: laborers who traveled to California in search of gold and railroad work. Their communities almost immediately faced mobs of white vigilantes who drove them from their workplaces and homes. In his rich, character-driven history, Luo tells stories like that of Denis Kearney, the sandlot demagogue who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement, and of activists who fought back, like Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar and newspaperman Wong Chin Foo. After the halt on immigration in 1889, the Chinese-American community who remained struggled to survive and thrive on the margins of American life. In 1965, when LBJ's Immigration and Nationality Act forbade discrimination by national origin, America opened its doors wide to families like those of Luo's parents, but he finds that the centuries of exclusion of Chinese-Americans left a legacy: many Asians are still treated, and feel, like outsiders today. Strangers in the Land is a sweeping narrative of a forgotten chapter in American history, and a reminder that America's present reflects its exclusionary past"--
Subjects: United States.; Chinese Americans; Chinese;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The passengers on the Hankyu line : a novel / by Arikawa, Hiro,1972-author.; Powell, Allison Markin,translator.; translation of:Arikawa, Hiro,1972-Hankyū densha.English.;
"Between the two beautiful Japanese towns of Takarazuka and Nishinomiya, in a stunning mountainous area of Japan, rattles the Hankyu train. Passengers step on and off, lost in thought, contemplating the tiny knots of their existence. On the outward journey we are introduced to the emotional dilemmas of five characters, and on the return journey six months later, we watch them resolve. A young man meets the young woman who always happens to borrow a library book just before he can take it out himself; a woman in a white bridal dress boards looking inexplicably sad; a university student leaves his hometown for the first time; a girl prepares to leave her abusive boyfriend; and an old lady discusses adopting a dog with her granddaughter. These fully developed stories crisscross each other like the railway lines in the book."--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Road fiction.; Novels.; Interpersonal relations; Man-woman relationships; Railroads; Self-realization;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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