Last Moments: Sentenced to Death in Canada
Dale Brawn
Before the final execution in 1962, more than 700 men and women were executed by hanging in Canada. Last Moments shines a light into a dark corner of a long and painful part of Canadian history that threatens to re-emerge. Here are dramatic stories of the characters whose finals moments and last words were tragic, unpredictable, poignant, eccentric and often bizarre. Stories such as, before Confederation, executioners were often recruited from among the condemned, and they were given two options — kill or be killed. A Yukon execution was delayed because freezing spectators used the wooden trapdoor of the gallows to build a fire. One man brawled with his executioner on the scaffold before onlookers leaped into the fray, overpowered him and held him on the trapdoor until he was dropped to his death... and so many more tantalizing and twisted tidbits.
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Canada 1911: The Decisive Election That Shaped the Country
Patrice Dutil and David MacKenzie
One hundred years ago, Canadians went to the polls to decide the fate of their country in an election that raised issues vital to Canada's national independence and its place in the world. Canadians faced a clear choice between free trade with the United States and fidelity to the British Empire, and the decisions they made in September 1911 helped shape Canada's political and economic history for the rest of the century. Canada 1911 revisits and re-examines this momentous turn in Canadian history, when Canadians truly found themselves at a parting of the ways. It was Canada's first great modern election and one of the first expressions of the birth of modern Canada. The poet Rudyard Kipling famously wrote at the time that this election was nothing less than a fight for Canada's soul. This book will explain why.
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Elusive Destiny: The Political Vocation of John Napier Turner
Paul Litt
Elusive Destiny reveals the inner workings of Liberal Party politics in their heyday as charted through the meteoric rise and fall of John Napier Turner. Drawing on extensive interviews, including several with John Turner himself, this engrossing work highlights Turner's time as Minister of Justice and Finance, exposing his deep clashes with Trudeau over language rights, social spending, and Quebec. Perhaps the book's greatest achievement is that it answers one of the prevailing mysteries of Canadian politics: how did the Liberal Party's star apprentice of the 1970s become its also-ran of the 1980s?
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Telling it to the Judge: Taking Native History to Court
Arthur J. Ray
Arthur Ray's extensive knowledge in the history of the fur trade and Native economic history brought him into the courts as an expert witness in the mid-1980s. For over twenty-five years he has been a part of landmark litigation concerning treaty rights, Aboriginal title, and Métis rights. In Telling It to the Judge, Ray recalls lengthy courtroom battles over lines of evidence, historical interpretation, and philosophies of history, reflecting on the problems inherent in teaching history in the adversarial courtroom setting. Told with charm and based on extensive experience, Telling It to the Judge is a unique narrative of courtroom strategy in the effort to obtain constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and treaty rights.
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Frontier Cattle Ranching in the Land and Times of Charlie Russell
Warren M. Elofson
Warren Elofson debunks the myth of the American "wild west" and the Canadian "mild west" by demonstrating that cattlemen on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel shared a common experience. Focusing on Montana, Southern Alberta, Southern Saskatchewan, and the well-known figure of Charlie Russell — an artist and storyteller — Elofson examines the lives of cowboys and ranch owners, looking closely at the prevalence of drunkenness, prostitution, gunplay, rustling, and vigilante justice in both Canada and the United States.
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