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Biographies and autobiographies

Raincoast Jews : integration in British Columbia

  • Author: Nördlinger McDonnell, Lillooet
    Date:
    Created
    2014
    Summary:

    Explores the lives and contributions of five leading Jews living in British Columbia between 1860 and 1970. Cecelia Davies Sylvester, Hannah Director, Leion Koerner, Harry Adaskin, and Nathan Nemetz are memorable for their contributions which shaped communities in British Columbia.

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): Cultural assimilation | Jews
    Original Publisher: Vancouver, BC, Canada, Midtown Press
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9780988110120, 0988110121
    Collection(s)/Series: Here in BC

No way to run : a mother and son story of surviving abuse

  • Author: Crichton, Holly
    Date:
    Created
    2016
    Summary:

    On September 3, 2010, the RCMP in Grande Prairie, Alberta, received a 911 call from Mat Crichton about a shooting on a local farm. Seconds later, miles from home, Holly Crichton got a shocking call from her son. "I just shot Dad," Mat told her. The violent end to a violent situation came as no surprise to the community; Holly and her sons had been living in terror from the abuse of her husband for many years. This is Holly Crichton's story of tenacity, hope, love and courage and a remarkable testament to the power of community.

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): Crichton, Holly | Mothers and sons | Trials | Trials (Manslaughter) | Victims of family violence
    Original Publisher: Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia, Caitlin Press
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9781987915181, 1987915186, 9781987915259, 1987915259
    Collection(s)/Series: Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs

Still : a memoir of love, loss, and motherhood

  • Author: Hansen, Emma
    Date:
    Created
    2020
    Summary:

    "A moving, candid account of one woman's experience with stillbirth. Emma Hansen is 39 weeks and six days pregnant when she feels her baby go quiet inside of her. At the hospital, her worst fears are confirmed: doctors explain that her baby has died, and she will need to deliver him, still. Hansen gives birth to her son, Reid, amidst an avalanche of grief. Nine days later, she publishes a candid essay on her website sharing photos from the delivery room. Much to her surprise, her essay goes viral, sparking positive reactions around the world. Still shares what comes next: a struggle with grief and confusion alongside a desire to better understand stillbirth, which is experienced by more than two million women annually, but rarely talked about in public. At once honest, brave, and uplifting, Still is about one woman's search for her own definition of motherhood, even as she faces one of life's greatest challenges: learning to live after loss."--

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs | Hansen, Emma | Loss (Psychology) | Motherhood | Mothers | Pregnant women | Psychological aspects | Stillbirth
    Original Publisher: Vancouver, British Columbia, Berkeley, [California], Greystone Books Ltd.
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9781771643924, 1771643927
    Collection(s)/Series: Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs

The suitcase and the jar : travels with a daughter's ashes

  • Author: Livingston, Becky
    Date:
    Created
    2018
    Summary:

    In 2010 a brain tumour took the life of Becky Livingston's daughter, Rachel. Twenty-three years old and an avid traveller, it was her dying wish to keep traveling. Eighteen months later, still reeling from her loss, Livingston sets off overseas, alone, untethered, and determined to continue her daughter's journey. She felt certain that seeing the world through Rachel's eyes would bring her some peace. In her suitcase - Rachel's ashes, heavy but compact - travelled with her. With no agenda or timeline, Livingston travelled the world for twenty-six months - Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, India, England, Ireland and North America - leaving her daughter's ashes wherever she went. It was a ritual. Merging her daughter's soul with the elements, Livingston gradually finds points of belonging for them both. 2018.

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): Livingston, Becky | Mothers | Mothers and daughters | Parental grief | Travel
    Original Publisher: Halfmoon Bay, Caitlin Press
    Language(s): English
    Collection(s)/Series: Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs

Gently to Nagasaki

  • Author: Kogawa, Joy
    Date:
    Created
    2016
    Summary:

    "Gently to Nagasaki is a spiritual pilgrimage, an exploration both communal and intensely personal. Set in Vancouver and Toronto, the outposts of Slocan and Coaldale, the streets of Nagasaki and the high mountains of Shikoku, Japan, it is also an account of a remarkable life. As a child during WWII, Joy Kogawa was interned with her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government. Her acclaimed novel Obasan, based on that experience, brought her literary recognition and played a critical role in the movement for redress. Kogawa knows what it means to be classified as the enemy, and she seeks urgently to get beyond false and dangerous distinctions of "us" and "them." Interweaving the events of her own life with catastrophes like the bombing of Nagasaki and the massacre by the Japanese imperial army at Nanking, she wrestles with essential questions like good and evil, love and hate, rage and forgiveness, determined above all to arrive at her own truths. Poetic and unflinching, this is a longawaited memoir from one of Canada's most distinguished literary elders."--

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): Authors, Canadian (English) | Biography | Canada | Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945 | Japanese | Japanese Canadians | Kogawa, Joy | Race relations
    Original Publisher: Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia, Caitlin Press
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9781987915150, 1987915151, 9781987915266, 1987915267
    Collection(s)/Series: Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs

The smallest objective

  • Author: Kirsch, Sharon
    Date:
    Created
    2020
    Summary:

    "A lantern slide, a faded recipe book, a postcard from Mexico, a nugget of fool's gold -- such are the clues available to the narrator of The Smallest Objective as she excavates for buried treasure in her family home. Together, these objects belonging to several Jewish personalities afford an intriguing vantage point on 20th-century Montreal -- from a Runyonesque character well-known by the city's gossip columnists to a Lithuanian botanist versed in the fossil record to a young woman whose newfound opportunities mirror the promise and ambiguities of the city itself. As the narrator struggles with her mother's failing memory and final decline, unexpected secrets are revealed and expired truths exposed."--

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): Biography | Family secrets | Kirsch, Sharon | Mothers and daughters
    Original Publisher: Vancouver, BC, New Star Books
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9781554201556, 1554201551
    Collection(s)/Series: Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs

Umingmak : Stuart Hodgson and the birth of the modern Arctic

  • Author: Ootes, Jake
    Date:
    Created
    2020
    Summary:

    "In 1967, Stuart Hodgson, a pugnacious British Columbia labour leader, was the newly-appointed Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, responsible for establishing a fledgling government in the frontier capital of Yellowknife. Written by his former aide and confidante, Umingmak is a first-hand account of Hodgson's indefatigable and often controversial efforts to introduce self-government and improve the lives of Northerners."--

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): Employees | Hodgson, Stuart
    Original Publisher: New Westminster, BC, Canada, Tidewater Press
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9781777010119
    Collection(s)/Series: Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs

Christmas in Mariposa : sketches of Canada's legendary little town

  • Author: Lamb, Jamie
    Date:
    Created
    2019
    Summary:

    "Many Canadians grew up in small towns, or at least in neighbourhoods that acted like small towns. But what if you grew up in Canada's most famous small town--Stephen Leacock's Mariposa? This was the world that journalist Jamie Lamb was raised in, the actual place that inspired Leacock's Canadian classic, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, over a century ago. The Mariposa of Lamb's time was slightly different, yet it still embodied the heart and soul, the eccentricities and the bizarre local customs of Leacock's sketches. Christmas in Mariposa is a celebration of that town and its people. It tells of secret gardens, special rinks, oddball hotels, remarkable foods, fast boats and sunken aircraft, Christmas Eve fireworks, and the best Christmas office party in the country. It describes a place where Christmas could be celebrated in summer with a Baby Jesus look-alike contest, Canada's only officially sanctioned reindeer races, and the Three Wise Men arriving with gifts by parachute. It transports readers to a world where where Gordie Howe once dropped by for a skate, and Glenn Gould regularly came to eat a well-done steak and six Parker House rolls slathered in butter at a Chinese restaurant. Jamie Lamb's Mariposa is timeless and quintessentially Canadian."--

    Genre:
    Biographies and autobiographies
    Subject(s): Canadian wit and humor (English) | Lamb, Jamie
    Original Publisher: Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Heritage House Publishing
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9781772032857, 1772032859
    Collection(s)/Series: Adult Fiction
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