A biographer is, in a sense, the ghostwriter of someone else’s life, trying to keep out of the way but inevitably leaving an imprint and being changed in the enterprise, and in her memoir Ghost Stories: On Writing Biography (May), biographer Judith Adamson tells the ghost’s side of the story. The HBC Brigades: Packhorses to the Pacific (May), by Nancy Marguerite Anderson, is lively recounting of the tough men and heroic but overworked packhorses who broke open B.C. to the big business of the 19th-century fur trade. In Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found (April), Ellen Anderson Penno structures a story of mourning, loss, despair and love through the lens of the classic medical text Gray's Anatomy, showing readers what becomes of those who must rebuild their lives after tragedy strikes.
An intergenerational source of wisdom and knowledge, Mitji-Let's Eat!: Mi'kmaq Recipes from Sikniktuk (April), by Margaret Augustine and Dr Lauren Beck, combines a cultural history of Mi'kmaw cuisine with a practical cookbook. Reconstructed from hours of unpublished interviews and hundreds of archival and personal documents, Nahlah Ayed tells a story about the ravaging costs of war in The War We Won Apart (June), but more than that, this is a story about love: two secret agents who were supposed to land in enemy territory together, but were fated to fight the war apart. And take a trip across British Columbia with Points of Interest: In Search of the Places, People, and Stories of BC (April), edited by David Beers and andrea bennett, an anthology marking The Tyee’s 20th anniversary with pieces published over the last two decades and including the distinct perspectives of some of the region’s most celebrated writers.
The Raptors’ story is an underdog story—and the same is true for their greatest superfan, Nav Bhatia in the memoir The Heart of a Superfan: A memoir of grit, love, family and basketball (February). Kate Black’s Big Mall (February) is a phenomenology of the mall: If the mall makes us feel bad, why do we keep going back? In a world poisoned by capitalism, is shopping what makes life worth living? And in Water Confidential: A Memoir about First Nations’ Drinking Water and Justice Denied (March), Susan Blacklin shares her experiences with fundraising, activism and lobbying work, emphasizing that ensuring safe drinking water to each and every First Nations community should be the top priority toward reconciliation with Indigenous people of Canada.
In her collection of essays, Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas (June), Gloria Blizzard explores the deep waters of dislocation in the spaces where art, music, spirit, ecology, race, and culture collide. In More Richly in Earth: A Poet's Search for Mary MacLeod (May) an act of recovery and restoration, Canadian poet and novelist Marilyn Bowering pieces together the puzzle of radically different accounts of MacLeod’s life, returning to the places the bard once lived with the help of contemporary Scottish Gaelic poets and scholars. And in Reservations (April), by Steve Burgess, a smart and sharply funny interrogation of our right to roam, Burgess looks into the traveller’s soul, sharing the stories of some of his most personally-significant travels, from Rome to Tana Toraja, and looking to studies and experts around the world for insight into why we travel and how we could do it better.
In Apocalypse Child (March), Carly Butler revisits a childhood shaped by white evangelicalism and conspiracy theories, and reclaims her identity as a queer, Mexican-Indigenous, Canadian mother. The debut memoir from award-winning journalist Morgan Campbell, My Fighting Family (January) is an incredible history of a family’s battles across generations, a hilarious and emotional coming-of-age story, and a powerful reckoning with what it means to be Black in Canada—particularly when you have strong American roots. And Good Food, Healthy Planet: Cooking to Eat Well and Live Sustainably (April), by Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma, is a refreshing, relaxed guide to the occasionally overwhelming yet absolutely necessary work of cooking for ourselves and saving the planet, one dish at a time.
From Denise Chong, bestselling author of The Concubine’s Children and The Girl in the Picture, comes Out of Darkness: Rumana Monzur's Journey through Betrayal, Tyranny and Abuse (April), a political, social and cultural portrait of domestic abuse in times of cultural turmoil, and the Bangladeshi woman whose irrepressible spirit found light in sudden darkness. Noting that he has never felt that his subjectivity was universal, Wayde Compton advocates for the importance of understanding your own history and positionality, and for letting go of the idea of a common aesthetic in Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics (February). And through the eyes and work of individuals who are bringing species back from the precipice, in Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction (April), Sarah Cox delivers both an urgent message and a fresh perspective on how we can protect biodiversity and begin to turn things around.
An examination of the unrelenting housing crisis Canadians find ourselves facing, by Balsillie Prize finalist and CBC Radio host Gregor Craigie, Our Crumbling Foundation (March) offers real-life solutions from around the world and hope for new housing innovation in the face of seemingly impossible obstacles. In Always On Call (March), the long-awaited sequel to Always Pack a Candle, intrepid public health nurse Marion Crook juggles marriage, children, and a vast array of patients and cases in rural British Columbia in the 1970s. In Beneath the Surface of Things (April), Wade Davis brings his unique cultural perspective to such varied topics as the demonization of coca, the sacred plant of the Inca; the Great War and the birth of modernity; the British conquest of Everest; the endless conflict in the Middle East; reaching beyond climate fear and trepidation; on the meaning of the sacred.
International humanitarian icon and bestselling author General Roméo Dallaire guides readers on a crucial and inspiring journey from past wars through post-modern conflict toward a vision of lasting peace in The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey (April). An unusual mix of history and story, Kristen den Hartog’s The Roosting Box (February) is an exquisitely written history of the early years of Toronto’s Christie Street Hospital and how war reshaped Canadian society, offering deeply personal perspectives on healing in the aftermath of war. In Dinner on Monster Island (February), an unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lamba Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of monsters and what it means to be different.
Activist, community organizer and social worker, Farzana Doctor (who is also a novelist), has created 52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life for Caregivers, Activists and Helping Professionals (March), a practical guide to self-care and community care, written for those who are often the first to help others, but the last to seek help themselves. Escape to Clayoquot Sound: Finding Home in a Wild Place (March), by John Dowd and Bea Dowd, is the couple’s affectionate retrospective of their decade spent living off the grid in a coastal paradise for paddlers, whale watchers, and naturalists. Seeking Asylum (March), by Toula Drimonis, is a plea for empathy, a way of rethinking and reframing the conversation to emphasize both our common humanity and our moral and legal obligations to one another.
Historian, journalist, and author Gwynne Dyer tracks down the world’s top climate scientists to discuss the extraordinary measures we must contemplate to counter the irreversible effects of climate change in Intervention Earth (March). From bestselling true-crime author Peter Edwards and Governor General's Award-winning playwright Kevin Loring, two sons of Lytton, BC, which burned to the ground in 2021, offer a meditation on hometown when hometown is gone in Lytton: Climate Change, Colonialism and Life Before the Fire (June). And in The Honourable John Norquay: Indigenous Premier, Canadian Statesman (April), by Gerald Friesen, Norquay’s life story ignites contemporary conversations around the nature of empire and Canada’s own imperial past.
Optimistic in spirit yet pragmatic in approach, Nadina Galle writes persuasively that the future of urban life depends on balancing the natural world with the technology that can help sustain it, The Nature of Our Cities (June) marking the emergence of an invigorating, prescient new talent in nature writing. Is logic a good tool for making decisions? Can it make us better listeners and help us find coherence in views that we disagree with? Is Sherlock Holmes actually good at logic? Patrick Girard addresses these and other questions by presenting logic as the guardian of coherence in Logic in the Wild (May). And in Fungal (June), Ariel Gordon explores her fascination with all mushrooms, and not just those you can eat, taking the reader through ditches and puddles in search of morels, through the hallways of a mushroom factory, down city sidewalks and beside riverbanks as she considers things found and fungal.
Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes (May), by Adrienne Gruber, is a revelatory collection of personal essays that subverts the stereotypes and transcends the platitudes of family life to examine motherhood with blistering insight. As Toronto marks the fiftieth year of its first gay rights march comes Pride (April), by photographer Angel John Guerra, with text by Michael Rowe, a celebration of those who march with pride. At once a deeply personal chronicle of a fascinating life and a measured, mature reflection on some of the most cataclysmic events of the past century, Michael Hadley’s Boxing the Compass (March) is an unforgettable journey that will leave readers reflecting on the experiences that affect us all. And calling attention to the long history of grappling with pausing in writing on plagues and pandemics, Julian Jason Haladyn explores the pause in its social, political, and personal manifestations over the extended pandemic in The Pause: Experiencing Time Interrupted (May).
Filled with interesting facts and little-known pieces of trivia, John Haney’s Nothing Trivial (April) explains the creation story of the one of the best-selling board games in history, Trivial Pursuit. In Restless in Sleep Country (May), Paul Huebener pulls back the covers on cultural representations of sleep to show how they are entangled with issues of colonialism, homelessness, consumer culture, technology and privacy, the exploitation of labour, and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. AndThe Consulting Trap (April), by Chris Hurl and Leah B. Werner, does a deep dive into how governments have become hooked on private consultancy firms with dire consequences for democratic decision-making, public accountability and accessible public services.
Svetlana Ischenko tackles the creative tension between her identity as a Ukrainian poet, with deeply Ukrainian sensibilities, and that of an immigrant poet enthused by her adopted country in Nucleus: A Poet's Lyrical Journey from Ukraine to Canada (January). Sophie Kaftal & Bobby Zielinski, artisanal jam makers and founders of the celebrated shop Kitten and the Bear, offer over 90 recipes to create your own sweet world of preserves and baked goods in Kitten and the Bear Cookbook (April). And for readers of Ross Gay and listeners of Therapy for Black Girls, Chelene Knight’s Let It Go (January), is a reflective examination of Black self-love and joy that guides the reader to ditch old beliefs, achieve difficult unlearnings and redefine language, relationships and love to find their own unique path to joy.
In the award-winning School of Racism (December), Catherine Larochelle demonstrates how Quebec’s school system has, from its inception and for decades, taught and endorsed colonial domination and racism, and S.E. Stewart’s English translation extends its crucial lesson to readers worldwide, bridging English- and French-Canadian histories to deliver a better understanding of Canada’s past and present identity. Sharp and intensely candid, entertaining, and deeply poignant, Katherine Leyton weaves her own experience of becoming a mother to her son (the shocks, the strangeness, and the pleasures) with historical research and cultural commentary in Motherlike (March). And fragmented and hybrid in style, On Comics and Grief (March), by Dale Jacobs, examines a year in comic book publishing and the author’s grief surrounding his mother’s death, the book connects grief, memory, nostalgia, personal history, theory, and multiple lines of comics studies inquiry in relation to the comic books of 1976.
Braiding together personal, collective, and historical explorations of what it means to “go west,” Amy Kaler’s Half-Light: Westbound on a Hot Planet (May) offers deep reflections on the meaning of life, middle age, and climate catastrophe. Window Shopping for God (May) is a memoir by Deborah Kimmett, whose play Miracle Mother was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for drama, and who happens to be your average people-pleasing, meaning-of-life-seeking, downward-facing-dog-posing stand-up comedian. A richly illustrated autobiography through dialogue, Raymond Klibanskyi: A Life in Philosophy (June), by Raymond Klibansky and Georges Leroux, translated by Peter Feldstein, with a foreword by Alberto Manguel, is a a portrait of a heroic figure in twentieth-century philosophy, a model for a younger generation who can find in his scholarship an admirable example of virtue in the service of peace.
In the memoir Permission to Land: A Memoir of Loss, Discovery, and Identity (February), Judy LeBlanc delves into a lyrical and moving exploration of her Coast Salish heritage, unravelling the deep-rooted consequences of erasure that have shaped her family. Jessica J. Lee, the prize-winning and bestselling author of Two Trees Make a Forest turns to the lives of plants entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared future in Dispersals (March). And Shawna Lemay’s Apples on the Windowsill (January) is a series of meditations on still life, photography, beauty, and marriage, full of personal reflections, charming anecdotes, and the history behind the art of still lifes, a lyrical memoir taking us from Edmonton to Rome to museums all over North America as Lemay discusses the craft of writing, the ups and downs of being married to a painter, and her focus on living a life in art and in beauty.
In They Called Him a Radical (March), Vera Maloff shares the fascinating memoirs of her grandfather, noted Doukhobor pacifist and philosopher Pete Maloff, written during his years under house arrest for peaceful protests. Based on interviews with twenty-one key decision-makers and participants, many of whom are speaking publicly for the first time, Unwinnable Peace (April), by Tim Martin, recounts the personal and professional challenges faced by individuals deeply committed to securing and rebuilding Kandahar province. Indigenous Legalities, Pipeline Viscosities (February), by Tyler McCreary, examines the relationship between the Wet’suwet’en nation and pipeline development, showing how colonial governments and corporations seek to control Indigenous claims, and how the Wet'suwet'en resist.
As a Black man charged with the duty to serve, Keith Merith delivers an evocative perspective on all sides of policing by providing the opportunity to walk in his shoes in A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer’s Memoir (March). For 50 years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario farm, Lambsquarters, and in Shepherd’s Sight (March) she shares the crises, pleasures, and challenges of farm life over the course of a year. In The Call Is Coming From Inside the House (April), a series of intimate and humorous dispatches, Allyson McOuat examines her identity as a queer woman, and as a mother, through the lens of the pop culture moments in the ’80s and ’90s that molded her identity.
The updated edition of a Toronto classic, Stroll (May), by Shawn Micallef, illustrated by Marlena Zuber, meanders around some of the city’s unique neighbuorhoods and considers what makes a city walkable. Published for the first time ever, The Blue Castle: The Original Manuscript (May) is the first draft of The Blue Castle exactly as L. M. Montgomery originally wrote it, with critical context from leading Montgomery scholar Carolyn Strom Collins. Hop on the Manitoba Food History Truck and journey into the province’s past with engaging essays and easy-to-follow recipes for kjielkje and schmauntfat, snow goose tidbits, chicken karaage, the Salisbury House flapper pie, duck fat smashed potatoes, Ichi Ban cocktails, pork inihaw, and more in mmm... Manitoba (April), by Kimberley Moore and Janis Thiessen.
With the wide-reaching scope of Desmond Cole’s The Skin We’re In and the introspective snapshot of life in Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Matthew R. Morris’s Black Boys Like Me (January) is an unflinching debut that invites readers to create braver spaces and engage in crucial conversations around race and belonging. Jenna Butler writes, of the pieces curated by Angel Mota in Beyond the Park: An Anthology of Ecological Experiences (May), that its authors “speak volumes about the nuanced histories, environmental complexities, and enduring narratives of the places we call home.” Thoughtful, observant, and fun, Pamela Mulloy’s Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel (April) is the perfect blend of research and personal experience that, like a good train ride, will whisk you into another world.
Award-winning author Christina Myers navigates the uncharted territory of midlife in a time of rapid social, cultural, and environmental change in Halfway Home (May). Looking to uncover and tell new stories about trauma and recovery in All Sky, Mirror Ocean: A Healing Manifesto (January), visual artist Brad Necyk explores his own histories with Bipolar Affective Disorder and childhood medical trauma alongside those of groups dealing with grief and loss: communities in Iqaluit aggrieved by suicide; head and neck cancer patients in Edmonton; and psychiatric inpatients at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. A raw and intimate memoir, Called By Mother Earth (February), by Greg F. Naterer, takes readers inside the mind of a father who embarked on a ten-month journey through rugged and remote terrain in British Columbia in search of his missing son.
A powerful, lyrical collection of essays from Lorri Neilsen Glenn, award-winning author of Following the River, The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been (April) explores the pivotal moments in her life, and how art and nature have shaped her. Rough Magic: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder (April), by Miranda Newman, is a harrowing but ultimately uplifting memoir about living with borderline personality disorder—the most stigmatized diagnosis in mental health. From leaving Communist Poland to enduring the demands of medical school, through living with a long undiagnosed mental illness to discovering the fascinating field of genetics, plunging into the pressures of prenatal diagnosis and finally finding the tools of writing and of narrative medicine, Margaret Nowaczyk shares a journey that is both inspiring and harrowing in Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery (June).
A series of short nonfiction pieces, Laser Quit Smoking Massage (April) explores the peculiarities of the urban and rural centres of the Canadian West, Cole Nowicki's witty, insightful, and ever curious reportage exploring the evolving states of community, family, and belonging. Work Less (January), by Jon Peirce, proposes ways to reduce work hours and keep workers happier, healthier, and more productive. And Skater Girl (March) is a collection of intensely personal essays, an archaeology of the self, Robin Pacific sifting through the midden of consciousness to find shells, potsherds, a broken piece of mirror.
From Jane Philpott, one of Canada's most respected and high-profile health professionals (and former federal Minister of Health), Health for All: A Doctor's Prescription for a Healthier Canada (April) is a timely, practical, ambitious, and deeply personal call for action on health that sets out the roadmap to our future well-being. Misty Pratt’s All In Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women's Mental Health (May) is a provocative, deeply personal book exploring how women experience mental health care differently than men—and lays out how the system must change for women to flourish. To tell the story of his life in memoir Crooked Teeth (May), Danny Ramadan must revisit dark corners of his past he’d rather forget and unearth memories of a city he can no longer return to.
Political equity advocates and academics often argue that we must elect more women, but what difference does it make if we do? What Women Represent (May), by Erica Rayment, shows that women can and do influence the issues raised and the decisions made in parliamentary debate and decision-making. Mourning the death of his wife, a struggling single dad seeks to bring joy back to his family after a long period of trauma in Never Better: Two Kids, Their Dad, and His Wife's Ghost (February), by Gonzalo Riedel. And in Bead Talk (May), editors Carmen Robertson, Judy Anderson, and Katherine Boyer gather conversations, interviews, essays, and full-colour reproductions of beadwork from expert and emerging artists, academics, and curators to illustrate the importance of beading in contemporary Indigenous arts.
Popular motivational speaker and entertainer David Roche’s latest essay collection Standing at the Back Door of Happiness (April) explores the beauty found in unusual places with elegant humour and compassion. After the Flames (January), by Jonathan R. Rose, is about one of the world's most famous burn victims: his incredible survival, his nightmarish path to recovery that helped revolutionize medical treatment for burn victims worldwide, the fame thrust upon him after he was declared a hero from the media, and the tumultuous years that followed, most of which were spent under the microscope of an unforgiving public eye. And in Storm of Progress: Climate Change, AI, and the Roots of Our Dangerous Ethical Myopia (January), Wade Rowland writes that the worst of global crises are the fruits of a basic error made at the dawn of the scientific revolution: in assuming the worst about human nature and fashioning a civilization based on those false assumptions, some of early modern philosophy's most revered thinkers have set us on a dangerous path.
Bestselling economist Jeff Rubin warns that the shock inflation of 2021 is the front of a perfect storm of war, supply-chain disruption, geopolitical realignment, domestic upheaval, and energy scarcity that will change everything in A Map of the New Normal (May). Exposing the complexities and limits of resilience, What the World Might Look Like (May), by Susie O'Brien, questions the concept of resilience, highlighting how Black and Indigenous novelists can offer different decolonial ways of thinking about and with resilience to imagine things “otherwise.” And featuring brilliant thinkers from coast to coast to coast, and others from around the world who now call Canada home, Roseann O’Reilly Runte‘s Canadians Who Innovate (May) paints a promising picture of a cleaner, healthier, more innovative future for us all.
In The Pain Project (April), ten years after her husband Simon Paradis’s catastrophic injury, author Kara Stanley embarks with him on a journey to understand his chronic pain and find pathways into joy and relief. In 2018, Tony Robinson-Smith and his wife bought dugout canoes and paddled down the Sepik, Papua New Guinea’s longest river, traveling with local guides and staying in their villages, where they ate smoked piranha and sago pancakes, heard tales of river gods and sorcerers, marvelled at Rainbow bee-eaters and cat-size flying foxes, sank in a tropical storm, got lost in mosquito-infested swamplands, and hid from pirates in mangroves near the sea, all of this and more recounted in Of Canoes and Crocodiles (June). Laced with humour and wry observations, The Death of Tony (March), by Leacock Medal nominee Antanas Sileika, is a tribute to the immigrant experience, a primer for Canadian readers on the history and culture of an Lithuania, and above all a sensitive exploration of its author's bifurcated identity.
In Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre (May), Niigaan Sinclair's debut collection of stories, observations, and thoughts about Winnipeg, the place he calls "ground zero" of Canada's future, read about the complex history and contributions of this place alongside the radical solutions to injustice and violence found here, presenting solutions for a country that has forgotten principles of treaty and inclusivity. Marie Uguay occupies a special place in Québec literature, her poetry winning her numerous and fervent readers, and Journal (January)—translated by Jennifer Moxley—written in the years before her 1981 death from cancer at only 26, chronicles the last years of her life and the story of an impossible and secret love. Nowhere, Exactly (March), by M.G. Vassanji, examines with exquisite sensitivity the space between identity and belonging, the immigrant experience of both loss and gain, and the weight of memory and nostalgia, guilt and hope felt by so many of those who leave their homes in search of new ones.
For fans of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Maurice Vellekoop’s I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is an epic graphic memoir about a queer illustrator surviving his intensely Christian childhood in 1970s Toronto. Across cultures, democracies struggle with intolerant groups, misinformation, social media conspiracies, and extreme populists, and in Irrational Publics and the Fate of Democracy (June), Stephen Ward combines history and evolutionary psychology for a comprehensive view of the problem. The truth has always been that Dirty Dancing was never just a teen romance or a dance movie—it also explored abortion rights, class, and political activism, with a smattering of light crime-solving—as Andrea Warner explores in The Time of My Life (April).
The recent pandemic accelerated an existing trend among urban Canadians to move to the country, and for anyone setting out in that direction, or dreaming of doing so, Tom Wayman’s The Road to Appledore: Or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place (May) is rewarding reading. A third-generation British Columbia logger returns to the forests of Haida Gwaii, to witness a way of life in the grip of change in The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era (May), by Aaron Williams. Part vital public documentary, part probing memoir, North of Nowhere: Song of a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner (June), by Marie Wilson, breathes fresh air into the possibilities of reconciliation amid the persistent legacy of residential schools, and is a call to everyone to view the important and continuing work of reconciliation not as an obligation but as a gift.
In Mohawk Warriors, Hunters & Chiefs (January), modern Mohawk artist, Juno Award-winner and best-selling author Tom Wilson Tehoháhake further explores his identity through a stunning collection of paintings that explore what it means to be removed and reconnected with your cultural heritage. The Only Constant (March), by Najwa Zebian, is a wise and tender guide to coming to terms with impermanence and recognizing that change is the force that allows you to become you. And through humorous anecdotes and compelling stories, trail-blazing George Zukerman recounts his life in music as concert bassoonist and impresario in Have Bassoon, Will Travel (June).