History

Canada’s residential school system for Indigenous children is now recognized as a grievous historic wrong committed against First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. Through historical photographs, documents and first-person narratives from people who survived residential schools, this book offers an account of the injustice of this period in Cana …

Stories of the hopeful, brave people who fled slavery and made Toronto their home.

“An engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s.” — Lawrence Hill, bestselling author of The Illegal

The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! explores Toronto’s role as a destination for thousands of freedom se …

Beginning in the 18th century, Black men and women arrived from the U.S. and settled in various parts of Nova Scotia. In the 1800s, a small Black community had developed just north of Halifax on the shores of the Bedford Basin. The community became known as Africville and grew to about 400 people. Its residents fished, farmed, operated small retail …

Prior to the Second World War, Canada's Jewish community was well established in many cities, including Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. As war grew closer, anti-Semitism across Europe was increasing. Hitler's Nazis were spreading hatred and violence towards Jews across Germany. At first, Jews were allowed to leave Germany and thousands escaped to s …

When Poland is invaded in WWII, the Gold family sticks together in horrific conditions to survive

It’s 1942, and the Nazis are rounding up Jews in the Polish town of Pinczow for transport to the Treblinka death camp. Leib and Hanna Gold thought they had more time to develop an escape plan. While Leib leaves to negotiate a hiding place, Hanna and …

She had expected to hate him. But hate, just like forgiveness, can be complicated.

The true story of nineteen-year-old Jordana Lebowitz’s time at the trial of Oskar Groening, known as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz, a man charged with being complicit in the death of more than 300,000 Jews. A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Jordana was still no …

When the Nazis came to power in Europe, the lives of homosexuals came to be ruled by fear as raids, arrests, prison sentences and expulsions became the daily reality. When the concentration camps were built, homosexuals were imprisoned along with Jews. The pink triangle, sewn onto prison uniforms, became the symbol of their persecution. Branded by …

Adapted from the Emmy-winning, multimedia interactive documentary of the same name, Highrise is an in-depth exploration of the world's highrises and the people who live inside them.

From the multi-story dwellings of Ancient Rome to the soaring glass skyscrapers of today, humans have used highrises for thousands of years to house the poor, protect t …