It’s time to kick-off one of Edmonton’s favourite events of the year, the Heritage Festival, that runs from August 1st to 3rd. Each year, Edmontonians walk, bike, or ride the bus down to Hawrelak Park to enjoy the weather and take part in this wonderful showcase of Canada’s multicultural heritage. There will be music, dancing, and artwork and there will be food—lots of of delicious food.
Although AU Press can’t offer up a delicious delicacy like the Mango Loco offered at the Guatemala site (I don’t think you’ll want to miss that one), we can offer you a trip across time and space to explore the many-faceted history and culture of Canada.
Xwelíqwiya: The Life of a Stó:lō Matriarch
At once a memoir, an oral history, and an “insider” ethnography presented by the subject herself, the story of Rena Point Bolton, a Stó:lō artist and craftswoman, will inspire others to use traditional knowledge and experience to build successful and creative lives.
Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains
Author Jack Brink, devoted 25 years of his career to “The Jump.” Here, he chronicles the cunning, danger, and triumph in the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported. His masterful blend of scholarship and public appeal is rare in any discipline.
Man Proposes, God Disposes: Recollections of a French Pioneer
In 1910, young Pierre Maturié bid farewell to his comfortable bourgeois existence in rural France and travelled to the Athabasca region in search of independence, adventure, and newfound prosperity. His memoir is a moving portrait of pioneer life in northern Alberta.
Dustship Glory
In this new edition of a classic prairie novel, Andreas Schroeder fictionalizes the true story of Tom Sukanen’s wild scheme to build an ocean-going ship in the middle of a wheat field in Saskatchewan. Set during the hardships of the “Dirty Thirties,” Dustship Glory presents us with one man’s mythic effort to escape both the drought and pestilence of his time, as well as his own personal struggle to be free.
C’est le temps d’en parler: L’historie de Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle
La biographie de Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle raconte la vie d’une jeune Canadienne d’humble origine qui tombe en amour avec le curé de son village, et qui en subit les terribles conséquences pour le reste de ses jours. L’histoire de cette femme s’étend sur plus d’un siècle (de 1858 à 1973), une période qui voit surgir plusieurs événements déterminants de l’histoire du Canada dont la Grande Dépression. Also available in English: A Woman of Valour
Union Power: Solidarity and Struggle in Niagara
Patrias and Savage argue that union power—power not built on profit, status, or prestige—relies on the twin concepts of struggle and solidarity: the solidarity of the shared interests of the working class and the struggle to achieve common goals. They trace the evidence of these twin concepts through the history of the Niagara region’s labour movement.
Film and the City: The Urban Imaginary in Canadian Cinema
In this, the first comprehensive study of Canadian film and “urbanity”—the totality of urban culture and life—Melnyk argues that Canada is no longer being primarily defined through the lens of rural nostalgia.
Provincial Solidarities: A History of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour
A pioneering study written in clear and forceful prose, this is the untold story of provincial labour solidarities that succeeded in overcoming divisions and defeats to raise the status of working men and women within New Brunswick society. Also available in French: Solidarités provinciales
Photo credit: Taiko drumming by the Kita No Taiko group at the Heritage Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (https://commons.wikimedia.org)
