Of Canoes and Crocodiles is a story of adventure in the remote and threatened landscapes of Papua New Guinea. In 2018, Tony Robinson-Smith and his wife Nadya Ladouceur bought dugout canoes and paddled down the Sepik, the country’s longest river. Traveling with local guides and staying in their villages, 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 stor... [READ MORE]

Braiding together personal, collective, and historical explorations of what it means to “go west,” Amy Kaler’s Half-Light: Westbound on a Hot Planet offers deep reflections on the meaning of life, middle age, and climate catastrophe. Her memoir weaves together three strands: living with the knowledge of one’s own aging and mortality; the slow-moving catastrophes of climate change; and the human history of the North American settler west, especially ... [READ MORE]

All the World’s a Mall details a whirlwind world tour in five stops: Edmonton, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and Casablanca, chosen because they are home to some of the biggest malls on the planet. Cities within cities, these malls are wonderlands where visitors come from afar to: walk, eat, sleep, watch, swim, ride, photograph, and, of course, shop. With a curious, critical, and sometimes ironic eye, Swiss journalist Rinny Gremaud recounts her travels to and through... [READ MORE]

How to Clean a Fish describes an extended family stay in Portugal, full of food, adventure, and the search for home. Offered the opportunity to live in Costa da Caparica for an extended period, Esmeralda Cabral jumped at the chance to return to the country of her birth. Together with her Canadian-born husband, children, and Portuguese Water Dog, Maggie, Cabral makes new and nostalgic discoveries—a labyrinth of cobblestone alleys and beautiful painted tiles, a delicio... [READ MORE]

Using the richness of braided essays, Theresa Kishkan thinks deeply about the natural world, mourns and celebrates the aging body, gently contests recorded history, and considers art and visual phenomena. Gathering personal genealogies, medical histories, and early land surveys together with insights from music, colour theory, horticulture, and textile production, Kishkan weaves a pattern of richly textured threads, welcoming readers to share her intellectual and emotional... [READ MORE]

Setting off on foot from Winchester, Ken Haigh hikes across southern England, retracing one of the traditional routes that medieval pilgrims followed to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Walking in honour of his father, a staunch Anglican who passed away before they could begin their trip together, Haigh wonders: Is there a place in the modern secular world for pilgrimage? On his journey, he sorts through his own spiritual aimlessness while crossin... [READ MORE]

Why couldn’t I occupy the world as those model-looking women did, with their flowing hair, pulling their tiny bright suitcases as if to say, I just arrived from elsewhere, and I already belong here, and this sidewalk belongs to me?

When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved Opa’s escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942 is discovered, Naomi Lewis decides to retrace his journey to freedom. Travelling alon... [READ MORE]

Four years after Therese Greenwood and her husband moved to Fort McMurray, Alberta, their new community was shattered by one of the worst wildfires in Canadian history. As the flames approached, they had only minutes to pack, narrowly escaping a fire that would rage for weeks, burn more than 85,000 hectares and force 80,000 people to flee.

“Windburned, eyes closed, this: beneath the keening of bergs, a deeper thresh of glaciers calving, creaking with sun. Sound of earth, her bones, wide russet bowl of hips splaying open. From these sere flanks, her desiccating body, what a sea change is born.”

From the endangered Canadian boreal forest to the environmentally threatened Svalbard archipelago off the coast of Norway, Jenna Butler takes us on a sea voyage that connects continents and tra... [READ MORE]

Tony Robinson-Smith, his wife Nadya, and ten Bhutanese college students set out to run 578 kilometres (360 miles) across the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas. Joined by a stray dog, they slogged over five mountain passes, bathed in ice-clogged streams, ate over log fires, and stopped at every store, restaurant, guesthouse, and dzong to raise money for the Tarayana Foundation. The “Tara-thon” was the first endeavour of its kind and gave 350 village children th... [READ MORE]

“It was a different crow, but the same crow, you understand? Because there is only one Crow. God made them all black and identical-looking because there is no reason for them to be different birds. That’s why you can never kill a crow, because it lives forever. Crow never dies!” — James Itsi

For over 50,000 years, the Great Hunt has shaped human existence, creating a vital spiritual reality where people, animals, and the land share inti... [READ MORE]

A peasant in peaked hat and blue shirt, with trousers rolled up high above his bare knees, crossed the road and silently examined the tricycle. “You have a good horse,” he then said; “it eats nothing.” —from An Italian Pilgrimage

The 1880s was an exhilarating time for cycling pioneers like Elizabeth and her husband Joseph. As boneshakers and high-wheelers evolved into tandem tricycles and the safety bike, cycling grew from child&#... [READ MORE]

“When you educate a girl, you educate a nation.” —Malawian saying

The women of Malawi, like many other women in developing countries, struggle to find their way out of poverty and build a better life for themselves and their families. Weaving a Malawi Sunrise tells the story of Memory Chazeza’s quest to get an education and to build a school for young women. Roberta Laurie was one of many who helped Memory realize her vision of seeing y... [READ MORE]

As the South African War reached its grueling end in 1902, colonial interests at the highest levels of the British Empire hand-picked teachers from across the Commonwealth to teach the thousands of Boer children living in concentration camps. Highly educated, hard working, and often opinionated, E. Maud Graham joined the Canadian contingent of forty teachers. Her eyewitness account reveals the complexity of relations and tensions at a controversial period in the histories ... [READ MORE]

The style of my book must be in small pieces, as my life has been in pieces. (Jalal Barzanji)

From 1986 to 1988 poet and journalist Jalal Barzanji endured imprisonment and torture under Saddam Hussein's regime because of his literary and journalistic achievements-writing that openly explores themes of peace, democracy, and freedom. It was not until 1998, when he and his family took refuge in Canada, that he was able to consider speaking out fully on these topi... [READ MORE]

After tough assignments as a Canadian diplomat abroad, Nicholas Coghlan and his wife Jenny unwind by sailing Bosun Bird, a 27foot sailboat, from Cape Town, South Africa, across the South Atlantic and into the stormy winter waters around Tierra del Fuego, South America. Coghlan recounts earlier adventures in Patagonia when, taking time off from his job as a schoolteacher in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s, he and Jenny explored the region of southern Argentina and Chile over... [READ MORE]

A deep-seated questioning of her inherited religion resurfaces when Myrna Kostash chances upon the icon of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica. A historical, cultural and spiritual odyssey that begins in Edmonton, ranges around the Balkans, and plunges into a renewed vision of Byzantium in search of the Great Saint of the East delivers the author to an unexpected place-the threshold of her childhood church. An epic work of travel memoir, Prodigal Daughter sings with immediacy an... [READ MORE]

Paris remains one of the most fascinating cities in the world. It provides a measure of excellence in many areas of culture, and it is itself constantly being measured, both by its lovers and by its critics. This book presents a series of studies on the images of Paris presented by writers (mostly Canadian, from John Glassco to Mavis Gallant to Lola Lemire Tostevin), but also in such other areas as social history and personal memoir. The result is a wide-ranging discussion... [READ MORE]

Tensions leading to World War I brewed for years, and were brought to a head by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. But who was the assassin? What was his plan? Not many people know the name of Gavrilo Princip. Tony Fabijancic peels back the mystery surrounding Princip, and explores his journey to Sarajevo, his motivations, idealism, and Yugoslavianism. Fabijancic also connects Princip to the new Bosnia that emerged from the ethnic violence of the 1990s. Anyone with a... [READ MORE]

A child's face, a forgotten scent, or a distinctive flavour engages memory and inspires longing. Ken Haigh brings us tantalizingly close to his own vision of longing for a place, a people, a time, as he revisits those all-too-fleeting years as a young school teacher in the remote Himalayan village of Khaling, Bhutan. These experiences in an exotic country will leave you yearning for ancient Buddhist temples, winding mountain trails, and a simpler way of life. This memoir w... [READ MORE]