Kirjahaku

Debate still rages on about who invented baseball. But one thing is certain...it was alive and fractious in southwestern Ontario in the summer of 1949. It was a remarkable summer. For Charlie Hodge, just finishing his last year of high school, the summer of 1949 begins with great fanfare and excitement. He has made the Galt Terriers' roster and will be riding the bench with a star-studded team, many of whom had played with the major leagues. When those seasoned pros arrive in town, big things are expected, and they don't disappoint. There is the towering home run that Goody Rosen hits into the Grand River; the frozen baseball scheme that backfires; and the busload of promotional cooking oil hijacked just before game time. It all comes down to Game 7 in the Terriers' semi-final series with the Brantford Red Sox, when a convicted gambler, playing centre field that night, makes one of the most controversial plays ever seen at Dickson Park. Based on exhaustive research and extensive interviews, David Menary recreates that post-war season in Terrier Town through the eyes of Charlie Hodge. While Charlie is a fictional character, the other players are not. This is a story that will resonate with young and old alike, baseball fans or not. This is a team that became a vital part of the town, and the town an elemental part of the team. This is a time rapidly fading from memory - a summer of myths and legends. This is a story of how life could be in the small southwestern town of Galt. And all this is our heritage.

Before the American Civil War, and almost a decade before Confederation, abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass visited Galt (present-day Cambridge, Ontario), Canada West. It was mid-December 1857, and he lectured about "The Brotherhood of Nations." Douglass was a familiar figure on the lecture circuit, having helped many fugitive slaves flee to Canada through the Underground Railroad. Although Douglass had been a close associate of radical abolitionist John Brown, he also developed a friendship with President Abraham Lincoln that lasted until Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth. The lecture series that winter in Galt included other well-known speakers, but all other speeches were free to the residents of the town, except for the Douglass lecture, for which there was a 12-and-a-half cent admission charge. Proceeds helped defray travel costs for Douglass, and fund his anti-slavery newspaper in Rochester, N.Y. When he died in 1895, he was one of the best-known men in America.

Third edition softcover version of David Menary's "Gordie Howe: A Year in Galt" which highlights a pivotal year in Howe's youth - the year a young prairie boy left his home to go east to Galt, Ontario, for the 1944-45 hockey season. Away from home for the first time, he was 16 that season, and too shy to attend the local high school. Howe became a fixture with the Galt Junior A Red Wings, even though he was unable to play any league games in the OHA. The team already had a western import - Terry Cavanagh, later the mayor of Edmonton - but coach Al Murray convinced him to stay with the team to practice and play exhibition games. Howe and some of his teammates recall many of the people associated with the team from that year. Subsequent visits back to Galt (Cambridge), and the historic arena which was reminiscent of the Olympia in Detroit, showed Howe at his off-ice finest; a kindly, considerate man whose characteristic humour and palpable decency endeared him to old man, maiden, young man and child.

Brothers of the Wind portrays the epic quest of three Canadian speed skaters, close friends and fierce competitors, to win Olympic gold in the 1990s. This story chronicles their successes and setbacks from their early days as promising teenagers, beginning in 1990, to become world-class skaters. It's a story that was more than 10 years in the making, and culminates at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics.Woven into the fabric of this tale are revealing threads of insight into the sport of speed skating - both long track and short track. The sport has resulted in more Olympic medals for Canada than almost any other sport. Follow these incredible young men from their formative teenage years as they grow into world-class athletes. The brotherhood they form along the way, accompanied by their mastery of the ice and an unshakable confidence, instilled fear among their competitors. But as much as they were feared on the ice, these Brothers of the Wind were admired by friends and foes alike.

An overview depicting many of Canada's great trees. This small book brims with stories about some of Canada's notable trees including the ages-old redwood forests of Axel Heiberg Island in Canada's Arctic, and the petrified forests in the Bay of Fundy at Joggins, which bear trees that lived before the Atlantic Ocean was born. Other stories, like the plight of the once mighty American Chestnut, are chronicled, as are trees great and small across one of the most heavily-treed landscapes in the world.

The Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame chronicles the world-class sports heritage of Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. As of 2015, there have been nearly 150 inductees recognized, spanning the entire history of this southern Ontario community.

Published by Blue River Press (2010), The River and the Railroad highlights the adventures of two boys, set in the small Canadian town of New Thunder in 1913. Determined to run away by hopping the train like their friend Hobo Willy, their goal is to head west to the Rocky Mountains, or south to Florida. Before they leave, they get involved as witnesses to a murder, and this sets in motion a perilous chain of events. "The book is really about two boys growing up in a small southern Ontario town," says Menary, "and as such, it will remind readers of the little triumphs and tragedies we all experience in youth. So much of the book is infused with my own childhood and this, ultimately, is not so different from the experiences of most others. I hope this book will give people moments they can recognize, remember and treasure. It's a reflection of a time and place that has come and gone, but the little pieces of time captured in The River and the Railroad are universal."

It was May, 1915, and a German U-boat had the largest passenger ocean liner on the high seas in its sights. This is the tale of two men from Ontario's Waterloo County who were on that ship. The Lusitania sinking was one of the greatest nautical disasters of all time. Their struggle for survival in the face of great odds would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

A personal exploration into some of Canada's greatest trees, from coast to coast to coast. Although some of the oldest, and biggest trees are examined, so too are the stories behind the trees. Canada is a land of trees, both in diversity and in sheer numbers. But the stories behind the trees harken back to the first humans to inhabit North America, and continue through European settlement, until today. The stories are uniquely Canadian and they give texture to this vast land and the people who inhabit it.