Trevor W. Harrison

Safarnameh—an Urdu word meaning an account of a journey—is the story of Trevor Harrison's overland trip from Turkey to India, a route taken by somewhere between 2 million and 6 million young people from Western countries during the 1960s and 1970s, until the Iranian Revolution and subsequent regional conflicts rendered the overland trek impossible. This first-person account amplifies, sometimes confirms, and occasionally challenges prevailing images of those who made the journey to India during that time. Based extensively on written observations made at the time, the book explores the physical, psychological, and emotional impact of travelling and its lingering echoes. Woven throughout the book are comments and insights drawn from forty-eight in-depth interviews with people from several different countries who made the overland journey to India during roughly the same period. Though framed around a personal memoir, Safarnameh situates one individual's experience in the broader historical, cultural, and socio-political context of the time.

"Travel takes you to places in yourself you might not otherwise visit . . ." In this delightful and intriguing collection of essays, Trevor W. Harrison, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge and a well-known contributor to public media, tells sometimes light-hearted and sometimes poignant tales of his life between his late teens and early thirties, a time when, like many other young people of the era, he travelled the world, beginning with hitchhiking or driving across western Canada and the United States in the early 1970s and travelling to Europe and Asia in the mid970s and early 1980s.From working on the railway in a small town to playing a Hittite soldier in a Biblical movie, from life among the hippies on a famous Greek beach to life in a houseboat on India's Lake Dal, from bullfights in Barcelona to the towering Himalayas, Harrison invites readers to travel with him, to meet the people, see the places, and experience the events he encountered as a young man.The stories we tell of our lives, Harrison says, are "the offspring of a pleasurable intercourse between fiction and non-fiction, gestated over time." There is nothing more innately human than the telling of tales.Enjoy these while you, too, are still this side of the Elysian Fields.

Now in its fourth edition, Canadian Society in the Twenty-First Century examines Canada’s development and current circumstances in a socio-historical framework. This foundational text encourages students to consider some of the tough questions Canadian citizens are likely to face in adjusting to the demands and challenges of life in the twenty-first century. Divided into three sections, the text investigates economic, political, cultural, and ideological perspectives through three main relationships: Canada and Quebec, Canada and the United States, and Canada and Indigenous Peoples. Each of these sections deals with large issues impacting all societies in the early 21st century: nationalism, neo-liberalism, and cultural values of social solidarity that persist, despite modernity. The final chapter revisits the importance of socio-historical methods, the roles of state and markets, and sociological theory in a wider context, ending with a look at the sociological implications of the global pandemic.Exploring the unique character of modern Canadian society, this is a vibrant introductory resource for sociology courses on Canadian society, as well as undergraduate courses in Canadian studies and Canadian history across North America.FEATURES:features updated statistics and data that reflect current scholarship in the field and new discussions on issues such as the current crisis of neo-liberal globalization, Canada’s petroleum industry, global warming, the Wet’suwet’en dispute in 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemicincludes annotated lists of recommended readings, videos, and websites, critical thinking questions, and a newly added glossaryintegrates sociological concepts in an accessible and engaging way to help students understand the foundations of contemporary Canadian society

Gay never recorded an album, never won a Juno. His music existed in the moment, appreciated by the few who were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. For the rest of us, those late-night jam sessions in a shack in an alley on the bad side of Edmonton never happened. We never got to hear him play the Cole Porter songs he loved with Carlos Montoya, never got to watch the ashes build dangerously on the end of his menthol cigarette. And when Frank Gay died, only the guitar players gently wept. — Shelley Youngblut Until his death in 1982, Edmonton luthier and guitarist Frank Gay built guitars for several famous musicians, including country stars Johnny Cash, Don Gibson, Webb Pierce, and Hank Snow. He captivated listeners with his singular talent on guitar and other instruments, and was well known within the music industry. Trevor Harrison’s detective work uncovers the story of this private, charming, and bohemian man, doing a tremendous service to Canadian culture and music history. Harrison pieces together Frank Gay’s life through interviews with people who knew him and saw him play. Very few recordings of him playing exist, and the sparse accounts of Gay’s life and work raise more questions than they answer. Musicians and instrument makers, as well as those interested in Canadian music or Edmonton’s colourful past, will be fascinated by this biography of western Canadian luthier, musician, and guitar virtuoso Frank Gay.