These databases are a great place to start when looking for a general overview of all topics to Canada or BC.
When studying our history as a country, you will find that there are recurring themes or issues. These issues are evident even today when we look at the headlines in the news. Your goal over the next next few weeks will be to gain a better understanding of the these two questions:
How are current events in Canadian politics and culture connected to our history?
How have our attitudes and approach to current issues been affected by historical events?
The Book of Negroes by
Abducted from her West African village at the age of 11 and sold as a slave in the American South, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom and of finding her way home again. Based on a true story, the novel spans three continents and six decades to bring to life a dark and shameful chapter in our history.
Three Day Road by
Set in Canada and the battlefields of France and Belgium, Three-Day Road is a mesmerizing novel told through the eyes of Niska--a Canadian Oji-Cree woman living off the land who is the last of a line of healers and diviners--and her nephew Xavier. At the urging of his friend Elijah, a Cree boy raised in reserve schools, Xavier joins the war effort. Shipped off to Europe when they are nineteen, the boys are marginalized from the Canadian soldiers not only by their native appearance but also by the fine marksmanship that years of hunting in the bush has taught them. Both become snipers renowned for their uncanny accuracy. But while Xavier struggles to understand the purpose of the war and to come to terms with his conscience for the many lives he has ended, Elijah becomes obsessed with killing, taking great risks to become the most accomplished sniper in the army. Eventually the harrowing and bloody truth of war takes its toll on the two friends in different, profound ways. Intertwined with this account is the story of Niska, who herself has borne witness to a lifetime of death--the death of her people. In part inspired by the legend of Francis Pegahmagabow, the great Indian sniper of World War I, Three-Day Road is an impeccably researched and beautifully written story that offers a searing reminder about the cost of war.
Counting on Hope by
Award-winning writer Sylvia Olsen's sensitively drawn depiction of innocence lost and wisdom hard won, Counting on Hopetells the story of an English girl named Hope and a Lamalcha girl named Letia, whose lives are profoundly changed when their two cultures collide. The action is set against the backdrop of the confusing events surrounding the English colonization of British Columbia and an 1863 naval assault on Kuper Island. Alternating between free verse and prose, Counting on Hopefollows the girls' individual story lines before, during and after their meeting. The novel captures the wonder and joy with which Hope and Letia develop their friendship and describes the tragic events, suspicion, fear and confusion that characterize so many early encounters between Europeans and the First Peoples. Ultimately a story of hope, the novel follows the two girls out of childhood, off their island paradise and into the complex realities of an adult world.