Bøger udgivet af Ronsdale Press

Eating too much, eating not enough, having sex, not having sex, aging parents, grief, drugs, childhood trauma, and the last call of ovaries-- a woman's body at mid-life can get messy. Debbie Bateman's stories take a clear-eyed look at the largely unexplored private world of a pivotal stage in virtually every woman's life. These stories are linked not only by the characters, but also by the visceral themes of food, sex, exercise, beauty, and aging. The secret clenching of a fist, the unwinding of a silk scarf, the proud refusal to have breast reconstruction, the women in these stories want full authority over their bodies and their lives.

"COVID-19 spread like wildfire around the globe in 2020. Country after country experienced massive shutdowns, introduced measures like masks, social distancing, and quarantines, and found hospitals and health services stretched to the limit as infection rates and deaths soared. In these poems, written for the large part during the first wave of the pandemic, Philip Resnick offers his own take on what was to become a world turned upside down. He writes of the fear which the virus engendered, the angst and shattered illusions many experienced, the overtones of Apocalypse and end of time that hung over the unfolding events. He looks to historical and political analogies or precedents. He taps literary sources as disparate as the Greek tragedians, Dante, Matthew Arnold, Anna Akhmatova, Federico Garcia Lorca and Borges in writing about our situation. He wrestles with his personal reactions to an event without precedent in his lifetime. The result is a body of work that bears vivid witness to what so many of us have experienced this past year. For what the author presents through these poems are reflections on a pivotal event that none of us living through it are likely to forget."--

Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein In 1970, the authors, Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein, were hired as childcare workers at the Alert Bay Student Residence (formerly St. Michael's Indian Residential School) on northern Vancouver Island. Shocked when Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families, punished for speaking their native language, fed substandard food and severely disciplined for minor offences, Dan and Nancy questioned the way the school was run with its underlying missionary philosophy. When a delegation from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs visited St. Michael's, the couple presented a long list of concerns, which were ignored. The next day they were dismissed by the administrator of the school. Some years later, in 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Reports were released. The raw grief and anger of residential school survivors were palpable and the authors' troubling memories of St. Michael's resurfaced. Dan called Reconciliation Canada, and Chief Dr. Robert Joseph encouraged the couple to share their story with today's Canadians. St. Michael's Residential School: Lament and Legacy is a moving narrative -- one of the few told by caregivers who experienced on a daily basis the degradation of Indigenous children. Their account will help to ensure that what went on in the Residential Schools is neither forgotten nor denied.

Poetry. Native American Studies. Having developed an impressive reputation for his many novels and nonfiction works, Richard Wagamese now presents a collection of stunning poems ranging over a broad landscape. He begins with an immersion in the unforgettable world where "the ancient ones stand at your shoulder...making you a circle / containing everything." These are Medicine teachings told from the experience of one who lived and still lives them. He also describes his life on the road when he repeatedly ran away at an early age, and the beatings he received when the authorities tried "to beat the Indian right out of me." Yet even in the most desperate situations, Wagamese shows us Canada as seen through the eyes and soul of a well-worn traveller, with his love of country, his love of people. Through it all, there are poems of love and music, the language sensuous and tender.

Captain Richards's journal is an account of three survey seasons on Vancouver Island aboard two British Navy ships, the HMS Plumper and the HMS Hecate. Between 1860 and 1862 Richards and his dedicated crew surveyed and charted the entire coastline of Vancouver Island, creating baseline information for the nautical charts we use today. This monumental task, faithfully and often humorously recorded, also includes a lively description of California on the eve of the American Civil War as Richards sits in dry dock following the near wreck of the Hecate. Part of the private collection of a direct descendant of Captain Richards, the journal is a little known and untapped resource. Extensively annotated and supplemented with excerpts from the journals of Second Master John Gowlland, the journal provides a unique and personal view of the aboriginal, colonial, nautical and natural history of Vancouver Island. Richards is revealed as a man of immense energy and diplomacy; the descriptions of the First Nations he encounters are remarkably unbiased for the time and his keen observations are a portal into the social and political life of Vancouver Island during these formative years of the colony. The journal will appeal to historians, anthropologists, sailors, meteorologists and the general reading public alike.

For over 200 years, controversy has simmered over the subject of cannibalism on the Pacific Northwest Coast. So heated has the topic become that many scholars have hesitated to engage in the debate. Now, using an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural approach, historian Jim McDowell offers a comprehensive study of cannibalism on the coast. Beginning with the many supposed 'man-eating' incidents recorded by European and American explorers and traders who visited Nootka Sound between 1744 and 1884, McDowell shows how the accounts were coloured by a 'cannibal complex' among the Western observers. McDowell then revisits the ground-breaking work of Franz Boas and other anthropologists to reinterpret cannibalism as it was practised in the secret 'Hamatsa' ceremony -- ritual cannibalism designed to strengthen and perpetuate Native communities. Presenting the most complete discussion of the 'Hamatsa' to date, McDowell demonstrates the spiritual profundity of the ceremony (which continues today in various forms) and its intended purpose in coping with the dark forces of the world. Whereas the early explorers abhorred the gustatory cannibalism they believed they were observing, McDowell reveals that the ritual cannibalism of the 'Hamatsa' has much to teach the West in its present spiritual uncertainty and confusion.