Search Results: Returned 20 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 20
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By Off, Carol2017., General, Random House Canada Call No: Bio O32a Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "The gripping story of a family's desperate attempts to escape Afghan warlords, Taliban oppression, and the persecutions of refugee life, in hopes that both their sons and their daughters could dare to dream of peace and opportunity. And behind the scenes, there are the unflagging efforts of one of Canada's most respected journalists, CBC Radio's Carol Off, working assiduously to help the family achieve freedom and a promising future. In 2002, Carol Off and a CBC TV crew encountered an Afghan man with a story to tell. Asad Aryubwal became key to their documentary on the terrible power of thuggish warlords who were working arm in arm with Americans and NATO troops. When Asad publicly exposed the deeds of one particular warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it set off a chain of events from which there was no turning back. Asad, his wife, Mobina, and their five children had to flee their home. Their only chance for a peaceful life was to emigrate - yet year after year of agonizing limbo would ensue as they were thwarted by a Byzantine international bureaucracy and the decidedly unwelcoming policies of Stephen Harper's government. One family's journey and fraught attempts to immigrate to a safe place, and what happens when a journalist becomes deeply involved with the people in her story and is unable to leave them behind. Carol Off is the host of CBC Radio's As It Happens, the network's flagship evening radio programme"--Provided by publisher.
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2023., Adult, Viking Call No: NEW Bio G475a Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Charlotte Gill's father is Indian. Her mother is English. And although they couldn't be more different, they meet in 1960's London when, despite the prevailing image of free love, the world was not ready for interracial love. Their union, a revolutionary act, results in a total meltdown of familial relations, a lot of immigration paperwork, and three children, all in varying shades of tan. Along the way, they venture from the United Kingdom to Canada and to the United States in elusive pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness--a pursuit that eventually tears them apart. Almost Brown is an exploration of diasporic intermingling involving parents of two different races and their half-brown children as they experience the paradoxes and conundrums of life as it's lived between race checkboxes. Eventually, her parents drift apart because they just aren't compatible. Charlotte distances herself from her larger-than-life father too, resulting in 20 years of silence--and, eventually, a complicated reunion. .
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By Kurdi, Tima2018., Adult, Simon & Schuster Call No: Bio K95b Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "An intimate and poignant memoir about the family of Alan Kurdi, the young Syrian boy who became the global emblem for the desperate plight of millions of Syrian refugees and of the many extraordinary journeys the Kurdis have taken, spanning countries and continents. Alan Kurdi's body washed up on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea on September 2, 2015, and overnight, the political became personal, as the world awoke to the reality of the Syrian refugee crisis. Tima Kurdi first saw the shocking photo of her nephew in her home in Vancouver, Canada. But Tima did not need a photo to understand the truth she and her family had already been living it. In The Boy on the Beach, Tima recounts her idyllic childhood in Syria, where she grew up with her brother Abdullah and other siblings in a tight knit family. A strong willed, independent woman, Tima studied to be a hairdresser and had dreams of seeing the world. At twenty two, she emigrated to Canada, but much of her family remained in Damascus. Life as a single mother and immigrant in a new country wasn't always easy, and Tima recounts with heart wrenching honesty the anguish of being torn between a new home and the world she'd left behind."-- Publisher.
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2010., Wilfrid Laurier University Press Call No: 331.7 B535i Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: Life writing series
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-- Forty years in Canada.2007., Heritage House Call No: SC Bio W629w Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library
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2023., Baraka Books Call No: NEW Bio C543k Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Born in Hong Kong to unwed parents, Stephanie Chitpin was transported illegally to the Island of Mauritius by Ah Pak, the head nun of a Buddhist temple with the help of Mr. Chui, a benevolent Chinese businessman. Ah Pak raised her as an orphan ward of the temple, Fook Soo Am, known as the Pagoda. Encouraged by Mr. Chui and in spite of Ah Pak's opposition, she did very well at school. The scars incurred by classmates' name calling (bastard, and more) the shame of being an orphan raised in a temple, tragic deaths, and other obstacles did not prevent her from pursuing her education and finishing high school at the age of 16. Although Ah Pak had other plans for her, Mr. Chui stood by her with diplomacy and tact throughout her school years and onto university in Canada on a scholarship. Keep My Memory Safe poetically chronicles life in the temple and in Mauritius, and the move to Canada. This immigration story is totally unique as no other orphaned temple nuns are known to have gone on to acquire a topnotch education and become academics.
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2019., Biblioasis Call No: QWF Bio O54m Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "In the south of Bosnia and Herzegovina lies Mostar, a medieval town on the banks of the emerald Neretva, which flows from the "valley of sugared trees" through sunny hills to reach the Adriatic Sea. This idyllic locale is where Maya Ombasic's life begins, but when civil war breaks out in Yugoslavia and the bombs begin to fall. Her family is exiled to Switzerland, and after a failed attempt to return, they leave again for Canada. While Maya adapts to their uprootings, her father never recovers from the trauma, refusing even to learn the language of his new country. Mostarghia, a portmanteau of "Mostar" and "nostalgia", centers around Ombasic's often explosive relationship with her father, who was both influence and psychological burden: he inspired her interest, and eventual career, in philosophy, and she was his translator, his support, his obsession. Along with this portrait of a larger-than-life man described by turns as passionate, endearing, maddening, and suffocating, Ombasic deftly constructs a moving personal account of what it means to be a refugee and how a generation learns to thrive despite its parents' struggles."--.
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2016., VLB éditeur Call No: QWF FR Bio O54m Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Mostar, dans le sud de la Bosnie-Hezégovine, est une ville idyllique entourée de collines ensoleillées. La cité médiévale est traversée par la Neretva, le fleuve émeraude qui charrie jusqu'à l'Adriatique la douceur de vivre dans la « vallée des arbres sucrés », où naître chrétien ou musulman, serbe ou croate, est la dernière des choses qui comptent. C'est là que vit la jeune Maya quand les obus se mettent à tomber, d'abord un à un, puis en pluie drue sur la Yougoslavie. Dans l'abri anti-bombardements, les scènes tragicomiques que rapportent les habitants hilares n'empêchent pas la réalité du massacre de filtrer : la guerre est là, elle va durer, il faut partir. Maya et son petit frère s'enfuient dans la caravane des gitans ; ils retrouveront leurs parents à Split, d'où la famille s'embarquera avec d'autres réfugiés pour un exil qui la mènera en Suisse, puis au Canada. Tout au long de ce périple, Maya grandit et s'éduque, poursuivant jusqu'à Cuba un dialogue enflammé avec son peintre de père, homme blessé, prophétique, emporté, balkanique jusqu'au bout des ongles. La résignation révoltée de Nenad, ses enthousiasmes d'enfant cent fois déçus, ses explications savantes sur l'indigence des mots pour dire la vérité du monde et des coeurs scandent le texte sensible et baroque de Maya Ombasic, qui signe avec Mostarghia son livre le plus autobiographique.
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2019., John Aylen Books Call No: Bio G618o Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Sheila Barshay Goldbloom was born in New York City to idealistic parents both of whom had immigrated to the United States as young children. Her mother was an avid reader, an early Zionist and a supporter of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. She prized education above all and set Sheila on a path that would include four years at Mount Holyoke College during the Second World War. Victor Goldbloom, a Montrealer, met Sheila while a resident in pediatrics at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Their marriage brought Sheila to Montreal and eventually to Canadian citizenship. She joined the faculty of the McGill School of Social Work and pioneered in the development of curricula related to community organization. Here Sheila tells the story of her childhood, marked irrevocably by the death of her father when she was ten years old. Her life in Quebec was punctuated professionally by the increased engagement of the government in the delivery of education, health and social services, while her personal life, notably her husband's role as an elected official, afforded her a vantage point on the Province of Quebec available to few anglophone citizens. The events recounted here, from linguistic and religious divisions to the referenda on separation, will be familiar, but the lens of this woman, Jew, immigrant, activist offers an important and often surprising perspective.
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2011., Allen Lane Canada Call No: 920.071 C613r Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: In this exciting and revealing personal inquiry, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson explores the immigrant experience through the people who have helped transform Canada.The Canadians she befriendswhether an Ismaili doctor, a Holocaust survivor, a Chilean-Canadian artist, or a Vietnam War deserterillustrate the changing idea of what it means to be Canadian and the kind of country we have created over the decades. Like her, many of the people who came here did not have a real choice: they often arrived friendless and with a sense of loss. Yet their struggles and successes have enriched Canada immeasurably. What drove them to become the kind of people they have become? What would have happened to them if Canada had not taken them in? What have they added to our national life us as we go forward in the twenty-first century?Written with humour and insight, and enriched by Clarkson's own memories of her trajectory from Hong Kong refugee to distinguished Canadian figure, Room for All of Us is a tale of many destinies. It is a richly textured, intimate, and unforgettable portrait of a changing country and its people.
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-- Elsewhere :2022., Adult, McClelland & Stewart Call No: NEW BLK Bio A135s Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Professional wrestling super fandom, Ontario's endlessly unfurling 401 highway, late nights at the convenience store listening to heavy metal--for writer and podcast host Elamin Abdelmahmoud, these are the building blocks of a life. Son of Elsewhere charts that life in wise, funny, and moving reflections on the many threads that weave together into an identity. Arriving in Canada at age 12 from Sudan, Elamin's teenage years were spent trying on new ways of being in the world, new ways of relating to his almost universally white peers. His is a story of yearning to belong in a time and place where expectation and assumptions around race, faith, language, and origin make such belonging extremely difficult, but it's also a story of the surprising and unexpected ways in which connection and acceptance can be found. In this extraordinary debut collection, the process of growing--of trying, failing, and trying again to fit in--is cast against the backdrop of the memory of life in a different time, and different place--a Khartoum being bombed by the United States, a nation seeking to define and understand itself against global powers of infinite reach. Taken together, these essays explore how we pick and choose from our experience and environment to help us in the ongoing project of defining who we are--how, for instance, the example of Mo Salah, the profound grief practices of Islam, the nerdy charm of The O.C.'s Seth Cohen, and the long shadow of colonialism can cohere into a new and powerful whole. With the perfect balance of relatable humor and intellectual ferocity, Son of Elsewhere confronts what we know about ourselves, and most important, what we're still learning.
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c2011., Enigma Books Call No: 327.1247 L668s Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: The key role played by Canadian Communist Fred Rose in atomic espionage is explained here for the first time. Born in Lublin, Poland, in 1907, he came to Montreal with his parents, joined the Young Communist League and was elected National Secretary in 1929. A secret member of Gaik Ovakimyan's North American NKVD network, he worked with Jacob Golos, Elizabeth Bentley's employer, in securing Canadian passports for Soviet agents. In 1943 Rose was elected to the federal Canadian parliament from a working class district in Montreal.In September 1945, Soviet embassy clerk Igor Gouzenko defected with documents that revealed an elaborate espionage operation to acquire American atomic research. Fred Rose was a major player in the scheme. Rose was found guilty of conspiring to turn over information about the explosive RDX to the Soviets, and was sentenced to a six-year prison term.He returned to his native Poland in 1953 and died in Warsaw in 1983, a disillusioned witness to the collapse of the Leninist vision he'd lived by.
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2020., Adult, Hamish Hamilton Canada Call No: Bio L478t Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Combining an immersive exploration of nature with captivatingly beautiful prose, Jessica J. Lee embarks on a journey to discover her family's forgotten history and to connect with the island they once called home Taiwan is an island of extremes: towering mountains, lush forests, and barren escarpment. Between shifting tectonic plates and a history rife with tension, the geographical and political landscape is forever evolving. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather's life, Jessica J. Lee seeks to piece together the fragments of her family's history as they moved from China to Taiwan, and then on to Canada. But as she navigates the tumultuous terrain of Taiwan, Lee finds herself having to traverse fissures in language, memory, and history, as she searches for the pieces of her family left behind. Interlacing a personal narrative with Taiwan's history and terrain, Two Trees Make a Forest is an intimate examination of the human relationship with geography and nature, and offers an exploration of one woman's search for history and belonging amidst an ever-shifting landscape."--
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2023., University of Regina Pess Call No: NEW QWF Bio R252w Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: In 1930, a young Jewish man, Yehuda Yosef Eisenstein, arrived in Canada from Poland to escape persecution and the rise of Nazism in the hopes of starting a new life for himself and his family. Like countless others who made this journey from "non-preferred" countries, Eisenstein was only granted entry because he claimed to be single, starting his new life with a lie. He trusted that his wife and children would be able to follow after he had gained legal entry and found work. For years, he was given two choices: remain in North America alone, or return home to Poland to be with his family. Born from years of archival research, Who Gets In is author Norman Ravvin's deeply personal family memoir, telling the story of his grandfather's resolute struggle against xenophobic and anti-Semitic government policies. Ravvin also provides a shocking exposé of the true character of nation-building in Canada and directly challenges its reputation as a benevolent, tolerant, and multicultural country.
