Today at Concordia University in Montreal, a launch was held for Depicting Canada’s Children, a gorgeous new hardcover book edited by Loren Lerner, a critical analysis of the visual representation of Canadian children from the seventeenth century to the present. Below I have embedded a slide show that features the table of contents and some of the many colour images of the book. This slideshow gives a sneak peek into a book that is a must-have for every library. Why not suggest it to your librarian today?
——————————-
Depicting Canada’s Children

Okay, not quite, but you wouldn’t know it if you visit any large department or grocery store these days. A huge waft of cinnamon hits me as soon as the doors slide open at my neighbourhood Superstore. It’s enough to knock me back on my heels. And just as we start planning for the holiday season and hope that people will remember our books in their gift-giving, the weather has other ideas. Ah, autumn in Ontario. Snow one week and balmy as summer the next. I’ll take some more of this weather, please, before we go back to the other.

Here’s a book you may want to consider for someone on your gift list. It is due mid-December. Order it now from your local bookstore.

Woldemar Neufeld’s Canada: A Mennonite Artist in the Canadian Landscape, 1925–1995

Woldemar Neufeld (1909–2002) emigrated with his Mennonite parents from Ukraine to Canada in 1924. By the late 1920s, he had begun his lifelong project as documentarist, responding especially to the built environment, whether close to his home in southern Ontario or farther afield: northern Ontario, the prairies and the west coast, the Maritimes and Quebec. His work passed through a number of styles, from the coolly abstract to the vividly “realistic.” Although he never abandoned oils, he produced a substantial body of watercolours and block prints—the latter influenced by German Expressionist and Japanese printmaking approaches.

Woldemar Neufeld’s Canada, a record of Neufeld’s Canadian paintings and block prints, explores influences that shaped Neufeld’s career as it developed in Canada during the 1920s and 1930s and came to fruition from 1940s to the 1990s.

Early on, Neufeld came into contact with leading Canadian artists, from Homer Watson to members of the Group of Seven. During the 1930s, he began to participate in group and solo exhibitions, including a one-man show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. After studies in Cleveland, he settled in New York City (1945) and New England (1949). Until the 1990s, however, he continued to work in Canada, returning especially to document, in various media, urban and rural landscapes in southern Ontario.

edited by Laurence Neufeld and Monica McKillen

text by Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen

We are pleased to announce the release of our latest co-publication with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). Part of our International Governance series, From Civil Strife to Peace Building: Examing Private Sector Involvement in West African Reconstruction (Hany Besada, editor) examines peace-building efforts in the fragile West African states of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire, with a focus on the role of the private sector in leading the reconstruction initiatives.

International contributors discuss ways in which West African governments can encourage the greater involvement of business in humanitarian support with incentives that demonstrate alignment with business objectives and profit margins, making humanitarian support simple, and more importantly, profitable and sustainable for both local and foreign investors.

Here at WLU Press we’ve been staunch supporters of the fundraiser to preserve Al Purdy’s home. On a number of occasions we’ve solicited donations and sent free copies of The More Easily Kept Illusions: The Poetry of Al Purdy to people who donated $25 or more. Now there is an official publication and I hope that you can make it to a very special launch in Cambridge on November 11th.

Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology Fundraiser & Exhibit at the University of Waterloo

Join Duncan Patterson and George Bowering for the Waterloo region launch of The Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology ($26.95, Harbour Publishing) and the exhibition “Room Enough Between the Trees: Al Purdy’s A-Frame” at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture—in the Stantec Gallery located at 7 Melville Street South, Cambridge—on Wednesday, November 11th beginning at 7:30 pm.

Duncan Patterson’s exhibit “Room Enough Between the Trees: Al Purdy’s A-Frame” coincides with the release of The Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology. Duncan Patterson and George Bowering are two of over twenty celebrated Canadian writers who contributed reminiscences and poetry to The Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology. Patterson and Bowering, along with a few other Anthology contributors, will share their A-frame anecdotes at this unique event. Book sales and proceeds from an auction featuring Al Purdy items and artwork will help raise funds for the Al Purdy A-frame Trust, an organization dedicated to preserving the A-frame as a retreat for future generations of Canadian writers.

In 1957, Al Purdy—one of Canada’s most influential and culturally significant poets—began building for himself and his family a lakeside A-frame cottage in Ameliasburgh, Ontario. No writer’s home has played such a starring role in the work of its owner since Orillia stood in as Mariposa in the work of Stephen Leacock. But, more than that, the Purdy A-frame served as a kind of tribal mustering place for notable Canadian writers from the 1950s to the 1990s including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, Milton Acorn, Patrick Lane and a host of others. The Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology collects memories and poems by a roll call of famous writers about inspiring days and nights spent at the A-frame, in addition to a selection of Purdy’s own writing which shows the depth of his feeling for the place where he put down his roots. The “Room Enough Between the Trees” exhibit will showcase a series of photographs and drawings documenting this house, supplemented by a series of samples of Purdy’s writing which further illuminates the role of the house in both his personal and creative life.

While the “Room Enough Between the Trees” exhibit is scheduled to run from November 6th to November 20th, the opportunity to hear readings from and obtain signed copies of The Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology is limited to the evening of November 11th as Bowering returns to his home in Vancouver, BC the following day. Bowering was the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, he has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada and he is the two-time winner of the Governor General’s Award. For more information, please call Duncan Patterson at (519) 781-2052.

On Friday, October 16, 2009, the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Heritage and Official Languages paid a visit to WLU to announce funding for WLU Press through the Book Publishing Program and also some funding for the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) to aid in the digitization projects of smaller presses.

In addition to our annual block grant that allows the press to continue its publishing activities, we received a special grant to hire an intern for an 18-week period. We’re thrilled to be able to offer this position to our current intern so that we can now pay him for the digital expertise he brings to our company. His responsibilities will include overseeing some of our digitization projects, establishing a workflow program, and sprucing up our email notifications.

This link takes you to our Flickr page, which includes pictures from many of our events, including this one.