"Just Mary"

Author: Margaret Anne Hume
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2006-02-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1550029215

Just Mary and Maggie Muggins are names that will arouse memories in those who grew up with CBC radio and television in the 1940s and 1950s. The creator of these and other children’s shows, former Fredericton schoolteacher Mary Grannan, became a radio star when she hit the national airwaves in 1939, her popularity peaking when Maggie Muggins moved to television in 1955. Long before The Friendly Giant and Mr. Dressup appeared, her work helped to shape the legacy of gentle children’s programming on CBC. Building on her broadcasting success, Grannan published over thirty books, most runaway best-sellers. Attired in stylish dress, extravagant hats, and enormous earrings, she made frequent guest appearances at public events across the country. She received the Beaver Award for her broadcasting and was honoured by the International Mark Twain Society and the Institute for Education by Radio at Ohio State University. "Just Mary": The Life of Mary Evelyn Grannan is the first biography of this creative and once well-known Canadian woman. Immersing the reader in rich detail while showcasing excerpts of her writings through the years, the book presents an intimate examination of her life journey through previously unreleased personal letters, archives, an abundance of photographs, and interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and former students. This is the private Mary Grannan as the public has never before known her.

"Just Mary" Reader

Author: Mary Grannan
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2006-02-11
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1554885574

For twenty-three years during the golden age of radio in Canada, stories for children by Mary Grannan, "Just Mary," were broadcast by CBC and beloved across the country. She retired from broadcasting in 1962 and died in 1975, but her sweet-tempered and humorous stories still have the power to entertain, while recapturing the atmosphere of another time. Grannan published stories from Just Mary and Maggie Muggins in over thirty best-selling books, but she had other radio series that were never released in print. The "Just Mary" Reader presents for the first time a selection of her stories from two other radio drama series. Jubilee Road tells the adventures and misadventures of Johnny and Patty Little and their friend Salty Pickle. Or, as Johnny describes it: "We get into quite a few messes, but if you know us, you’ll know that it’s hardly ever our fault." In Land of Supposing, Grannan retold fairy tales and legends from around the world, as well as a few legends of her own making. Previously unpublished selections from Just Mary and Maggie Muggins complete the collection.

History of the Book in Canada

History of the Book in Canada
Author: History of the Book in Canada Project
Publisher:
Total Pages: 682
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The History of the Book in Canada is one of this country's great scholarly achievements, with three volumes spanning topics from Aboriginal communication systems established prior to European contact to the arrival of multinational publishing companies. Each volume observes developments in the realms of writing, publishing, dissemination, and reading, illustrating the process of a fledgling nation coming into its own. The third and final volume follows book history and print culture from the end of the First World War to 1980, discussing the influences on them of the twentieth century, including the country's growing demographic complexity and the rise of multiculturalism. Crucial to creating a sense of identity during this period was the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, whose report of 1951 led to the establishment of influential cultural institutions such as the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Library of Canada. Other key developments included the initiation and growth of library systems, the expansion of film, radio, and television, the burgeoning of children's literature, enhanced opportunities for writers, the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and the rise of Canadian studies and Canadian literature as respected fields for teaching and research. In English Canada, mainstream book publishing flourished during the 1920s, suffered severely during the Depression, went through a period of renewal and advance after the Second World War, but became imperilled by the 1970s. Small literary presses and allophone publishers, in turn, grew increasingly significant during the 1960s, a decade in which Quebec's new cultural policies began to foster ongoing support for francophone book culture. In addition to telling the stories of Canada's recent book history, this volume pays due attention to multifarious developments in print culture, including book prizes, sports writing, pulp magazines, the alternative press, Coles Notes, the international success of Harlequin, and the unprecedented influence of Les insolences du Frère Untel, the famous cry for education reform in 1960s Quebec. Volume three of the History of the Book in Canada marks the successful completion of an extraordinary project that documents the country's achievements for generations of scholars and readers to come.

12 Rose Street

12 Rose Street
Author: Gail Bowen
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0771024029

The indomitable Joanne Kilbourn is back! From beloved author Gail Bowen comes the 15th installment in the nationally bestselling series. For readers of Louise Penny, Ruth Rendell, and Peter Robinson. Joanne's husband Zack is the leading progressive candidate in a neck-and-neck race, with the existing mayor, for Regina's top job. The tough campaigning is well underway when a disturbing threat disrupts the celebration for the opening of the Racette-Hunter Centre -- a project Zack has been spearheading, intended to benefit the impoverished community of North Central Regina. Joanne soon realizes that sinister interests are working behind the scenes of the election, and another savage act makes clear that someone will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo. The Shreve campaign perseveres, but when Zack's opponents share some shocking information about the past, the revelation sends Joanne reeling. As tensions around the election build, Joanne tries to hold herself together, keep her family intact, and get to the bottom of why a series of violent incidents, seemingly related to the mayoral race, all lead back to a mysterious property in North Central, 12 Rose Street. A gripping novel about family and friendship, competition and betrayal, 12 Rose Street confirms why Gail Bowen is indeed the "queen of Canadian crime fiction" (Winnipeg Free Press).

Ring Around the Maple

Ring Around the Maple
Author: Cynthia R. Comacchio
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 707
Release: 2024-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1771126167

Ring Around the Maple is about the condition of children in Canada from roughly 1850 to 2000, a time during which “the modern” increasingly disrupted traditional ways. Authors Cynthia R. Comacchio and Neil Sutherland trace the lives of children over this “long century” with a view to synthesizing the rich interdisciplinary, often multi-disciplinary, literature that has emerged since the 1970s. Integrated into this synthesis is the authors’ new research into many, often seemingly disparate, archival and published primary sources. Emphasizing how “the child” and childhood are sociohistoric constructs, and employing age analytically and relationally, they discuss the constants and the variants in their historic dimensions. While childhood tangibly modernized during these years, it remained a far from universal experience due to identifiers of race, gender, culture, region, and intergenerational adaptations that characterize the process of growing up. This work highlights children’s perspectives through close, critical, “against the grain” readings of diaries, correspondence, memoirs, interviews, oral histories and autobiographies, many buried in obscure archives. It is the only extant historical discussion of Canadian children that interweaves the experiences of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children with those of children from a number of settler groups. Ring Around the Maple makes use of photographs, catalogues, advertisements, government publications, musical recordings, radio shows, television shows, material goods, documentary and feature films, and other such visual and aural testimony. Much of this evidence has not to date been used as historical testimony to uncover the lives of ordinary children. This book is generously illustrated with photographs and ephemera carefully selected to reflect children’s lives, conditions, interests, and obligations. It will be of special interest to historians and social scientists interested in children and the culture of childhood, but will also appeal to readers who enjoy the "little stories" that together make up our collective history, especially when those are told by the children who lived them.

TV North

TV North
Author: Peter Kenter
Publisher: Whitecap Books
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2001
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

This is an entertaining and nostalgic encyclopedia of Canadian television. History textbooks pale in comparison to this retro look at what's hot and what's not on Canada's small screen.