Roland Gissing

Roland Gissing
Author: Maxwell Foran
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Total Pages: 87
Release: 1988
Genre: Canada, Western
ISBN: 0919813801

The book begins with a description of the impression Canada made on Gissing upon his arrival in this country in 1913 at the age of 18. Gissing wanted to be a cowboy. He travelled from Alberta to California and back on horseback, sketching and painting as he went. Examples of this early work appear in the book. Gissing began selling his work and supporting himself solely by painting. The author discusses Gissing's technique as his style began to change and how the artist's frame of mind was reflected in his work. There is a good representation of the work of this period in the book. The book concludes with a discussion of Gissing's love of steam locomotives and some details about his time spent building these scale trains. Finally a sampling of paintings of the drastically different seascapes and badlands he was doing in the few years before his death, concludes the pictorial record of Gissing's life and works.

The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part II

The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part II
Author: Pierre Coustillas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2015-09-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317304063

This ambitious three-volume biography on Gissing examines both his life and writing both chronologically and in close detail. Part II assesses the period of Gissing’s greatest authorial triumphs. His most critically acclaimed works, The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893) date from this time.

Icon, Brand, Myth

Icon, Brand, Myth
Author: Maxwell Foran
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 1897425058

This book investigates the meanings and iconography of the Stampede: an invented tradition that takes over the city of Calgary for ten days every July. Since 1912, archetypal "Cowboys and Indians" are seen again at the chuckwagon races, on the midway, and throughout Calgary. Each essay in this collection examines a facet of the experience – from the images on advertising posters to the ritual of the annual parade. This study of the Calgary Stampede as a social phenomenon reveals the history and sociology of the city of Calgary and a component of the social construction of identity for western Canada as a whole.

Wild Horses, Wild Wolves

Wild Horses, Wild Wolves
Author: Maureen Enns
Publisher: Rocky Mountain Books Ltd
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2013-06-03
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1927330246

Established in 1967, the Ghost River Wilderness Area, located along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in southern Alberta, is one of only three provincially designated wilderness areas in the province. As such, it is supposed to have the strictest form of government protection available in Canada, with development, motorized transportation and recreational activities either tightly controlled or altogether forbidden. This has not been the case, however. It is in this beautiful, threatened and geographically remote area that Maureen Enns, a well-known artist, author, educator and conservationist, has come to discover an incredible world inhabited by wild horses, one of the region’s most elusive and iconic creatures. Descendants of the original settlers of the area have been known to describe the “wildies” of the Ghost Wilderness as ugly, nondescript, Roman-nosed and useless animals. But such descriptions stand in sharp contrast to some of the athletic and beautiful stallions, mares and foals that Enns has encountered. Using a stunning combination of drawn and painted images, conventional and remote photography (using hidden cameras activated by heat or motion) and traditional stories told by Peigan and Stoney Nakoda people, Enns invites the reader to join her as she untangles old myths regarding Alberta’s heritage and reveals some uncomfortable realities facing the province in the 21st century. The wild horses, wolves, moose, deer and bear profiled in this book have had little contact with humankind. As communities, developers and governments struggle to understand the impacts of conservation, recreation and development in sacred places, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep the “wild” in wild animals. This project is passionate plea for understanding, conservation and action.

Onoto Watanna

Onoto Watanna
Author: Diana Birchall
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780252026072

In 1901, Winnifred Eaton arrived in New York City with literary ambitions, journalism experience, and the manuscript for A Japanese Nightingale, the novel that would make her famous. Her writing and gift for reinvention would set her apart from other women authors of her time and make her a fascinating early figure in Asian American literature. Diana Birchall, Eaton's granddaughter, tells the Horatio Alger story of the woman who became Onoto Watanna. Born to a British father and a Chinese mother, Winnifred capitalized on her exotic appearance--and protected herself from Americans' scorn of the Chinese--by "becoming" Japanese. Her popular Japanese-themed romance novels thrust her into the glittering world of New York's literati. From there she leapt to Hollywood to become a scriptwriting protégée of Carl Laemmle at Universal Studios. Yet her boldness and talent masked a sometimes-desperate personal life that included a troubled first marriage and the sudden end of her Hollywood career. A compelling saga of the shifting boundary between life and art, Onoto Watanna reveals the conflicting stories, personal tempests, and remarkable accomplishments of a woman whose career was sensational in every sense.

The Prairie West as Promised Land

The Prairie West as Promised Land
Author: R. Douglas Francis
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 1552382303

Millions of immigrants were attracted to the Canadian West by promotional literature from the government in the late 19th century to the First World War bringing with them visions of opportunity to create a Utopian society or a chance to take control of their own destinies.

Alequiers

Alequiers
Author: Michael J. Schintz
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1552380920

Alequiers is the story of a one-hundred-year-old log house on the banks of the Highwood River, in Southern Alberta, with particular emphasis on the time that Schintz and his family spent there. The book details what little is known about the original settler on the site Alexander McQueen Weir and goes on to describe the changes in structure that took place under succeeding occupants, the Royle and Schintz families.

A Wilder West

A Wilder West
Author: Mary-Ellen Kelm
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0774820322

The rodeo cowboy is one of the most evocative images of the Wild West. The master of the frontier, he is renowned for his masculinity, toughness, and skill. A Wilder West returns to rodeo's small-town roots to explore how rodeo simultaneously embodies and subverts our traditional understandings of power relations between man and nature, women and men, settlers and Aboriginal peoples. An important contact zone – a chaotic and unpredictable place of encounter – rodeo has challenged expected social hierarchies, bringing people together across racial and gender divides to create friendships, rivalries, and unexpected intimacies. At the rodeo, Aboriginal riders became local heroes, and rodeo queens spoke their minds. A Wilder West complicates the idea of western Canada as a “white man's country” and shows how rural rodeos have been communities in which different rules applied. Lavishly illustrated, this creative history will change the way we see the West's most controversial sport.