The Queen’s Bush Settlement: Black Pioneers 1839-1865

Taking inspiration from John Glassco’s Memoirs of Montparnasse, Young Hunting is both a story of discovery and transformation. While Toronto changes around him, from a puritanical British colonial outpost to a mixing bowl filled with colourful cultural components, a young boy emerges from his middle class childhood to become a flamboyant adolescent a questioning adult who refuses to accept conventional wisdom.

Kate Cayley’s is a mind both studious and curious, deeply attuned to the question “what if?” What if Nick Drake and Emily Dickinson met in the afterlife? What if a respected physician suddenly shrank to the size of a pea? What if the blind twins in a Victorian photograph could speak to us? What if we found another Earth orbiting another sun?

In this memoir Penny Petrone tells what it was like growing up in Northern Ontario as the daughter of parents who moved to Canada from the class-bound feudal society of Southern Italy during the first quarter of the century when America was the dream of millions of Europeans.

This is the dramatic story of the Underground Railroad as seen through the eyes of two young girls — Eliza, a runaway slave from a plantation in Virginia, and Johanna, whose family gives her refuge in St. Catharines, Canada West (now Ontario). In a unique mix of fact and fiction, each chapter is followed by background information and hands-on activities.

Morning Star is the story of how the Underground Railroad linked two girls living more than a century apart: 

Flower, her parents, and her baby brother have escaped from the plantation where they were kept as slaves and are making their way north to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Their journey is dangerous and often desperate, as they are helped and sheltered by some, and hunted by others. Flower’s courage helps her family through illness, re-capture, and to escape again to safety.

John R. Hardy's vivid account of life on a family farm from one hundred years ago to the final auction sale. Generously illustrated with images from family albums that take readers through the seasons: seeding and blossoms, haying and harvest, autumn colour and winter sparkle. His grandparents' farm was often visited by legendary photographer Reuben R. Sallows, who used the Hardys' operation to represent Ontario agriculture.

There are many great Canadians who deserve recognition for what they have done for the nation and its people. This book profiles ten of these individuals who rose above with their courage and compassion, protecting the things that we as a community and as a nation hold close to our hearts. These heroes are men, women and even children throughout four hundred years of this nation's history who deserve our attention and our admiration.

Ontario Boys explores the preoccupation with boyhood in Ontario during the immediate postwar period, 1945–1960. It argues that a traditional version of boyhood was being rejuvenated in response to a population fraught with uncertainty, and suffering from insecurity, instability, and gender anxiety brought on by depression-era and wartime disruptions in marital, familial, and labour relations, as well as mass migration, rapid postwar economic changes, the emergence of the Cold War, and the looming threat of atomic annihilation.

For a quarter century, Glenn Cochrane, of CFTO's six o'clock news, left viewers with a smile by scouring the city for the genuine eccentrics and landmark fests that put Hogtown on the map.

A part of the Canadian Flyer childrens chapter book series. In Hurry, Freedom Emily and Matt embark on their most important journey yet — to the Canada-U.S. border in 1858 to travel along the Underground Railroad. They befriend famous abolitionist Dr. Alexander Ross and a group of runaway slaves he’s helping escape to Canada. With slave catchers in close pursuit, will Emily and Matt be able to help their new friends cross the Niagara River to safety?

From the first Black person who came to Canada about 400 years ago to the most recent wave of African immigrants, Black Canadians have played an important role in our country's history. In this informative overview, kids will discover the inspiring stories and events of a people who fought oppression as they searched for a place to call their own. 

Featuring fact boxes, mini-profiles, a timeline and more, this book in the acclaimed Kids Book of series offers a glimpse into an often-overlooked part of Canadian history. 

Rusty Rails documents 35 years in the history of rural transportation. With more than 200 original photographs by the author, this book coveys a personal approach to the rail lines that once crisscrossed the Ontario map.http://www.brucedalepress.ca/html/History.htm

From 1937 until the mid 1960s, RESTLESS and RESTLESS TOO carried passengers along the coast of Lake Huron between Port Elgin and Southampton, Ontario. John G. Mackay rode aboard from babyhood while his father, George Mackay, operated the vessel. Later, John crewed for both his father and partner Addie Cairns. To present the story of the building and sailing of the boats, John has spent several years researching old newspapers, family documents, and interviewing those who recall the harbours as they once were.

The sixth and final book of the Upper Canada Preserved — War of 1812 series, The Ashes of War examines in detail the closing stages of the war on the Northern Frontier, including the two-month siege of Fort Erie, the engagement at Cook’s Mills, the American attempt to recapture Michilimackinac (Mackinac), the tale of the Nancy, and the American raids into southwestern Upper Canada.

This is the remarkable story of Phillis Wheatley, who is born into an African family of griots, or storytellers, but captured by slave raiders and forced aboard a slave ship, where appalling conditions spell death for many of her companions. Numerous sharks follow the ship, feeding on the corpses of slaves thrown overboard. 

Weakened by the voyage and near death in a Boston slave market, Wheatley is bought by a kind family who nurses her back to health and teaches her to read and write. Soon her mistress recognizes that the girl is a quick learner and talented. 

Approaching a scholar and critic as legendary as Northrop Frye is a daunting task — but not for Mel Montrose. Armed with a prestigious academic award and a nothing-to-lose attitude, she convinces Frye to supervise her ambitious thesis exploring E.J. Pratt’s epic poem about Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf. To embark on her study, Mel takes a job at the newly reconstructed historical site at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, where de Brébeuf and seven other missionaries met their tragic ends.

The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!, a richly illustrated book, examines the urban connection of the clandestine system of secret routes, safe houses and "conductors." Not only does it trace the story of the Underground Railroad itself and how people courageously made the trip north to Canada and freedom, but it also explores what happened to them after they arrived.

Ontario's African-Canadian Heritage is composed of the collected works of Professor Fred Landon, who for more than 60 years wrote about African-Canadian history. The selected articles have, for the most part, never been surpassed by more recent research and offer a wealth of data on slavery, abolition, the Underground Railroad, and more, providing unique insights into the abundance of African-Canadian heritage in Ontario.

Launched in a barn where you are as likely to hear classical music as the cooing of pigeons or the lowing of cows, a book celebrating traditional timber-frame structures is one of the most popular publications of the Brucedale Press.

Reading Julie Berry’s poetry means entering a new poetic space, crossing thresholds of pain and delight at once raw and refined. “like marie d’oignies who buried bloody/ mouthfuls of herself/ in the garden/ i need my poems to be like this,” Berry writes in “Touching Ground.”  “Like this” is finely-turned and constantly surprising, haunting as plainsong, throaty as the blues.