Book Description

Enterprise 2000 explores an economic region stretching from Niagara Falls to Oakville (where the Toronto sprawl begins).

This economic region takes in the political regions of Greater Hamilton, Halton and Niagara. With Hamilton at its core, the region encompasses over 1 million people and boasts a highly diversified economy. Enterprise 2000 looks at this region on the cusp of a new millennium and examines how a new generation is being prepared for challenges ahead. The book combines detailed text with stunning photography by Paul Sparrow. It's a perfect blend of a community coffee table book with a business book. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The book of our future
If you want to know how the Hamilton area is preparing to meet the chalenges of the new millennium, be sure to read this book. There's even an entire chapter on how the new generation is getting ready for what lies ahead. This book is very informative and it also features terrific photography of Southern Ontario scenes. I highly recommend it.

The book of our future
The book Enterprise 2000 is really cool! It discusses the way the businesses work and how the financial companies work. It is a really cool book and it has beautiful pictures and very descriptive articles. I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars because it's a really good book. Read it for yourself. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Away from headlines and into the lives of refugee families
This material formed a display at the Royal Ontario Museum; it works even better between book covers. It should be mandatory reading for Canadians - and few could help but respond to this intimate introduction to selected refugee families. The material was compiled back when Canada's refugee policies were worthy of international recognition. That time has passed. From time to time, "the refugee issue" splashes across headlines and quickly fades from view - having left little insight but rather the unmistakable whiff of problem and cost.

The refugee families selected are representative of the major refugee movements of the recent past. Both photos and text help place these personal stories within the larger context. However, the strength of the book is the personal glimpse of individuals' hopes and fears, losses mourned and futures planned. The reader sees that individuals differ in their responses to this devastating circumstance. The book is a useful antidote to the tendency to view the refugees' plight as simply a political or economic concern. The reader may better question the belated and begrudging response currently given to refugees who request safe haven in Canada. The process of moving past mourning lives torn asunder in order to plan lives to be built sits in painful hiatus while government appointees decide whether individuals are welcomed or forced back into the maelstroms from which they fled. Send this excellent book to our elected representatives. ... Read more

Book Description

Wild Daisies in the Sand reopens a chapter of North American World War II history. This book is a series of diary entries beginning in 1941, when author Tom Sando was imprisoned in concentration camps, first in Petawawa and then Angler, Ontario—a young Japanese Canadian imprisoned only because he was willing to stand and fight for his rights as a Canadian. The Japanese Canadians relocated to Petawawa and Angler were imprisoned in maximum security penitentiaries: compounds encircled by three layers of barbed wire fences, and under constant surveillance by rifle-armed guards stationed in watchtowers. These people were not prisoners-of-war or even criminals, but Canadian civilians deemed dangerous by the Canadian government because of their race.

Wild Daisies in the Sand is a unique first-hand look at a part of the Japanese internment that many people are still unfamiliar with. Tom Sando relates his story of loneliness, fear, and eventually friendship and hope, candidly and with careful thought. ... Read more

Book Description

What is the relationship between a city, its suburbs, and the rural landaround it?

In the 150 short pieces in Tom Thomson's Shack, Harold Rhenisch explores this questionin economic prose redolent with subtleties. From his native Okanagan to his home on theCariboo plateau, his musings are interwoven with a book tour to Toronto. On itsoutskirts, in Kleinburg, he discovers Group of Seven member Tom Thomson's studio,crucible of Canada -- to his surprise, as real as the valley a short distance from hishome that he knows as the Centre of the Universe.

Side trips to the stagnating mining town of Hedley, the totem poles of Kispiox, theretirement villas and golf courses of Kelowna, shape and refine the author's quest.Toronto, the inescapable electronic grid-city, ceaselessly colonizes the land with imagesof the land. In its wake, how can farming as Rhenisch's Okanagan forebears know it, afight to the death with God, prevail? Amazingly, the author's unsparing inquiry tunnelsthrough paradox to emerge beyond the city-country dichotomy, in the light of a newapprehension of ourselves as Canadians, whether city or country dwellers.

A rich and rigorous meditation on identity, language, work and life, Tom Thomson'sShack is a vital successor to the celebrated Out of the Interior. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Marynia, Don't Cry : Memoirs of Two Polish Canadian
I strongly recommend this book for anyone with Polish ancestry who would like to grasp a phase in the history of their nationality, as well as anyone who liked the storyline of Angela's Ashes. Part I is an amazing and shocking account of a family's endurance of dreadful hardships in the early 1900s in Poland and their eventual migration to Canada. Were the story embellished with more prose, it would be a Polish counterpart of Angela's Ashes! (and easily go on as a box office hit). I was constantly in awe of the determination and comradery of the women in overcoming astonishing obstacles in order to simply survive. ... Read more

Book Description

Rocco Perri came to Canada almost a century ago from Calabria, Italy. Even today his name is well known to historians, police and organized crime—and especially to the people of the city he called home—Hamilton, Ontario.

A poor immigrant, Perri along with his common-law wife, Bessie Starkman, built an unequalled crime empire for the time. During the Prohibition years, Perri provided alcohol to a thirsty clientele in Canada and the United States—a business that was very illegal and highly lucrative. Al Capone and Joseph Kennedy were among Perri’s customers. The Perris also ran gambling, loan-sharking, extortion and prostitution rackets.

ROCCO PERRI: King of the Bootleggers is more than the biography of a man and his empire; it is a riveting portrait of a time when corruption was rampant, murder a business necessity, and discrimination against newcomers forced many to turn to crime as a means of survival. This book also solves a half-century-long mystery about the fate of Rocco Perri. ... Read more