One of the most turbulent periods in the history of prairie agriculture is chronicled in a new book about the life and times of Alexander "Mac" Runciman, the Saskatchewan farmer who led the United Grain Growers as president from 1961 to 1981. Mac Runciman earned the respect and admiration on both sides of the great agriculture debates of the 1960s and 1970sófrom individual farmers to Pierre Trudeau, who offered Runciman a cabinet post in 1980 (Mac turned him down).Mac Runciman: A Life in the Grain Trade tells the story of how Runciman rose through the ranks of the UGG to play a central role in the fierce debates over the modernization of grain handling, subsidized freight rates, and the role of The Canadian Wheat Board. Runciman's reminiscences give new insights into the events and personalities of that critical period in Canadian agricultural history, a time in which the rural community began to question highly centralized and regulated marketing and transportation systems. The events and decisions of those years continue to reverberate in today's controversies over grain marketing and grain transportation.

The legacy of the residential school system ripples throughout Native Canada, its fingerprints on the domestic violence, poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide rates that continue to cripple many Native communities. Magic Weapons is the first major survey of Indigenous writings on the residential school system, and provides groundbreaking readings of life writings by Rita Joe (Mi’kmaq) and Anthony Apakark Thrasher (Inuit) as well as in-depth critical studies of better known life writings by Basil Johnston (Ojibway) and Tomson Highway (Cree). Magic Weapons examines the ways in which Indigenous survivors of residential school mobilize narrative in their struggles for personal and communal empowerment in the shadow of attempted cultural genocide. By treating Indigenous life-writings as carefully crafted aesthetic creations and interrogating their relationship to more overtly politicized historical discourses, Sam McKegney argues that Indigenous life-writings are culturally generative in ways that go beyond disclosure and recompense, re-envisioning what it means to live and write as Indigenous individuals in post-residential school Canada.

Based on hundreds of interviews with Manitoba farm men and women, Making Ends Meet reconstructs the common history shared by modern farm women as well as by their mothers and grandmothers. It explores women's changing roles on the farm, from the early days of the Red River settlement to the twentieth-century farm community. The women's own stories reveal their ingenuity and tenacity in "making ends meet" through economies, shared, labour, and generation of new resource income as varied as raising poultry and custom woodworking. These stories prove that the contributions of farm women have been vital in establishing and maintaining the family farm, and are critical to its continued survival.

Traditional approaches to Prairie literature have focussed on the significance of "the land" in attempts to make a place into a home. The emphasis on the importance of landscape as a defining feature ignores the important roles played by other influences brought to the land such as history, culture, gender, ethnicity, religion, community, family, and occupation. Deborah Keahey considers over 70 years of Canadian Prairie literature, including poetry, autobiography, drama, and fiction. The 17 writers range from the well-established, like Martha Ostenso and Robert Kroetsch, to newer writers, like Ian Ross and Kelly Rebar. Through their works, she asks whether the Prairies are a physical or a political creation, whether "home" is made by what you bring with you, or what you find when you arrive, and she incorporates the influences and effects far beyond landscape to understand what guides the "home-making" process of both the writers and their creations. Her study acknowledges that "home" is a complicated concept, and making a place into a home place is a complicated process. Informed by current linguistic, feminist, postcolonial, and cultural theory, Keahey explores these concepts in depth and redefines our understanding of place, home, and the relationship between them.

For many Canadians, the state of our health care and medical system is at the top of the public agenda. By following the growth and development of modern medicine in one Canadian province, Manitoba Medicine provides an insight into where our present medical system came from and how it developed .Beginning with a description of some early Aboriginal healing practices and of the physicians of the Red River Settlement, Manitoba Medicine follows the struggles in the 1870s to establish what would become the first medical college and the first major hospitals in Western Canada. It chronicles the fight for public health in the 1920s, the development of health insurance and medicare after WWII, and medicine's role in fighting the 1950 Winnipeg Flood and the polio epidemic of the late 1950s. Manitoba Medicine also provides vivid accounts of many of the individuals who built Manitoba's medical system, including early educators like Swale Vincent, pioneering women physicians such as Charlotte Ross, important researchers like Bruce Chown, and colourful private practitioners such as Murrough O'Brien.

Manitoba has always been a province in the middle, geographically, economically, and culturally. Lacking Quebec’s cultural distinctiveness, Ontario’s traditional economic dominance, or Alberta’s combustible mix of prairie populism and oil wealth, Manitoba appears to blend into the background of the Canadian family portrait. But Manitoba has a distinct political culture, one that has been overlooked in contemporary political studies.Manitoba Politics and Government brings together the work of political scientists, historians, sociologists, economists, public servants, and journalists to present a comprehensive analysis of the province’s political life and its careful “mutual fund model” approach to economic and social policy that mirrors the steady and cautious nature of its citizens. Moving beyond the Legislature, the authors address contemporary social issues like poverty, environmental stewardship, gender equality, health care, and the province’s growing Aboriginal population to reveal the evolution of public policy in the province. They also examine the province’s role at the intergovernmental and international level.Manitoba Politics and Government is a rich and fascinating account of a province that strives for the centre, for the delicate middle ground where individualism and collectivism overlap, and where a multitude of different cultures and traditions create a highly balanced society.

Mennonites and their forebears are usually thought to be a people with little interest or involvement in politics. Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood reveals that since their early history, Mennonites have, in fact, been active participants in worldly politics. From western to eastern Europe and through different migrations to North America, James Urry’s meticulous research traces Mennonite links with kingdoms, empires, republics, and democratic nations in the context of peace, war, and revolution. He stresses a degree of Mennonite involvement in politics not previously discussed in literature, including Mennonite participation in constitutional reform and party politics, and shows the polarization of their political views from conservatism to liberalism and even revolutionary activities. Using a wide variety of sources, Mennonite, Politics, and Peoplehood combines an inter-disciplinary approach to reveal that Mennonites, far from being the “Quiet in the Land,” have deep roots in politics.

Ukrainians first came to Canada a century ago, seeking a new life on the western prairies. They brought with them an ancient and rich cultural tradition, deeply rooted in Christianity. The most visible symbol of this tradition is the Ukrainian church with its distinctive cupolas. As soon as the settlers were established in the new land, they began to reshape their environment by building churches in the styles they remembered from their homeland.In this richly illustrated volume, the authors trace the continuity of tradition in achitecture, art, and community life from Ukraine to the parishes of the Manitoba prairie. In a detailed examination of the exteriors and interiors of forty-nine churches, the book establishes a typology of Ukrainian church designs. Biographies of the architects, master builders, and artists are included, along with a guide to the art and architecture of a Ukrainian church.

My Parents: Memoirs of New World Icelanders is a collection of essays written by second-generation Icelandic immigrants in North America, describing the lives of their parents. Originally collected in 1956 by Dr. Finnbogi Gumundsson, the first Chair of Icelandic at the University of Manitoba, seven of the fourteen memoirs are translated here from Icelandic to English. They offer a rare first-hand look into the lives of New World immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Readers are invited straight into the heart of these people’s lives, from social evenings spent reading poetry and the sagas, to the daily struggles to prepare the land and build homes. A prevailing sense of community emerges from the writers’ stories, showing how Icelandic culture and tradition sustained the immigrants through hardship, illness, and isolation. My Parents also details some of the genealogy of the New World Icelanders who settled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota.