In August 1972, military leader and despot Idi Amin expelled Asian Ugandans from the country, professing to return control of the economy to "Ugandan citizens." Within ninety days, 50,000 Ugandans of South Asian descent were forced to leave and seek asylum elsewhere; nearly 8,000 resettled in Canada. This major migration event marked the first time Canada accepted a large group of predominantly Muslim, non-European, non-white refugees. Shezan Muhammedi's Gifts from Amin: Ugandan Asian Refugees in Canada (U of Manitoba Press, 2022) documents how these women, children, and men--including doctors, engineers, business leaders, and members of Muhammedi's own family--responded to the threat in Uganda and rebuilt their lives in Canada. 

Building on extensive archival research and oral histories, Muhammedi provides a nuanced case study on the relationship between public policy, refugee resettlement, and assimilation tactics in the twentieth century. He demonstrates how displaced peoples adeptly maintain multiple regional, ethnic, and religious identities while negotiating new citizenship. Not passive recipients of international aid, Ugandan Asian refugees navigated various bureaucratic processes to secure safe passage to Canada, applied for family reunification, and made concerted efforts to integrate into--and give back to--Canadian society, all the while reshaping Canada's refugee policies in ways still evident today. As the numbers of forcibly displaced people around the world continue to rise, Muhammedi's analysis of policymaking and refugee experience is eminently relevant. The first major oral history project dedicated to the stories of Ugandan Asian refugees in Canada, Gifts from Amin explores the historical context of their expulsion from Uganda, the multiple motivations behind Canada's decision to admit them, and their resilience over the past fifty years.

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Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897 (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2025) traces the origins of theatre, dance, and concert singing in Canada and their connection to British and American song and dance traditions.

When theatrical acts first appeared in the late eighteenth century, chattel slavery had transformed into mass entertainment on minstrel stages across the Atlantic world. As railroads and theatres were built, local blackface troupes emerged alongside touring British and American acts. By the 1850s, blackface theatre could be found in remote Western outposts to stages in Central and Maritime Canada. This is one of the first books to connect the rise of Canadian blackface minstrelsy with the emergence of Black singers, and choral groups. It describes how Black performers who assumed minstrelsy’s mask remapped plantation slavery on Canadian stages.

It begins with the conflicts that shaped North America – the American Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812. Next, it connects these origins with eighteenth-century British immigration, which brought folk dances and masking traditions to North America. From there, it unmasks when and how “Jim Crow” became an Atlantic world sensation, which set the stage for blackface to expand. Finally, it considers how Black acts reimagined the parameters of their own freedom.

Find Dr. Thompson on her website and the website of Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives, on BlueSky, and on Substack.

Find host Sullivan Summer at her website, on Instagram, and on Substack.

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A transparent first-hand account of a Black officer maneuvering through three terrifying yet rewarding decades of policing, all while seeking reform in law enforcement
When 16-year-old Keith Merith finds himself pulled over, berated, and degraded by a white police officer, he’s outraged. He’s done nothing wrong. But the officer has the power, and he doesn’t. From that day on, he vows to join a police service and effect change from within.
Twelve years and a multitude of infuriating applications later, Merith is finally hired by York Regional Police. Subjected to unfair treatment and constant microaggressions, he perseveres and gradually rises through the ranks, his goal of systemic change carrying him through. After a stellar career, Merith retires at the rank of superintendent, but his desire for sustained and equitable reform is stronger than ever.
In A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer's Memoir (ECW Press, 2024), Merith shares both his gut-wrenching and heart-warming experiences and advocates for immediate police reform in a balanced and level-headed manner. He praises the people in blue, but he also knows on a visceral level that there are deep issues that need to be rectified — starting with recruitment. He knows that law enforcement agencies should reflect the communities they serve and protect, and that all citizens should be treated equally. Entrusted with the duty to serve, Merith delivers an evocative perspective of policing by providing the opportunity to walk in his shoes, as a Black man, and as a police officer on the front lines.

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Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2025) by Dr. L. Sasha Gora explores the complex relationships between wild plants and introduced animals, Indigenous foodways, and Canadian regulations. Blending food studies with environmental history, the book examines how cuisines reflect social and political issues related to cultural representation, restaurants, and food sovereignty.

Dr. Gora chronicles the rise of Indigenous restaurants and their influence on Canadian food culture, engaging with questions about how shifts in appetite reflect broader shifts in imaginations of local environments and identities. Drawing on a diverse range of sources – from recipes and menus to artworks and television shows – the book discusses both historical and contemporary representations of Indigenous foodways and how they are changing amid the relocalization of food systems.

Culinary Claims tells a new story of settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance, emphasizing the critical role that restaurants play in Canada’s cultural landscape. It investigates how food shapes our understanding of place and the politics that underpin this relationship. Ultimately, the book asks, What insights can historians gain from restaurants – and their legacies – as reflections of Indigenous and settler negotiations over cultural claims to land?

Culinary Claims presents a comprehensive history of Indigenous restaurants in Canada, highlighting their significant role in the evolution of Canadian food culture.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Northwest Coast of North America is a treacherous place. Unforgiving coastlines, powerful currents, unpredictable weather, and features such as the notorious Columbia River bar have resulted in more than two thousand shipwrecks, earning the coastal areas of Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island the moniker “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Beginning with a Spanish galleon that came ashore in northern Oregon in 1693 and continuing into the recent past, Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific (University of Washington Press, 2025) by Dr. Coll Thrush includes stories of many vessels that met their fate along the rugged coast and the meanings made of these events by both Indigenous and settler survivors and observers.
Commemorated in museums, historical markers, folklore, place-names, and the remains of the ships themselves, the shipwrecks have created a rich archive. Whether in the form of a fur-trading schooner that was destroyed in 1811, a passenger liner lost in 1906, or an almost-empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999, shipwrecks on the Northwest Coast opens up conversations about colonialism and Indigenous persistence. Dr. Thrush’s retelling of shipwreck tales highlights the ways in which the three central myths of settler colonialism—the disappearance of Indigenous people, the control of an endlessly abundant nature, and the idea that the past would stay past—proved to be untrue. As a critical cultural history of this iconic element of the region, Wrecked demonstrates how the history of shipwrecks reveals the fraught and unfinished business of colonization on the Northwest Coast.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Andrew Forbes about his phenomenal novella, McCurdle’s Arm: A Fiction (Invisible Publishing, July 16, 2024).

Southern Ontario, 1892. The Ashburnham Pine Groves are a semi-professional baseball club in the South Western Ontario Base-Ball Players’ Association, sponsored by the Grafton Brewery, makers of Ashburnham’s Famous Pine Grove Ale. When sober the Ashburnham players are an impressive group, though coarse and occasionally cretinous, and as with any collection of men, not without their peculiarities. Robert James McCurdle is one of their most formidable pitchers, though he understands that his body won’t let him perform at a high level forever. McCurdle’s Arm is an account of a particular man in his particular time, playing a version of baseball devoid of the comforts of the modern game, rife with violence, his employment always precarious. Against this backdrop McCurdle must choose between his love for the game and his desire to be reunited with the woman who loves him.

About Andrew Forbes:

Andrew Forbes is the author of the novel The Diapause (Invisible, October 1, 2024), the novella McCurdle’s Arm: A Fiction (Invisible Publishing, July 16, 2024), and the essay collection Field Work: On Baseball and Making a Living (Assembly Press, April 15, 2025). He is also the author of two books of short fiction and two earlier collections of baseball writing. His work has appeared in publications such as the Toronto Star, Canadian Notes and Queries, and Maisonneuve Magazine. He was the 2019 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University, and served on the jury of the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Forbes lives in Peterborough, Ontario.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health,moir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Me

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Gina Leola Woolsey about her stunning biography, Fifteen Thousand Pieces (Guernica Editions, 2023). 

On Wednesday, September 2nd, 1998, an international flight carrying 229 souls crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia. There were no survivors. By Friday, Sept 4th, thousands of dismembered body parts had come through Dr. John Butt's makeshift morgue in Hangar B at the Shearwater military base. The Chief Medical Examiner faced the most challenging and grisly task of his career. Five years prior to the plane crash, John had lost his prestigious job as Alberta’s Chief Medical Examiner. After 14 years of marriage, John began to think of himself as gay, but remained closeted professionally. Then, after serving a handful of years as Nova Scotia's Chief Medical Examiner, the devastating crash in Nova Scotia cracked his carefully constructed façade. Fifteen Thousand Pieces explores one man's journey to accept his true nature and find his place in the world. Chapters alternate between the fast-paced story of the crash, and the history of the man in the making. It is both fast-paced and introspective; gruesome and touching. Ultimately, it is the story of how death teaches us to live.

About Gina Leola Woolsey:

CBC Award-winning author Gina Leola Woolsey tugs at your heartstrings with written portraits of people striving to find love, self-acceptance, and belonging in an ever-changing world. She left her corporate career mid-life to pursue an education in creative writing, earning a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the University of King’s College. She lives wherever the narrative takes her. Currently, her time is split between small-town Alberta, downtown Montreal, and her hometown of Vancouver.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is  a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Professor Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishness has been imagined, experienced, disputed and ultimately discarded across the globe since the end of the Second World War. From Indian independence, West Indian immigration and African decolonization to the Suez.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Join me for a fascinating conversation with one of today’s leading voices in environmental studies, Daniel Macfarlane, as we explore his new book The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024). Please see the description of the book below, then tune in to hear Dr. Macfarlane share the insights, research, and stories that shaped this important work.

Lake Ontario has profoundly influenced the historical evolution of North America. For centuries it has enabled and enriched the societies that crowded its edges, from fertile agricultural landscapes to energy production systems to sprawling cities. In The Lives of Lake Ontario Daniel Macfarlane details the lake’s relationship with the Indigenous nations, settler cultures, and modern countries that have occupied its shores. He examines the myriad ways Canada and the United States have used and abused this resource: through dams and canals, drinking water and sewage, trash and pollution, fish and foreign species, industry and manufacturing, urbanization and infrastructure, population growth and biodiversity loss. Serving as both bridge and buffer between the two countries, Lake Ontario came to host Canada’s largest megalopolis. Yet its transborder exploitation exacted a tremendous ecological cost, leading people to abandon the lake. Innovative regulations in the later twentieth century, such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements, have partially improved Lake Ontario’s health. Despite signs that communities are reengaging with Lake Ontario, it remains the most degraded of the Great Lakes, with new and old problems alike exacerbated by climate change. The Lives of Lake Ontario demonstrates that this lake is both remarkably resilient and uniquely vulnerable.

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How can urban housing, and the land underneath, now account for half of all global wealth? According to Patrick Condon, the simple answer is that land has become an asset rather than a utility. If the rich only indulged themselves with gold, jewels, and art, we wouldn’t have a global housing crisis. But once global capital markets realized land was a good speculative investment, runaway housing costs ensued. In just one city, Vancouver, land prices increased by 600 percent between 2008 and 2016. How much wealth have investors extracted from urban land? In Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis (U British Columbia Press, 2024), Patrick Condon explains how we have let land, our most durable resource, shift away from the common good – and proposes bold strategies that cities in North America could use to shift it back.

Patrick Condon is the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program.

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