Notley Nation


Book Description

#1 Edmonton Journal Bestseller! • 2017 Alberta Literary Awards, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction — Winner Rachel Notley’s dramatic triumph over Alberta’s Conservative regime was an early rumble before the Trudeau landslide. Alberta has long been seen as politically paralyzed. But it has always been a cauldron of discontent, producing the Reform Party, the Wildrose movement, the modern Conservative Party of Canada, and Stephen Harper. Notley Nation tells how this pent-up energy exploded in an unexpected direction with Rachel Notley’s NDP victory. Stereotypes of redneck Alberta have long been at odds with the province’s growing progressive streak. The political upheaval that swept conservatism out of office in 2015 had shown its first tremors there five years earlier. Progressive mayors were elected in Calgary and Edmonton, and soon it became clear that the province’s PC government was falling out of touch with modern Alberta. Political journalists Sydney Sharpe and Don Braid explore how the Alberta NDP ended a forty-three-year Conservative dynasty that proved incapable of adapting to forces beyond its control or understanding. That wave would soon spread across the country, sweeping Justin Trudeau into office.










The Resistance Dilemma


Book Description

How organized resistance to new fossil fuel infrastructure became a political force, and how this might affect the transition to renewable energy. Organized resistance to new fossil fuel infrastructure, particularly conflicts over pipelines, has become a formidable political force in North America. In this book, George Hoberg examines whether such place-based environmental movements are effective ways of promoting climate action, if they might inadvertently feed resistance to the development of renewable energy infrastructure, and what other, more innovative processes of decision-making would encourage the acceptance of clean energy systems. Focusing on a series of conflicts over new oil sands pipelines, Hoberg investigates activists’ strategy of blocking fossil fuel infrastructure, often in alliance with Indigenous groups, and examines the political and environmental outcomes of these actions. After discussing the oil sands policy regime and the relevant political institutions in Canada and the United States, Hoberg analyzes in detail four anti-pipeline campaigns, examining the controversies over the Keystone XL, the most well-known of these movements and the first one to use infrastructure resistance as a core strategy; the Northern Gateway pipeline; the Trans Mountain pipeline; and the Energy East pipeline. He then considers the “resistance dilemma”: the potential of place-based activism to threaten the much-needed transition to renewable energy. He examines several episodes of resistance to clean energy infrastructure in eastern Canada and the United States. Finally, Hoberg describes some innovative processes of energy decision-making, including strategic environment assessment, and cumulative impact assessment, looking at cases in British Columbia and Lower Alberta.







Compelled to Act


Book Description

"Compelled to Act" showcases fresh historical perspectives on the diversity of women’s contributions to social and political change in prairie Canada in the twentieth century, including but looking beyond the era of suffrage activism. In our current time of revitalized activism against racism, colonialism, violence, and misogyny, this volume reminds us of the myriad ways women have challenged and confronted injustices and inequalities. The women and their activities shared in "Compelled to Act" are diverse in time, place, and purpose, but there are some common threads. In their attempts to correct wrongs, achieve just solutions, and create change, women experienced multiple sites of resistance, both formal and informal. The acts of speaking out, of organizing, of picketing and protesting were characterized as unnatural for women, as violations of gender and societal norms, and as dangerous to the state and to family stability. Still as these accounts demonstrate, prairie women felt compelled to respond to women’s needs, to challenges to family security, both health and economic, and to the need for community. They reacted with the resources at hand, and beyond, to support effective action, joining the ranks of women all over the world seeking political and social agency to create a society more responsive to the needs of women and their children.




Governor's Houses and State Houses of British Colonial America, 1607-1783


Book Description

This comprehensive survey of British colonial governors' houses and buildings used as state houses or capitols in the North American colonies begins with the founding of the Virginia Colony and ends with American independence. In addition to the 13 colonies that became the United States in 1783, the study includes three colonies in present-day Florida and Canada--East Florida, West Florida and the Province of Quebec--obtained by Great Britain after the French and Indian War.







Carbon Province, Hydro Province


Book Description

Why has Canada been unable to achieve any of its climate change targets? Part of the reason is that emissions in two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have been steadily increasing as a result of expanding oil and gas production. Declining emissions in other provinces, such as Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, have been cancelled out by those western increases. The ultimate explanation for Canadian failure lies in the differing energy interests of the western and eastern provinces. How can Ottawa possibly get all the provinces moving in the same direction of decreasing emissions? To answer this question, Douglas Macdonald explores the five attempts to date to put in place co-ordinated national policy in the fields of energy and climate change - from Pierre Trudeau's ill-fated National Energy Program to Justin Trudeau's bitterly contested Pan-Canadian program - analyzing and comparing them for the first time.







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