The Battlefield of Ontario Politics


Book Description

Greg Sorbara has enjoyed one of the most successful careers of any Ontario politician. He was appointed minister of finance by Premier Dalton McGuinty in 2003, and served as campaign chair for the Liberals’ three consecutive election victories — the first time that had happened in more than a century.




Provincial Battles, National Prize?


Book Description

In parliamentary systems like Canada, voters directly contribute to the election outcome only in their own riding. However, the focus of election campaigns is often national, emphasizing the leader rather than the local candidate, and national rather than regional polls. This suggests that elections are national contests, but election outcomes clearly demonstrate that support for parties varies strongly by province. Focusing on the 2015 Canadian election campaigns in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, three large provinces with different subnational party systems, Provincial Battles, National Prize? evaluates whether we should understand elections in Canada as national wars or individual provincial clashes. The authors draw upon voter and candidate surveys, party campaign behaviour, and media coverage of the election to document how political parties vary their messages and strategies across provinces, how the media communicate and frame those messages, and how voters ultimately respond. The study shows that provincial variations in party support reflect differences in voters' political preferences rather than differences in party messages or media coverage. A novel and comprehensive study, Provincial Battles, National Prize? is the first and only thorough treatment of the party, media, and voter aspects of a federal election campaign through a subnational lens.




Dalton McGuinty


Book Description

2016 Speaker's Book Award — Shortlisted Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty shares the story of his life in politics and the leadership lessons he has learned. Dalton McGuinty was premier of Ontario for ten years, from 2003 to 2013. Inheriting a province wounded from years of cutbacks and divisive politics, McGuinty led Ontario through a deep recession and a challenging shift away from a manufacturing-based economy. Moving boldly, he initiated a major rebuilding of the province's schools and hospitals as well as a transformation of its transportation and energy infrastructure. Here, McGuinty tells the story of his life in politics, including his first crushing defeat, the victories that followed, his campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party, and his years as premier. Delivering a frank look at his years in power, he offers insight into major issues, like the closing of the coal-fired electricity plants, the HST, full-day kindergarten, and the two cancelled Ontario Hydro gas plants. Perpetually underestimated by both his opponents and the media, Dalton McGuinty prevailed through a mix of sheer determination and political shrewdness, becoming the longest-serving Liberal leader in Ontario in over a century. Here he shares the valuable lessons he has learned along the way about leadership and the limitations and expectations for political leaders in the twenty-first century.




Socialist Cowboy


Book Description

Socialist Cowboy is a political biography detailing the life and activism of longtime New Democrat MPP Peter Kormos, one of the most colourful and controversial political personalities in the history of Ontario politics. Throughout his illustrious twenty-three year career as a member of the Ontario legislature, Kormos's unapologetic commitment to democratic socialism and his shoot-from-the-hip brand of small-town populism won him strong accolades back in his blue-collar hometown of Welland, while raising eyebrows at Queen's Park and within his own party. From his days as a student strike leader, to his short-lived time in Bob Rae's cabinet, to his run for the Ontario NDP leadership and his epic battles with the province's political establishment, the book chronicles Kormos's political trajectory, through interviews and archival research, with a view to unpacking the ideas and traits that have made him a New Democrat icon.




Class Action


Book Description

In this inspiring history of a union, labour historian Andy Hanson delves deep into the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) and how it evolved from two deeply divided unions to one of the province’s most united and powerful voices for educators. Today’s teacher is under constant pressure to raise students’ test scores, while the rise of neoliberalism in Canada has systematically stripped our education system of funding and support. But educators have been fighting back with decades of fierce labour action, from a landmark province-wide strike in the 1970s, to record-breaking front-line organizing against the Harris government and the Common Sense Revolution, to present-day picket lines and bargaining tables. Hanson follows the making of elementary teachers in Ontario as a distinct class of white-collar, public-sector workers who awoke in the last quarter of the twentieth century to the power of their collective strength.




War Beyond the Battlefield


Book Description

In an effort to make sense of war beyond the battlefield in studying the wars that were captured under the rubric of the "War on Terror", this special issue book seeks to explore the complex spatial relationships between war and the spaces that one is not used to thinking of as the battlefield. It focuses on the conflicts that still animate the spaces and places where violence has been launched and that the war has not left untouched. In focusing on war beyond the battlefield, it is not that the battlefield as the place where war is waged has gone in smoke or has borne out of importance, it is rather the case that the battlefield has been dis-placed, re-designed, re-shaped and rethought through new spatializing practices of warfare. These new spaces of war – new in the sense that they are not traditionally thought of as spaces where war takes place or is brought to – are television screens, cellular phones and bandwidth, George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, videogames, popular culture sites, news media, blogs, and so on. These spaces of war beyond the battlefield are crucial to understanding what goes on the battlefield, in Iraq, Afghanistan, or in other fronts of the War on Terror (such as the homeland) – to understand how terror has globally been waged beyond the battlefield. This book was originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics.




The Battle for Berlin, Ontario


Book Description

Chronicles the events of 1916--a watershed year in the history of the small Canadian town known today as Kitchener, Ontario. The community, founded by German immigrants, was in turmoil over attempts to raise a battalion to support the British war effort, and that turmoil broke down the established order and culminated in the town's name change. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




History of Women's Marches – The Political Battle of Suffragettes (Complete 6 Volume Edition)


Book Description

Experience the American feminism in its core. Learn about the decades long fight, about the endurance and the strength needed to continue the battle against persistent indifference and injustice. Go back in time and get to know the founders and the followers, the characters of all the strong women involved in the movement. Find out what was the spark which started it all and kept the flame going. Learn about the organization, witness the backdoor conversations and discussions, read their personal correspondence, speeches and planned tactics. Learn about the relationship between great activists and what caused the fraction. See the movement in its full light and learn what it took to obtain most basic civil rights. Know your history and learn how to continue the fight. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) was an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was an American suffragist, social reformer and women's rights activist. Harriot Stanton Blatch (1856-1940) was a suffragist and daughter of Elizabeth Stanton. Matilda Gage (1826–1898) was a suffragist, a Native American rights activist and an abolitionist. Ida H. Harper (1851–1931) was a prominent figure in the United States women's suffrage movement. She was an American author, journalist and biographer of Susan B. Anthony.




Paikin and the Premiers


Book Description

A unique perspective on Ontario’s most powerful political leaders. Ontario’s fortunes and fates increasingly rest in the hands of the province’s premier. Critics say the role of premier concentrates too much power in one person, but at least that points to the one person Ontarians, and others beyond the province’s borders, ought to know all about. Few people know the modern-era premiers of Canada’s most populous province the way Steve Paikin does. He has covered Queen’s Park politics, discussed provincial issues from all perspectives with his TVO guests, and has interviewed the premiers one-on-one. Paikin and the Premiers offers a rare, uniform perspective on John Robarts, Bill Davis, Frank Miller, David Peterson, Bob Rae, Mike Harris, Ernie Eves, Dalton McGuinty, and Kathleen Wynne – from the vantage point of one of Canada’s most astute and respected journalists.




Strength of Conviction


Book Description

The inside story of Thomas Mulcair’s rise from modest beginnings to the threshold of power. Discover the man behind the headlines, who he is, how he thinks, and the struggles he faced — from fighting sexual misconduct, to protecting our environment, to his work alongside Jack Layton leading the NDP to a historic breakthrough in Quebec.