Showing results by narrator "Nina Richmond" in All Categories

In this incisive collection, Sharon Butala reflects on the ways her life has changed as she's grown old. She knows that society fails the elderly massively, and so she tackles ageism and loneliness, friendship and companionship. She writes with pointed wit and acerbic humour about dinner parties and health challenges and forgetfulness and complicated family relationships and the pandemic—and lettuce. And she tells her story with the tremendous skill and beauty of a writer who has masterfully honed her craft over the course of her storied four-decade career.

The Secret of Love is a compilation of amazing stories from couples whose relationships improved or completely turned around just by being pointed within, toward their true nature. These couples began to see how they were contributing to their problems from insights gained as they were learning. They saw how they could work with the force of nature, rather than against it. The inspiration for the book came from “Thought and Marriage” by the late Sydney Banks, the person who uncovered the Three Principles that create everyone’s experience of life.

After the orphanage she lives in is destroyed by fire, Betty, an innocent and trusting teen, takes a job as a maid in Kingston, Ontario. Welcomed into the household of the wealthy Remington clan, Betty makes friends with the staff at the house and soon discovers that her mother had also been a maid there—and that her father is in a nearby jail, convicted of murdering her mother. When she meets her father, she is taken aback by his claims of innocence, and she decides to try to uncover the truth about her mother’s murder and her father’s conviction.

Margaret Bradley is the most senior associate at a prestigious law firm, and she is on track to make partner. It is the 1970s; her climb up the career ladder in this male-dominated profession has been difficult, but with hard work she has made herself one of the best in it. She is dedicated to her work and is happily married until one day her entire world is shattered by the sudden death of her son Andrew, a military pilot. Now, Margaret lives with a heavy, all-encompassing sense of loss and regret that is pushing her further and further away from the person she once knew herself to be, and from her husband, Jack, a successful geologist and a loving partner.

Claudia, single mom of two, pines for her past independent life. Her ex, after all, has moved on to a new wardrobe, new hobbies and—worst of all—new adult friends. But in Claudia's house she's still finding bananas in the sock drawer, cigarettes taped to wrestling figures, and colourful doodles on her MasterCard bills. Then Claudia receives the unexpected news that her mother has died.

Katrina is an adventure athlete who craves the wild; her husband, Mike, watches sports with his buddies. Like many couples, after 11 years in a relationship they’ve grown apart and have become mere acquaintances, as opposed to husband and wife. When they hit rock bottom they realize it's time for a change and they make the dramatic decision to travel the world by bike.

This picture of Devin, alive when she should not be alive, triggers of a journey of grief and discovery as the young woman convinced that she caused Devin's death sets out to discover whether Devin may actually be alive, and whether she can be forgiven. Along the way she steals identities, picking up and discarding the people she may or may not be as she struggles with her guilt, and to come to terms with her own bisexuality. As her sense of self unravels, she meets Calgary hippies, a car thief, and an ice cream loving corpse.

Using the richness of braided essays, Theresa Kishkan thinks deeply about the natural world, mourns and celebrates the aging body, gently contests recorded history, and considers art and visual phenomena. Gathering personal genealogies, medical histories, and early land surveys together with insights from music, color theory, horticulture, and textile production, Kishkan weaves a pattern of richly textured threads, welcoming listeners to share her intellectual and emotional preoccupations.

In A History of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Volume 5: 1973-1999, the story of CIBC unfolds amidst a backdrop of world-changing events, economic booms and busts, and memorable moments in Canadian history. This era of the bank saw challenges such as the OPEC crisis and recession-driven collapses of iconic companies like Massey Ferguson, Dome Petroleum, and Olympia & York.

This is an imaginary drama in verse in which US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pleads with President George Bush, Jr., to be allowed to chronicle the glorious presidency of Mr. Bush after his second inauguration. Of course, he is allowed to do so. Thus emerges a gentle satire which is also a social commentary of our time, replete with a large cast which includes Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, the Ghost of Saddam Hussain, and others, not to mention a sombre 'Chorus of the Homeless' providing a rational commentary throughout. An echo of Greek tragedies of yore.

Kate, a somewhat clumsy widow of 32, flees her stifling hometown on Vancouver Island to live alone on an even smaller island in the Salish Sea. In so doing, she has vague expectations of solace and sanctuary, despite past experience. Instead she meets Ivy, a woman who through their conversations transports her to the intoxicating world of 1926 Cuba. Within the context of their friendship, Ivy’s past begins to unravel from a long-held silence, just as Kate finds herself confronting her relationship with the colorful community she’s known all her life.

In Until Further Notice, Amy Kaler records a personal account of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time. She documents a series of jolts to her thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and habits—an internal seismograph of living through a global emergency. Kaler’s introspection underlines the universal experience of dissonance brought on by COVID-19 and invites listeners to ponder its ambiguities. At the same time, the pandemic lets Kaler put down roots, as she rediscovers her neighbourhood and her city’s natural spaces.

The kid called Chatter has an affliction. Perhaps it is a gift. He attracts dying jackrabbits. Orphaned by parents whose names he never knew, he was worshiped and savaged in the institutions that raised him. Pushed out by his peers, trailed by the dying, the kid called Chatter fled. In an isolated river valley on the western frontier, as the Great Depression drags on, the jackrabbits are undeterred and the kid called Chatter is trapped inside the choice to survive. Moonshiner Ruddy Lou offers him a future as a messianic faith healer, as long as he never asks questions or exposes the con.