Dispersing the Fog is an unprecedented and explosive report compiled from an investigation into the politics and justice system of Canada, focusing primarily on the relationship between governments of Canada since the 1980s and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Until recently, no institution in Canada has enjoyed such admiration and respect as the Mounties. They were beloved. They were trusted. They were respected. From its humble beginnings in 1874, the Mounties have evolved into a hugely complex police force with almost 16,000 officers and nearly 10,000 civilians with an annual budget of $4 billion. There is no police service in the world like it, and for good reason. For more than 35 years the RCMP has found itself mired in a seemingly unending litany of organizational, legal and political controversies, the kinds of scandals that would have ruined a similar-sized corporation. How did it all go so wrong? In Dispersing the Fog , Paul Palango provides answers to questions that have long simmered in the consciousness of Canadians. Why was Ottawa so anxious to settle in the Maher Arar case? What were the roots of the Income Trust scandal that helped to get Stephen Harper elected Prime Minister of Canada? Was Brian Mulroney an innocent victim of biased journalists in the ongoing Airbus imbroglio? Why did governments cover up the truth in Project Sidewinder, a joint RCMP-CSIS investigation? Palango builds on the powerful and influential arguments made in his first two RCMP books, Above the Law and The Last Guardians , to show Canadians why they should be concerned about the RCMP, its mandate, its performance and its relationship to governments and politics. No other author knows the subject matter better than Palango. Dispersing the Fog is not just a book about the RCMP, but a story about the political and justice systems in general and a wake-up call for any Canadian converned about the security and integrity of the country. Dispersing the Fog is an elegant, thorough and conclusive debunking of the many myths of the RCMP and the Canadian way of policing. It shows clearly how the federal and provincial governments have encouraged and nurtured the RCMP over the past three decades for their own political purposes. It takes the reader on a step-by-step, virtually invisible process whereby one prime minister after another toyed or parried with the RCMP in pursuit of his own respective agenda. In our post-9/11 world, Dispersing the Fog addresses the role played by RCMP leaders, politicians and the media, who have all collectively failed to recognize and address the very real and articulate concerns of Canadians from coast to coast who have long questioned the ability or willingness of the RCMP to carry out its duties. No one who cares about democracy and the health of the country’s guardian institutions can afford to ignore this book.

Author-illustrator Matt Hammill has created a tongue-in-cheek adventure story where fantasy and reality merge, with hilarious results. The eponymous hero is an armchair explorer on a quest for a Lost Tablet of Illusion, stolen by an elusive beast. Sir Reginald’s quest takes the reader on a journey through figments and flights of imagination on one hand, and through his mild-mannered home life on the other. Is that the deafening buzz of the carnivorous elephant beetle — or Sir Reginald’s alarm clock? Does the tiger-stripe viper lie stretched across his path — or is it a sock? What is the nature of this Lost Tablet and its awesome power? As Sir Reg veers comically between worlds, the imagination emerges as the most powerful charm of all.

The most prestigious and eagerly anticipated nonfiction series of the year teams up with legendary poet, novelist, and essayist Margaret Atwood to deliver a surprising look at the topic of debt – a timely subject during our current period of economic upheaval, caused by the collapse of a system of interlocking debts. In her wide ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air – something we take for granted until things go wrong. And then, while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it.

Payback is not a book about practical debt management or high finance, although it does touch upon these subjects. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By investigating how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day through the stories we tell each other, through our concepts of “balance,” “revenge,” and “sin,” and in the way we form our social relationships, Atwood shows that the idea of what we owe one another – in other words, “debt” – is built into the human imagination and is one of its most dynamic metaphors.

Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care)

A bestselling investigative journalist takes a tour of the Alberta oil and gas industry, revealing how Canada’s richest province is squandering our chance for a sustainable future.

In its desperate search for oil and gas riches, Alberta is destroying itself. As the world teeters on the edge of catastrophic climate change, Alberta plunges ahead with uncontrolled development of its fossil fuels, levelling its northern Boreal forest to get at the oil sands, and carpet-bombing its southern half with tens of thousands of gas wells. In so doing, it is running out of water, destroying its range land, wiping out its forests and wildlife and spewing huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, adding to global warming at a rate that is unrivalled in Canada or almost anywhere else in the world. It’s digging, drilling and blasting its way to oblivion, becoming the ultimate symbol of Canada’s – and the world’s – pathological will to self-destruct.

Nowhere has the world seen such colossal environmental destruction as is being wreaked on Alberta. At one point the province even went so far as to consider a scientist’s idea of nuking its underbelly to get at the tar sands. Stupid to the Last Drop looks at the increasingly violent geopolitical forces that are gathering as the world’s gas and oil dwindle and the Age of Oil begins its inevitable slide towards oblivion. As Canadians deplete their energy reserves, selling them off to Americans at bargain-basement prices, no thought is given to conservation or the long-term needs of the nation.

In this powerful polemic, William Marsden journeys across the heart of a province seized by the destructive forces of greed, power and the energy business, and envisions a very bleak future.

From the Hardcover edition.

Author Bio
William Marsden is co-author of the international bestsellers Angels of Death and The Road to Hell. He is
an award-winning senior investigative reporter for the Gazette in Montreal

Charles Darwin meets the Beatles in this attempt to blend neuroscience and evolutionary biology to explain why music is such a powerful force. In this rewarding though often repetitious study by bestselling author Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music), a rock musician turned neuroscientist, argues that music is a core element of human identity, paving the way for language, cooperative work projects and the recording of our lives and history. Through his studies, Levitin has identified six kinds of songs that help us achieve these goals: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love. He cites lyrics ranging from the songs of Johnny Cash to work songs, which, he says, promote feelings of togetherness. According to Levitin, evolution may have selected individuals who were able to use nonviolent means like dance and music to settle disputes. Songs also serve as memory-aids, as records of our lives and legends. Some may find Levitin’s evolutionary explanations reductionist, but he lightens the science with personal anecdotes and chats with Sting and others, offering an intriguing explanation for the power of music in our lives as individuals and as a society.

In this startlingly original vision of Canada, thinker John Ralston Saul unveils 3 founding myths. Saul argues that the famous “peace, order, and good government” that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country’s true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase “peace, welfare, and good government,” demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount. He also argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas: egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. Another obstacle to progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn’t believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future.