FINALIST FOR TORONTO BOOK AWARDS

The inside story of the grassroots fight to have a suicide barrier erected on Toronto’s “bridge of death.”

Most Torontonians have no idea their city once hosted the second most popular suicide magnet in North America, behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Since its completion in 1918, more than four hundred people jumped to their death from the Bloor Viaduct, which spans the cavernous Don Valley.

That number might still be rising if not for the tireless efforts of a group of volunteers, led by two citizens, who fought City Hall for years to get a suicide barrier erected. Not only did they win, they saved numerous lives and brought to light valuable research on how barriers actually lower suicide numbers overall. The resulting barrier — The Luminous Veil — has been praised for its ingenious and inspiring design.

The Suicide Magnet tells how the battle was won, and explores the ongoing efforts to help those suffering from mental health challenges.

After years working in homicide, retired Toronto detective Steve Ryan reflects on six cases he will never forget.

Retired detective Steve Ryan worked in Toronto’s homicide squad for over a decade. For Ryan, the stories of Toronto’s most infamous crimes were more than just a headline read over morning coffee — they were his everyday life.

After investigating over one hundred homicides, Ryan can never forget the tragedies and the victims, even after his retirement from the police force. In The Ghosts That Haunt Me, he reflects on six of the many cases that greatly impacted him — seven people whose lives were senselessly taken — and that he still thinks about nearly every day. While the stories are hard to tell for Ryan, they were harder to live through. Yet somewhere between the crimes and the heartache is a glimmer of hope that good eventually does prevail and that healing can come after grief.

Gosia feels stalled in her life, but a family trip opens her eyes to the life she has … and the life she wants.

Gosia, a high school chemistry teacher, travels to her native Poland to visit her estranged father. Back in Canada, meanwhile, her father-in-law — who has been more of a dad to her than her own — is dying of cancer. Away from her routine, Gosia questions everything in her life, including her long-term boyfriend, Peter. She feels stuck in the terrifying time of early adulthood, in her first grown-up job while managing student debt, monogamy, and existential dread. Is this really it, she wonders?

Gosia’s time in Poland gives her the chance to examine her life, and she finds herself pulled homeward to Canada, where she faces the fact that Peter’s father — like her own — is far from perfect. Can she love despite betrayal? Can she find hope in her fiery, complex love for Peter? Is there something more to this life that she didn’t even realize she had?

Becalming tells the story of two people realizing that happily ever after is not something to be but something to continue to explore, through adversity and outrage, tragedy and inspiration, and love.

A RARE MACHINES BOOK

Once celebrated as the city that works, Toronto is a city on the brink.

Strained by urban sprawl, crumbling infrastructure, and outdated governance, Toronto is coming apart at the seams. Its promise — of livability, opportunity, and innovation — is being undermined by years of inaction and political gridlock.

But all is not lost.

In this book, ten leading City Builders set out a bold, practical roadmap to turn things around. Together, they show how we can:

• make local government work
• find the money to fix what’s broken
• solve the housing crisis
• unclog our streets and transit
• confront the climate emergency
• navigate the rise of big tech
• foster social solidarity
• and design spaces that bring people together.

This is a wake-up call — Toronto’s future is still ours to shape.

One family’s story of racism, redemption, and the long shadow of the Black Construction Battalion.

From an early age, Lance Dixon had heard about his grandfather, George Dixon, who was one of six hundred men that served in the only Black battalion in Canadian history — Nova Scotia’s No. 2 Construction Battalion in 1916. Sadly, much of his knowledge about his grandfather’s involvement in the battalion stopped there. It was undoubtedly difficult for his father, a veteran, to tell the story without reliving the painful racism his own father and he himself endured, and the shame they were taught to feel about being Black bodies in “a white man’s world.”

In A Footnote to Freedom, Dixon grapples with the effects of racism on three generations of his family. Drawing on their collective intergenerational strength, he brings to light the painful irony of the Black battalion’s struggle: that these men had to fight their own country to fight for the freedom of others in a distant land. This is the tale of his grandfather’s redemption.