Dundurn Press

Terence Young exposes the pharmaceutical industry secrets and cultural myths that thwart our safe use of prescription drugs.… Everyone should read it before their next visit to a doctor. — DR. NANCY OLIVIERI, MD, physician and professor

When it comes to drug safety, Big Pharma holds all the power, and it’s time for patients to take it back.

Tens of millions of patients in North America take prescription drugs, but the safety of these drugs is often based on medical myths. We are led to believe that if a medication isn’t safe, the government would never allow it on the market and that doctors would never prescribe a drug that isn’t proven effective. Who controls these narratives? And do they always have the best interests of patients in mind?

In an in-depth study of the enormous influence the pharmaceutical industry has over our health, drug safety advocate Terence Young explores how those with the most to gain financially are also those who wield all the power in health care — and withhold the knowledge that is critical to the safety of patients.

Forbidden Knowledge reveals the truth you need to know about prescription drugs and what to do about it. It will empower you to partner with your doctor to talk openly and plainly about medications to help avoid serious adverse drug reactions. This is your survival guide to Big Pharma.

A deeply personal memoir from one of Canada’s most celebrated architects.

In this personal account of A.J. Diamond’s life and work, he shares how he came to be the founder of the leading architecture firm Diamond Schmitt, one of Canada’s most successful architecture companies. He also explains his principles of design, which at their core are about making a positive impact in the world, considering the needs of the content, client, and context. Diamond gives insight into his design principles in relation to some of his most notable projects, including the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, la Maison symphonique de Montréal, the Mariinsky II Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the new city hall in Jerusalem. Diamond also chronicles his family ancestry, his childhood in South Africa, from his birth in his grandfather’s study in the small provincial town of Piet Retief on the borders of Eswatini (Swaziland) and Mozambique, to his university days at the University of Cape Town and Oxford — where he played rugby at the international level, scoring two winning tries for the Oxford Blues against Australia — and the University of Pennsylvania. His memoir traces his immigration to the U.S. and, eventually, Canada as well as his growing architectural practice in Toronto, where he focused on the issues facing his chosen city. 

A treasure trove of incredible lives lived.
— RICK MERCER, comedian and author

Muir sets out to restore the faces of women who worked and struggled in nineteenth-century Toronto. A fascinating read.
— WARREN CLEMENTS, author and publisher

Emphasizes the enormously influential role women had in laying the groundwork for life in the city today.
— DR. ROSE A. DYSON, author of Mind Abuse: Media Violence and Its Threat to Democracy

Women in nineteenth-century Toronto were integral to the life of the growing city. They contributed to the city’s commerce and were owners of stores, factories, brickyards, market gardens, hotels, and taverns; as musicians, painters, and writers, they were a large part of the city’s cultural life; and as nurses, doctors, religious workers, and activists, they strengthened the city’s safety net for those who were most in need.

Their stories are told in this wide-ranging collection of biographies, the result of Muir’s research on early street directories and city histories, personal diaries, and other historical works. Muir references over four hundred women, many of whom are discussed in detail, and describes the work they undertook during a period of great change for Toronto.

The American-led global order has been increasingly challenged by Chinese assertiveness and Russian revanchism. As we enter this new era of great-power competition, Canadians tend to assume that the United States will continue to provide global leadership for the West.

Canada Alone sketches the more dystopian future that is likely to result when the illiberal, anti-democratic, and authoritarian Make America Great Again movement regains power. Under the twin stresses of a reinvigorated America First policy and the purposeful abandonment of American global leadership, the West will likely fracture, leaving Canadians all alone with an increasingly dysfunctional United States. Canada Alone outlines what Canadians will need to navigate this deeply unfamiliar post-American world.

Get your daily Toronto Maple Leafs fix with Leafs 365. From the franchise’s early beginning as the Arenas and the St. Patricks to the incredible four-goal comeback against the Lightning in the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Leafs 365 includes 365 short stories about everybody’s favourite hockey team — one for every day of the year — to remind you why you still cheer for the blue and white season after season.

Some people say that the Leafs are cursed, but any team that brings you this many moments worth revisiting must be blessed. You may not be old enough to remember the team’s last Stanley Cup, but chances are you can recall Auston Matthews’s four-goal debut or the sense of optimism when the Leafs signed John Tavares. And while there are plenty of stories in this book that might make you question why you still root for the Buds, like the Game 7 meltdown to the Bruins in 2013 or losing to the Hurricanes, who had a Zamboni driver in net in 2020, the lowlights are what make the best times sweeter and worth celebrating. Chances are, if you’re holding this book in your hands, you’re a Leafs fan, and with every turn of the page you’ll fall in love with them all over again.

Plan your wedding without the weight of outdated customs and get hitched in a way that is authentic, fun, and true to who you are.

From the minute couples become engaged, they are pressured to buy into a one-size-fits-all wedding. By breaking down the antiquated traditions of that #blessedweddingday, The New Wedding Book will help you and your betrothed throw those icky traditions to the curb in honour of having the wedding of your actual dreams — not the one you've been force-fed for decades by the wedding-industrial complex.

Inspiring couples to plan their wedding in a way that is meaningful to them, Bilodeau and Cleveland debunk the manufactured traditions, advocate for realistic budgets, offer brilliant advice from real-life couples, and confront the crushing pressure for weddings to be perfect.

“An inspiring story of resilience, told with a vivid sense of character and humour.” —RICHARD CROUSE, CTV host and film critic

Film critic, writer, and broadcaster Thom Ernst chronicles his life growing up with an abusive father in rural Ontario.

The residents of Waubamik know about the Wild Boy, a somewhat feral child, standing nearly naked in a rusty playground of weeds and discarded metal, clutching a headless doll. They know the boy has been plucked from poverty and resettled into a middle-class family. But they don’t know that something worse awaits him there.

This is the story of a system that failed, a community that looked the other way, and a family that kept silent. It is also a record of the popular culture of the 1960s — a powerful set of myths that kept a boy comforted. But ultimately, The Wild Boy of Waubamik is a story of triumph, of a man who grew up to become a film critic and broadcaster despite his abusive childhood. It reminds us that life, even at its darkest, can surprise us with moments of joy and hope and dreams for the future.

During a pandemic lockdown full of pyjama dance parties, life talks, and final goodbyes, a family helps a father die with dignity.

In April 2020, journalist Mitchell Consky received bad news: his father was diagnosed with a rare and terminal cancer, with less than two months to live. Suddenly, he and his extended family — many of them healthcare workers — were tasked with reconciling the social distancing required by the Covid-19 pandemic with a family-based approach to end-of-life care. The result was a home hospice during the first lockdown. Suspended within the chaos of medication and treatments were dance parties, episodes of Tiger King, and his father’s many deadpan jokes.

Leaning into his journalistic intuitions, Mitchell interviewed his father daily, making audio recordings of final talks, emotional goodbyes, and the unexpected laughter that filled his father’s final days. Serving as a catalyst for fatherly affection, these interviews became an opportunity for emotional confession during the slowed-down time of a shuttered world, and reflect how far a family went in making a dying loved one feel safe at home.

Glamorous young wife Alma Rattenbury takes her chauffeur as a lover and their scandalous relationship leads to a murder most foul.

The 1935 murder of architect Francis Mawson Rattenbury, famous for his design of the iconic Parliament Buildings and Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, and the arrest and lurid trial of his 30-years-younger second wife, Alma, and the family chauffeur, George Percy Stoner, her lover, riveted people.

Francis and Alma had moved to Bournemouth, England, after the City of Victoria had ostracized them for their scandalous, flagrant affair while Francis was married to his first wife. Their life in Bournemouth was tangled. Francis became an impotent lush. Deprived of sexual gratification, Alma seduced George, previously a virgin who was half her age. They conducted their affair in her upstairs bedroom with her and Francis’s six-year-old son in a nearby bed, “sleeping,” she said, and the near-deaf Francis in his armchair downstairs in a drunken stupor.

The lovers were tried together for Francis’s murder at the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London, resulting in intense public interest and massive, frenzied media coverage. The trial became one of the 20th century’s most sensational cases, sparking widespread debate over sexual mores and social strata distinctions.

Powerful strategies to combat the design flaws of the human brain that make life in the twenty-first century unreasonably difficult.

If other animals could study us the way we study them, they would be puzzled by our unique ability to inflict misery on ourselves. We expend a lot of energy replaying past anguish, anticipating future distress, and stewing in self-righteous anger. Other animals would call us out for being oddly paradoxical creatures who long to be happy but who are the source of their own suffering, We worry about things we have no control over. We complain about not being understood while casting a critical eye on others. We stubbornly defend our beliefs despite contradictory evidence. Complicating all of this is our struggle to adapt to a complex world that we created. who struggle to adapt to a confusing world that we ourselves created.

In our defence, we haven’t yet mastered our neuron-packed brains, whose incredible complexity evolved over millennia in a very different world than today’s. The result of this evolutionary journey? Five design features that often morph into design flaws in need of fixing.

Hard to Be Human corrals the best insights from psychology, neuroscience, physics, and philosophy to reveal powerful strategies for the five big battles we each face in the war with our misguided, misbehaving selves. Tapping into deeply personal stories to ground the concepts in real life, Cadsby reveals how we can overcome our design flaws to be smarter, happier, and better adapted to the complexities of life in the twenty-first century.

Celebrating Toronto’s built heritage of row houses, semis, and cottages and the people who lived in them.

Despite their value as urban property, Toronto’s workers’ cottages are often characterized as being small, cramped, poorly built, and in need of modernization or even demolition. But for the workers and their families who originally lived in them from the 1820s to the 1920s, these houses were far from modest. Many had been driven off their ancestral farms or had left the crowded conditions of tenements in their home cities abroad. Once in Toronto, many lived in unsanitary conditions in makeshift shantytowns or cramped shared houses in downtown neighbourhoods such as The Ward. To then move to a self-contained cottage or rowhouse was the result of an unimaginably strong hope for the future and a commitment to family life.

Through the stories of eight families who lived in these “Modest Hopes,” authors Don Loucks and Leslie Valpy bring an important but forgotten part of the Toronto narrative to life. They illuminate the development of Toronto’s working-class neighbourhoods, such as Leslieville, Corktown, and others, and explain the designs and architectural antecedents of these undervalued heritage properties.

Herbert Whittaker, drama critic emeritus of The Globe and Mail, has spent over fifty years in the service of Canadian theatre. Beginning as a stage designer and director in Montreal, in 1949 he became drama, film, and dance critic for The Globe and Mail in Toronto. From his position in the audience and backstage, he watched, praised, cajoled, and championed Canadian theatre during its impressive flowering.

Along the way, he met and became friends with international stars and promising beginners on their way to stardom. In Whittaker's Theatricals, he shares some memories from personal encounters and draws on historical records to demonstrate Canada's long connection to world-class theatre.

These lively theatrical portraits include such varied performers as The Divine Sarah and Richard Burton, "America's Sweetheart" and Christopher Plummer, Edmund Kean and Kate Reid. Designers like Tanya Moiseiwitsch, directors from Fyodor Komisarjevsky to Tyrone Guthrie and Robert Lepage and influential friends of theatre such as Ed Mirvish and Robbie Ross also find their place in this intriguing collection.

Name-dropping at its best!

For one memorable year, nurse Dorothy Knight traded her conventional urban existence for a life of isolation in the Arctic. This is the story of her courage and humour while she faced the enormous responsibility of caring for the health of scattered villages; of journeys by dog-sled; of loneliness; and of the friendship and interdependence of the few companions who spoke her language. This dramatic, true story glows with human warmth and compassion as Dorothy struggles to carry on her job amid blizzards and epidemics, and as the white woman and the Eskimo community gradually achieve understanding, respect, and friendship.

Dorothy Knight learned a lot that year; the conditions and courage of Eskimo life, the lack of facilities, the tragedies that are sometimes caused by the white man's interference in a long-established way of life. She left having earned the name Lutiapik — the little one who cares for us.

If Lutiapik is a life-affirming story of humour and strength, it is also a shocking book that reveals the ravages of disease brought by the white man to the Eskimo world. It reveals too the pathetic shortcomings of measures only half taken to correct the situation, as official apathy and bureaucratic indifference persists.

In an alternate 1933, a sleuth and his robot partner are caught in the middle of a legal battle that will decide the fate of the world’s machine population.

Carlson does a good job populating his gritty, split-level world with dodgy mobsters, deadly dames, and killer machines. — Publishers Weekly, for Night Call

Two months after an investigation that nearly put Elias Roche behind bars, the former cop turned mob enforcer has endeavoured to separate himself from his past by going straight. Now working as a private investigator, his attempts to build himself a quiet life have so far been promising. However, while Manhattan’s Lower City is in the midst of a reignited mob war, Elias is faced with finding a man who doesn’t want to be found, absolving a machine of a murder charge, and discovering a network of secrets that keeps the world turning, almost literally.

Reuniting with his old Automatic partner, Allen, and reporter-turned-hitman Simone, Elias must search for the truth amid a web of conspiracy and lies. While failure would result in the eradication of all Automatics in America and cripple the megacorporation that hired him to investigate, success could uncover truths no one is ready to face: truths about the city, Allen’s past, and which side they are all truly fighting for.

Tormented, rebellious police detective Victor Lessard races to track down a ruthless killer in Montreal.

“Martin Michaud is a master at twisty storytelling and compelling atmosphere.” — Catherine McKenzie

“Never Forget is a crackerjack read.” — Quill & Quire

“A raucous crime thriller.” — Publishers Weekly

When a homeless man jumps to his death in Old Montreal, the police discover two wallets in his possession: one belonging to a retired psychiatrist who was murdered in a bizarre ritual, the other to a powerful corporate lawyer who has vanished. As Montreal police detective Victor Lessard and his partner, Jacinthe Taillon, work to solve the separate mysteries, a dark conspiracy begins to emerge.

While the pressure builds and the bodies accumulate, disturbing secrets come to light about a pivotal moment in political history. But will Lessard and Taillon crack the case in time to stop the killer from striking again?