This YA novel about a bantam hockey player who goes to Europe to represent Canada in the world championships is also about the heroes of tradtion and Beowulf. High school hockey players and English students will love it. A hockey players overcomes his fears of high school English after winning the world hockey championship.

Hockey occupies a prominent place in the Canadian cultural lexicon, as evidenced by the wealth of hockey-centred stories and novels published within Canada. In this exciting new work, Jason Blake takes readers on a thematic journey through Canadian hockey literature, examining five common themes - nationhood, the hockey dream, violence, national identity, and family - as they appear in hockey fiction. Blake examines the work of such authors as Mordecai Richler, David Adams Richards, Paul Quarrington, and Richard B. Wright, arguing that a study of contemporary hockey fiction exposes a troubled relationship with the national sport. Rather than the storybook happy ending common in sports literature of previous generations, Blake finds that today's fiction portrays hockey as an often-glorified sport that in fact leads to broken lives and ironic outlooks. The first book to focus exclusively on hockey in print, Canadian Hockey Literature is an accessible work that challenges popular perceptions of a much-beloved national pastime.

One man's journey across the heartland of Canada, from Georgian Bay to the Zen Forest, in search of healing. He travels through Muskoka and the Kawarthas, interviews a Zen Master and a New Age guru, gets the Oneness Blessing, and finds a short-cut to enlightenment.

A novel about a father and son reunion. The son was raised by two women. One of the women became a man. The father went away for a decade to study New Age healing and Zen, and returned when the boy was just about ready for high school. They spend an amazing, incredible, healing summer together in Canada.

The true story about meetings with a Zen Buddhist monk and Zen master who wanted to write a book about a short-cut to enlightenment in the Zen Forest and what happened right after.

64 hockey poems celebrating Yakupov, the Edmonton Oilers, hockey, and Canada

Contributors include Julian Ammirante (Laurentian University at Georgian), Jason Blake (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Robert Dennis (Queen's University), Jamie Dopp (University of Victoria), Russell Field (University of Manitoba), Greg Gillespie (Brock University), Richard Harrison (Mount Royal College), Craig Hyatt (Brock University), Brian Kennedy (Pasadena City College), Karen E.H. Skinazi (University of Alberta), and Julie Stevens (Brock University).

What "national pastime" novels tell us about our country.