A fresh take on the Manitoba schools question and the Conservative Coup that toppled Canada's fifth prime minister. When Mackenzie Bowell became Canada's fifth Prime Minister in December 1894, everyone -- including Bowell -- expected the job would involve nothing more than keeping the wheels on the Conservative wagon until a spring election. Plans for a quiet caretaker-ship were dashed in January 1895 when the courts ruled that the Manitoba government had violated Roman Catholics' constitutional rights by abolishing the provincial separate school system back in 1890. Catholics in Quebec demanded that Bowell force Manitoba to restore the schools, while Ontario Protestants warned him to keep his hands off. Backed into a corner, Bowell tried three times to negotiate a compromise with Manitoba over the course of 1895, but to no avail. By January 1896, seven of Bowell's cabinet ministers had had enough. Convinced Bowell had tarnished the Conservative brand, the caballers forced Bowell to resign and make way for a new leader who they believed could revive party fortunes in time for the coming election, the old Warhorse of Cumberland himself, Sir Charles Tupper. Ultimately, the coup didn't matter. Tupper and his conspirators plead their case in Parliament and on the hustings, but nothing could stand in the way of Wilfrid Laurier and his Liberals' historic rise to power in the June 1896 election. A Very Canadian Coup brings fresh sources and new perspectives to bear on the life and times of Canada's fifth -- and least understood -- Prime Minister and his Sixth Ministry.

A first-hand chronicle of Wolseley's expedition to end Riel's Red River Rebellion by a remarkable trio embedded on the mission. In the spring of 1870, two reporters set off from Toronto to cover one of the biggest stories in Canadian history: Colonel Garnet Wolseley's 1870 expedition to Red River. Over the course of six months, the Daily Telegraph's Robert Cunningham and the Globe's Molyneux St. John brought readers along as they paddled and portaged alongside the expedition's 1,100 troops and 400 voyageurs and guides from the shores of Lake Superior to Fort Garry. But that's not the whole story. Buried well below the fold was the fact that St. John's wife - international burlesque star Kate Ranoe - accompanied him and the expedition, and not just as an adventurer. Owing to an accident early on, Ranoe ended up ghostwriting many of St. John's stories. Embedded is the remarkable story of two reporters and one extraordinary woman as they journeyed to Red River with Colonel Garnet Wolseley and his expeditionary force.