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Wendy Murphy was rendered with incomplete paraplegia following a motor vehicle accident in 1984. She has carried on with tenacious spirit, and her life and career choices have been anything but conventional. Determined to make a difference for the physically challenged community, Wendy threw herself front and center publicly. After she established herself as a sought-after model with a number of department stores and other high-profile advertisers, she moved on to commercial and acting roles. Her biggest achievement was finding her place in front of the camera as a broadcast journalist for eight years with City TV. Today Wendy sees total access for those in wheelchairs as both a community and a political issue and she dedicates herself accordingly, all with the goal of seeing change. Just as importantly, she hopes her life and all that she's accomplished will serve as an inspiration to others; a fact that has spurred her efforts to write this memoir. Wendy's advice to others with hopes and dreams?'Reach for the stars with good intentions and the universe is sure to answer!'

Winner of the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political WritingFinalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers'Trust Prize for Nonfiction An incredible work of non-fiction that reads like a thriller, All We Leave Behind is the true story of a family fleeing the death sentence of a ruthless warlord, written by the journalist who broke all her own rules to get them to safety.In 2002, Carol Off and a CBC TV crew encountered an Afghan man with a story to tell. Asad Aryubwal became a key figure in their documentary on the terrible power of thuggish warlords who were working arm in arm with Americans and NATO troops. When Asad publicly exposed the deeds of one of the warlords, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it set off a chain of events from which there was no turning back. Asad, his wife, Mobina, and their five children had to flee their home. The family faced an uncertain future. But their dilemma compelled a journalist to cross the lines of disinterested reporting and become deeply involved. Together, they navigated the Byzantine international bureaucracy and the decidedly unwelcoming policies of Stephen Harper's government until the family finally found a new home. Carol Off's powerful account traces not only one family's journey and fraught attempts to immigrate to a safe place, it also illustrates what happens when a journalist becomes irrevocably caught up in the lives of the people in her story and finds herself unable to leave them behind.

No one likes listening to smug hippies bragging about how they don't use toilet paper, or worse yet, lecturing about the evils of plastic bags and SUVs. But most of us do want to lessen our ecological footprint. With this in mind, Farquharson takes on the intense personal challenge of making one green change to her lifestyle every single day for a year to ultimately figure out what's doable and what's too hardcore.Vanessa goes to the extremes of selling her car, unplugging the fridge, and washing her hair with vinegar, but she also does easy things like switching to an all-natural lip balm. All the while, she is forced to reflect on what it truly means to be green.Whether confronting her environmental hypocrisy or figuring out the best place in her living room for a compost bin full of worms and rotting cabbage, Vanessa writes about her foray into the green world with self-deprecating, humorous, and accessible insight. This isn't a how-to book of tips, it's not about being eco-chic; it's an honest look at what happens when an average girl throws herself into the murkiest depths of the green movement.