The Peddlers The Fuller Brush Man, the Lords of Liniment and Door to Door Heroes in Nova Scotia and Beyond
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95The Peddlers is the story of the leading roles some Nova Scotians played in the North American door-to-door sales profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It starts with the life of Nova Scotia-born Alfred C. Fuller, the Fuller Brush Man, whose humble upbringing in the Annapolis Valley laid the foundation for what became one of the biggest businesses of its type in the world.
It also follows the career of Yarmouth County’s Frank Stanley Beveridge, who co-founded the highly successful Stanley Home Products company. From the tough times of the 1920s and 1930s, the story showcases the Lebanese immigrant backpack peddler Herman Rofihe who established a quality men’s wear store that served three generations.
The Peddlers takes you on a door-to-door tour of the origins of household brands like Minard’s and Sloan’s Liniment, JR Watkins and Rawleigh Products, Fraser’s Liniment, Gates Little Gem Pills, Buckley Cough Syrups, Muskol, and other medicinal enterprises founded by peddlers, many of them Nova Scotians. It also chronicles a century-old Hants County murder case involving two young peddlers — one the victim, the other the perpetrator.
Filled with these fascinating stories of Nova Scotia’s history in the door-to-door trade, The Peddlers is a tribute to the men and women of a bygone era in merchandising, the likes of which will never be seen again.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Ten Years of Misadventures in Coffee
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Annabel’s coffee adventures took her from a wet, dreary market in northern England to the Canadian Prairies via a PhD in Central America. She gradually mastered the art of juggling a start-up business, her thesis, and a five-month-old baby at the same time, and negotiated emigration bureaucracy, a few disastrous business relationships, and the brutality of Canadian winters. This is the real story of coffee entrepreneurship, with all the grim, impossible, frustrating, and messy bits left in. Because they all seemed like a good idea at the time.
Cultivating Success The Life of Acadian Seaplants Founder Louis Deveau
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95Louis Deveau was born in the Acadian village of Salmon River, Digby County, NS, in the early years of the Great Depression. He inherited his father’s work ethic and his mother’s entrepreneurial flair, soon pioneering the creation of the commercial crab industry?now the second-largest fishery in Atlantic Canada. That work put him on the front lines of the industry he would transform over a lifetime: the seaweed business.
At forty-nine, Louis incorporated Acadian Seaplants Limited (ASL), and doggedly grew the company by capitalizing on research and development innovations. Today, ASL employs hundreds of people in more than a dozen nations, keeps a research staff of about fifty, and exports a wide range of products to over eighty nations worldwide.
With dozens of black and white photos and two colour inserts, this comprehensive biography tells the story of a visionary whose determination to build a successful business in Nova Scotia, and whose commitment to church, family, community, and Acadian culture transformed ASL into a world-leading, research- and technology-driven juggernaut.
« Merci de nous avoir choisis » K.C. Irving, Arthur Irving et l’histoire d’Irving Oil
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95Est-ce qu’on naît entrepreneur ou est-ce qu’on apprend à le devenir? « Merci de nous avoir choisis » cherche à répondre à cette fameuse question en examinant l’histoire fascinante des magnats des affaires Arthur Irving et K.C. Irving, et celle d’Irving Oil.
Un observateur aguerri a écrit au sujet des Irving : « Qu’on les aime ou qu’on les haïsse, on se doit de les respecter. » S’appuyant sur d’innombrables entrevues et des recherches approfondies, l’auteur primé Donald J. Savoie (Se débrouiller par ses propres moyens) examine en détail le succès d’une entreprise qui a vu le jour à Bouctouche et qui a grandi à Saint John, au Nouveau-Brunswick, et qui exploite maintenant la plus grande raffinerie de pétrole au Canada, ainsi que plus d’un millier de stations-service réparties dans l’Est du Canada, la Nouvelle-Angleterre et l’Irlande. L’entreprise a également des bureaux à Amsterdam et à Londres et exploite la seule raffinerie en Irlande.
Comme l’a dit K.C. Irving, on n’est jamais assuré de garder les clients; il faut gagner leur fidélité une personne à la fois. « Merci de nous avoir choisis » retrace l’histoire de la famille Irving depuis ses origines en Écosse, couvre la création et les premières années de l’entreprise et étudie la façon dont Irving Oil fait face aux défis actuels. Cette biographie exhaustive fournit des enseignements précieux pour les aspirants entrepreneurs, les écoles de commerce, les politiques publiques et, en particulier, le Canada atlantique.
“Thanks for the Business” K.C. Irving, Arthur Irving, and the Story of Irving Oil
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95As K. C. Irving said, business is never given—it has to be earned, one customer at a time. “Thanks for the Business” traces the Irving family back to its roots in Scotland, covers the establishment and early years of the company, and looks at how Irving Oil is confronting current challenges. This comprehensive biography holds important lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs, for business schools, for public policy, and particularly for Atlantic Canada.
A Future for the Fishery
$22.95Canadian fisheries industries face rapid change. With key stocks stable or rebuilding and most commercial fisheries managed sustainably, a younger workforce must be attracted and retained for this industry to thrive. Industry professional and author Rick Williams examines fisheries in rural-coastal Canada and explores strategies to develop new labour supply. This timely read for decision-makers features illustrative charts, data tables and crucial perspective from fish harvesters themselves.
Cod Collapse The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95It’s 1992 in Newfoundland and Labrador and the cod moratorium has put some thirty thousand fishers out of work. Journalist Jenn Thornhill Verma blends memoir and research in this gripping account of the enduring legacy of the largest mass layoff in Canadian history. Tracing the early history of the fishery to the present, Verma considers what lies ahead and what was lost along the way.
Living Treaties – Narrating Mi’kmaw Treaty Relations
Editor: Marie BattistePublisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95First Nations, Métis and Inuit lands and resources are tied to treaties and other documents, their relevance forever in dispute. Contributors share how they came to know about treaties, about the key family members and events that shaped their thinking and their activism and life’s work.
The Chemistry of Innovation Regis Duffy and the Story of DCL
Publisher: Island Studies Press$34.95How did a farm boy from Prince Edward Island become a succesful businessman, mentor and community philanthropist? In 1970, Regis Duffy %38212; then dean of science at UPEI — started a small chemical reagent company to create summer jobs for his students. Diagnostic Chemicals and its offspring, BioVectra, soon grew into global competitors in the diagnostic and pharmaceutical industry, employed hundreds of Islanders, and provided a model for entrepreneurship and economic development in Canada’s smallest province. The key to his success? As Regis once said, “Innovate or die; the atlernative is not that appealing.”
Dignity, Democracy, Development A Citizen’s Reader
Publisher: Breton Books$19.95With these 61 readable essays, Cape Breton’s Tom Urbaniak brings a courageous, critical and constructive eye to problems of our time. Whether it’s revitalizing struggling communities, harnessing the power of small investors, reforming tired institutions or protecting parliamentary democracy, he is able to point to workable solutions. This is a practical and thought-provoking reader, challenging everyone to engage with their region and with the world.
The Last Canadian Knight
$24.95From a small-town law office in Nova Scotia to the boardrooms of London, England, where he was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s “privatization ace,” lawyer and businessman Sir Graham Day has established a sterling international reputation as a tough-minded but charming negotiator. In The Last Canadian Knight, award-winning business journalist Gordon Pitts chronicles Day’s meteoric rise and explores the valuable lessons Day has gleaned from a lifetime of global business experience.
Twenty-First Century Irvings (Revised)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95Three generations after the Irving family arrived in Canada from Scotland, the name K. C. Irving hit the Forbes top billionaires list, making K. C. one of the richest men in the world and the most powerful businessperson in Canada.
But there is much more to the Irving story than the fascinating and brilliant K. C. and his immediate legacy. Twenty-first Century Irvings takes a careful look at both the family foundations upon which this empire was built and the dozen or more individuals who, in the twenty-first century, constitute the future of this important business family.
A business story, a family story, and a Maritime story, Twenty-first Century Irvings is a book for anyone interested in or affected by the legendary Irvings of New Brunswick.
This new edition includes an afterword from the author about recent developments in the Irving family business.
Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95Eco-Innovators profiles some of the region’s most innovative and forward-thinking leaders in sustainability. These entrepreneurs and educators, activists and agitators, farmers and fishers have all made measurable contributions both in their respective fields of interest and in motivating others to make change.
In the book, we meet Kim Thompson, a strawbale builder and consultant, who has recently brought her building experience to a renovation of an older house in downtown Halifax. Then there’s Edwin Theriault, who bought a bale of clothing back in 1971 and launched Frenchy’s, a chain of seventy-six used-clothing stores that has become an East Coast institution. Edwin doesn’t consider himself an environmentalist at all, but over the years his business has kept countless tonnes of material out of landfills. Also profiled are Speerville Flour Mill and Olivier Soaps in New Brunswick, Sean Gallagher of Local Source in Halifax, David and Edith Ling of Fair Acre Farm on PEI, and Jim Meaney of Cansolair solar heat air exchangers in Newfoundland, among many others.
With ten chapters on matters like reducing consumption, greening the home, sustainable eating, dressing, transportation, and vacationing, the book is an important look into the lives of Atlantic Canadians committed to creating viable green options in our region.
Social Economy : Communities, Economics and Solidarity in Atlantic Canada
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95THIS BOOK CONTRIBUTES to the growing literature on the social economy from the particular perspectives of Atlantic Canadians who have been part of the Social Economy and Sustainability Research Network. It illustrates the importance of the sector to the region’s social, economic and public life while exploring its potential for positive change. Prefiguring an economy based on principles of human values and principles of solidarity, the social economy offers a space for people to exercise democracy in realms thought to be “economic” and thus exempt from such priorities. The social economy has the aim of development in a double sense-development of the individual and local or community development. What is at stake is no less than democratizing the economy, creating a space for dialogue and debate, building partnerships, networks and capacity for innovation, sustainability, democracy and justice-in other words, developing the potentials for a social economy. Considerable innovation and significant contributions to quality of life thrive within the social economy in the Atlantic region. Organizations vary tremendously, not least in terms of how successful they are in meeting the immediate and longer term objectives to which they and their supporters aspire. This volume marks one step in furthering such understanding.
Community Economic Development
Editor: Eric Shragge, Michael ToyePublisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Communities have long been ahead of governments in responding to changes in the economy, forging ahead with innovative grassroots projects that now make up a substantial portion of economic development initiatives.
Having made major gains in practice and having built local capacities through innovation, Community Economic Development now stands at a crossroads. In Building for Social Change, Eric Shragge, Michael Toye and colleagues from across the country offer a timely critical examination of CED practices and debates.
This book is designed for CED practitioners, for others working in community-based organizations and those being trained. There are a growing number of post-secondary programs in English Canada that educate students in CED and related fields such as regional development, yet there are not many publications that provide analytical perspectives and debate.
The goal of this book is to describe and analyze CED practice, primarily in Canada, through a wide range of subjects—the evolution of its definitions, economic dimensions and the key elements that form its context.
Building for Social Change situates CED in wide political, economic and social contexts: rich examples of the scope and practices, and some of the limits—in Aboriginal communities, as a tool to support women, psychiatric survivor enterprises, housing and worker ownerships—are explored to help spur further critical discussion and debate.
Grumbling Hive Revisited Private Greed, Public Need
Publisher: Bunim & Bannigan$8.99In the original Grumbling Hive, dishonesty and vice created employment and wealth, inspiring Adam Smith, whose idealization of markets is a template for today’s unbridled capitalism. In Mandeville Sr.’s fable, a turn to honesty by his bees ( miniature Europeans) ruins the economy. In Mandeville Jr.’s fable, bees as they are, a community based on mutual support and selfless care, are ruined by the adoption of unbridled capitalism.
A Future for the Fishery
$22.95Canadian fisheries industries face rapid change. With key stocks stable or rebuilding and most commercial fisheries managed sustainably, a younger workforce must be attracted and retained for this industry to thrive. Industry professional and author Rick Williams examines fisheries in rural-coastal Canada and explores strategies to develop new labour supply. This timely read for decision-makers features illustrative charts, data tables and crucial perspective from fish harvesters themselves.
The Last Canadian Knight
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95From a small-town law office in Nova Scotia to the boardrooms of London, England, where he was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s “privatization ace,” lawyer and businessman Sir Graham Day has established a sterling international reputation as a tough-minded but charming negotiator. In The Last Canadian Knight, award-winning business journalist Gordon Pitts chronicles Day’s meteoric rise and explores the valuable lessons Day has gleaned from a lifetime of global business experience.
Money : The Canadian Story
$19.95Money: The Canadian Story will tell you everything you want to know about money, but were just too darn timid to ask. From how big is the middle class to the one percenters to the average CEO salary to exactly how much does the public sector cost, it is all here.
Where are Canadians working and what are the highest paid professions. What is Sidney Crosby’s hourly rate? From gold plated pensions to what prime minister has added the most to the national debt to the gender pay gap, there is no more complete book about money in Canada. We let the numbers do the talking.
Sustainable People
$19.95This book deals with a new role that has emerged as communities all over the world struggle to gain more control over their destinies as globalization accelerates.Community entrepreneurs create organizations that encourage people to learn their way out of poverty, dependency and marginalization. By participating in such innovative ventures, individuals become more self-sustaining and able to create good lives for themselves and others in their own communities or wherever the choose to settle.Sustainable People moves discussion about social and economic change from abstract terms such as “community” and “development” by focusing on what individuals and groups are actually doing to encourage personal and community development, it documents the background of the role of the entrepreneur, the kinds of organizations they create, their learning process and the moral basis of their initiatives.
