New London: The Lost Dream
Publisher: Island Studies Press$27.95Sometimes, fact is better than fiction. In 1773 a group of Quaker tradespeople and their families from London, England settled on Prince Edward Island’s north shore. Rather than farming or fishing, their dream was to create a “new”– a bustling, commercial outpost–on what they considered to be a doorstep to the new world. New London survived and occasionally thrived for twenty years. This is its remarkable story.
Dispensing Aid
$20.00The floors were deep with plaster and glass, shelving was toppled, and heavy wooden counters broken. Amidst this disarray pharmacists gave first aid to the injured who came to the drug stores seeking care almost immediately following one of the worst disasters in Canadian history, the Halifax Explosion.
Dispensing Aid tells the stories of druggists in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion, the care they provided, their narrow escapes and the unexpected roles they played. The common medications of a hundred years ago are identified and their usage described. Photographs of corner drug store promotions, century old prescriptions and medication bottles add to this book’s unique perspective of an unforgettable time in Halifax’s history.
Cable Captain
$25.00This is the remarkable story of Captain Melville Henry Bloomer and the cable ships he commanded. The Lord Kelvin participated in the repair of cables damaged by the great seaquake of 1929 and the five year expedition to develop an undersea plough to bury cables in the ocean bed. That project is considered one of the greatest marine accomplishments of all times. The Minia was one of the ships that rescued Titanic survivors. Complemented by nearly 150 photos and drawings.
Old Trout Funnies: The Comic Origins of the Cape Breton Liberation Army
Artist: Paul MacKinnonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Cape Breton Island underwent a metamorphosis of sorts during the late 1970s and 1980s. Long marginalized by geography, economics and predominant mainland political culture, a countercultural sea change brought the island’s deeply rooted creative side to centre stage. One such platform was Old Trout Funnies, a homegrown series of satirical comic books created by artist Paul MacKinnon. Emerging from MacKinnon’s Cape Breton comic book heroes, the Cape Breton Liberation Army led a cultural revolution that swept the nation, winning acclaim on every front.
Oak Island Mystery: Solved!
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95For more than two centuries, adventurers, thrill seekers and treasure hunters have tried to unlock the secret of Oak Island, investing millions of dollars, and costing at least six lives. And the obsession continues: a television series in the winter of 2014 and seasonal walking tours that include locations highlighted by the series.
Theories and intrigue abound – a clandestine treasure trove? The resting place of some holy relic? A cache of priceless documents? The promise of treasure is a powerful compulsion – Oak Island story is embroiled with politics and treachery from its humble beginnings – and many have risked and lost entire fortunes, and in some cases their very lives, chasing these theories. The bald truth is that nobody actually knew, and every imaginable theory from the fantastic to the ridiculous was concocted to explain that unknown.
To get at the real treasure of Oak Island it is necessary to dig deeply, but through the facts, not the legends, and Joy Steele’s thorough investigation reveals a remarkable and credible truth vastly different than legend would have it.
Lifeline The Story of the Atlantic Ferries and Coastal Boats
Publisher: Breton Books$24.95Lifeline is an all-new edition of Harry Bruce’s classic telling of the roots of today’s Marine Atlantic—a history of the courage and determination that maintain the water-links of Atlantic Canada. From Newfoundland to Cape Breton, along the coast of Labrador—from Nova Scotia to Maine and New Brunswick, and across to PEI—through wind and ice, Harry Bruce brings to life a bold, brave, sometimes hilarious and often tragic history. With 40 historic photographs.
Silver Dart The Story of J.A.D. McCurdy, Canada’s First Pilot and the First Airplane
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95A WARM, ENTHUSIASTIC AND ENTERTAINING biography of the fearless pioneer pilot who flew Canada into the Aviation Era when his Silver Dart lifted off lake ice in Baddeck, February 23, 1909. The story of the Aerial Experiment Association — four young men around Alexander Graham Bell — that developed and flew the flimsy planes that became the legendary Silver Dart. A story of companionship, invention and courage, as Canadian aviation was born in Cape Breton Island.
Calendar of Life in a Narrow Valley: Jacobina Campbell’s Diary, Taymouth, NB 1825-1843
Publisher: Acadiensis Press$19.95Over the course of two decades, the ever-observant Jacobina Campbell coordinated the activities of a busy household and reported on the daily lives of family and neighbours. This remarkable woman’s diary introduces an early 19th-century community on the Nashwaak River where life and work were shaped by the seasonal rhythms of the farming-lumbering economy that came to characterize much of rural New Brunswick.
Separate Spheres Women’s Worlds in the 19th-Century Maritimes
Editor: Janet Guildford, Suzanne MortonPublisher: Acadiensis Press$9.95A best-selling anthology of original articles about the history of women in the Maritime Provinces. The traditional stereotypes surrounding Victorian womanhood are challenged by authors who tell us about farm women and black women, about women in classrooms, churches and factories, about women who struggled against family violence, defended their property rights, participated in public events and campaigned for social reform. Contributors include Rusty Bittermann, Gail Campbell, Janet Guildford, Phillip Girard, Rebecca Veinott, Hannah Lane, Bonnie Huskins, Suzanne Morton, Sharon Myers, Judith Fingard and Gwendolyn Davies.
Myth and Milieu: Atlantic Literature and Culture 1918-1939
Publisher: Acadiensis Press$16.95A lively look at the cultural history of the Maritimes and Newfoundland in the years between the two world wars. This is the world of Lucy Maud Montgomery and Thomas Raddall, E. J. Pratt and Helen Creighton, Margaret Duley and Frank Parker Day. In a wide-ranging review of regional culture, Myth & Milieu explores novels and poetry, painting and folklore, music and film, local dialect and political cartoons.
Studies in Maritime Literary History 1760-1930
Publisher: Acadiensis Press$16.95From the early diarists and satirists to the women writers of the nineteenth century and the poetic Song Fishermen of the twentieth, Maritime writers have made distinctive responses to the social, political and geographical realities of their time. These essays reveal how the region’s writers have shaped and reflected the identity of the Maritimes.
Planter Links
Publisher: Acadiensis Press$21.95They came into early Nova Scotia from many backgrounds, carrying the village culture, missionary ideals, political dreams, economic ambitions and ordinary hopes of the eighteenth century. Preachers and privateers, teachers and soliders, merchants and farmers , these men and women founded communities and planted seeds that have made a distinctive contribution to local and regional identities in the Maritime Provinces.
This latest volume in the Planters Studies Series features fourteen chapters by writers and scholars in the field, including Richard Lyman Bushman, Robert McLaughlin, Daniel Conlin, David Murray, Peter Haring Judd, David Jaffee, Philip Girard, Eldon Hay, Barry Cahill, Kenneth Paulsen, Nancy Vogan, Patrick Rogers, M.A. MacDonald and Julian Gwyn.
Education of an Innocent
Publisher: Acadiensis Press$14.95An informal personal history by one of the most respected and beloved regional historians of the Maritimes. Insights into schooling and society, family and church, the outdoors and the universities, all of which shaped his character and his work. Edited and introduced by former student Stephen Dutcher, and featuring a conversation with historian John G. Reid.
Witnesses to a New Nation
Publisher: SSP Publications$29.95From pioneer houses to elegant neo-Classical churches, this collection from Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia is based on an exhibition of the same name that toured the province in 2017, to great acclaim. A must-have for historians, conservationists and architecture buffs, this volume is replete with great colour images and solid research and writing.
Myth and Milieu: Atlantic Literature and Culture 1918-1939
A lively look at the cultural history of the Maritimes and Newfoundland in the years between the two world wars. This is the world of Lucy Maud Montgomery and Thomas Raddall, E. J. Pratt and Helen Creighton, Margaret Duley and Frank Parker Day. In a wide-ranging review of regional culture, Myth & Milieu explores novels and poetry, painting and folklore, music and film, local dialect and political cartoons.
Cariboo Gold Rush The Stampede that Made BC
Publisher: Heritage Group Distribution$9.95In 1858, some 30,000 gold seekers stampeded to the Fraser River. Scores perished during the gruelling journey, but some made their fortune and many pressed on northwards to the creeks of the Cariboo. Originally compiled by Art Downs, founder of Heritage House, this is a vivid and detailed account of the first gold strikes, the miners who made them and the incredible efforts to establish transportation routes and build roads to the Cariboo goldfields. Here are the stories of the legendary Williams Creek diggings, which yielded a golden harvest of over $2.6 million in 1862, and creeks with names like Lightning, Jack of Clubs and Last Chance.Also included are excerpts from Walter B. Cheadle’s journals. Cheadle and Lord Viscount Milton became the first tourists to the Cariboo in 1863. Richly descriptive and touched with humour, Cheadle’s first-hand account is a fascinating window into Cariboo history.
Enemy Offshore Japan’s Secret War on North America’s West Coast
Publisher: Heritage Group Distribution$9.95On June 20, 1942, the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island was shelled by the Japanese submarine I-26. It was the first enemy attack on Canadian soil since the War of 1812. But this was only one incident in the incredible and little-known Japanese campaign to terrorize North America?s west coast and mount an invasion through the Aleutian Islands.Enemy Offshore is a dramatic, comprehensive narrative of the events that unfolded as Japan brought the Second World War to North American shores. Submarines?Japan?s formidable I-boats?stalked the West Coast, attacking ships and shore stations. A Japanese aircraft-carrier force attacked Alaska twice, grabbing a footing in North America and launching a bloody conflict in the Aleutians. The Japanese bombed an Oregon forest in an eccentric plan to start mass fires and desperately launched thousands of bomb-laden balloons against Canada and the United States.Here are also the stories of ordinary citizens?fishermen, Natives and wilderness warriors who allied with the military in the extraordinary but largely unknown war on the West Coast.
Chilcotin Yarns
Publisher: Heritage Group Distribution$17.95Getting three trucks and two horses stuck in the mud on “a good road” into BC’s wild, remote interior was just the start of Bruce Watt’s Chilcotin adventures—and it was his honeymoon, too. The wildlife, landscape and quirky, down-to-earth people captivated Bruce, and despite the hard work and challenging conditions, the Watts put down roots, raising a family, alongside herds of cattle and horses.
A consummate storyteller, Bruce tells it like it was—and perhaps still is for many people calling this place home. These yarns capture the adventure and humour of running a ranch—from roping cougars to close calls on cliff edges and other “typical” accidents. His stories of chasing horses, navigating the backcountry and getting five kids off to school have a charm all their own.
Women at Sea in the Age of Sail
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many women experienced firsthand the perils and pleasures of life at sea. These venturesome women went to sea largely to be with their captain husbands and many proved themselves useful far beyond their roles as companions. Luckily for us, many of these seafaring women kept journals. Here, these women recount, in their own words, their impressions of the exotic places they visited, the homes they made and the children they raised afloat on the seas.
Donal Baird has published various articles and books on his passions, sailing and firefighting.Dancing on a Powder Keg
Publisher: Bunim & Bannigan$39.95Ilse Weber’s letters document the life of a young Jewish author of children’s book, as she and her family were gradually trapped and persecuted in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. Her poems, written and performed in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, have become an international symbol of the camp and ghetto poetry. Ilse saved her older son, but she and her younger son were gassed in Auschwitz.
Chocolates, Tattoos, and Mayflowers
$24.95Did you know that goose grease apparently cures the common cold, while salt fish draws a fever? How about the fact that “Torpedos” (automobiles) were manufactured in Kentville in 1910? These are just some of the tidbits of Maritime wisdom and little-known facts that you will find in Chocolates, Tattoos, and Mayflowers.
Collected over the years for Clary Croft’s popular radio column on CBC’s Mainstreet, these stories, memories, photographs, and advertisements show a fascinating side of Maritime popular culture and history. From accounts of sea monsters and famous duels to the history behind Maritime staples like Pot of Gold chocolates and Morse’s Tea, these entertaining and evocative pieces are sure to spark conversations around your kitchen table—just like any good Maritime subject!
A Soldier’s Place
$19.95For two decades following the First World War, Nova Scotia-born Will R. Bird published war stories in magazines and periodicals, which have gone out of print and were never digitized, and the stories had long fallen into obscurity—until now.
Carefully curated by author and editor Thomas Hodd, A Soldier’s Place is an anthology of fifteen of Bird’s best combat stories, based on the experiences of himself and of others, covering all aspects of the war effort and following brave Canadian, American, and Australian soldiers.
An infantry soldier, Will R. Bird miraculously survived the First World War and became one of the most prolific Canadian authors on the subject, completing both fiction and non-fiction works.
In Their Own Words
$21.95What was the First World War really like for Maritimers overseas? This epistolary book, edited by historian Ross Hebb, contains the letters home of three Maritimers with distinct wartime experiences: a front-line soldier from Nova Scotia, a nurse from New Brunswick, and a conscripted fisherman from Prince Edward Island. Up until now, these complete sets of handwritten letters have remained with the families, who agreed to share them in time for the one-hundredth anniversary of the Great War’s end in 2018. These letters not only give insight into the war, but provide greater understanding of life in rural Maritime communities in the early 1900s.
In Their Own Words includes a learned introduction and background information on letter writers Eugene A. Poole, Sister Pauline Balloch, and Herry Heckbert, enabling readers to appreciate the context of these letters and their importance.
25 Years of 22 Minutes
$29.95The final chaotic season of Codco had just wrapped when Mary Walsh sat down at a Toronto bistro with George Anthony, then creative head of CBC TV’s arts programming. She’d been thinking about a news-based comedy show–did he think that would fly? He did. That was the early ’90s. Twenty-five seasons later, hundreds of thousands of Canadians continue to tune in weekly to This Hour Has 22 Minutes for its unashamedly Canadian, biting satirical take on politics and power.
25 Years of 22 Minutes takes readers backstage to hear first-hand accounts of the show’s key moments—in the words of the writers, producers and cast members who were there. Readers will have a front-row seat to the birth of the show—including a crisis that had producers scrambling in the very first episode—and offer an insider’s take on the highs, the lows, and the daily grind behind the scenes at 22 Minutes.
The Sea Was in Their Blood
$22.95The Sea Was in Their Blood explores two key questions: who were the men aboard the Miss Ally, and why were they battered and sunk by a storm forecasted days in advance? Through interviews with the crew’s families and friends, rescue personnel, and members of the tight-knit fishing communities of Woods Harbour and Cape Sable Island, award-winning journalist Quentin Casey pieces together the tragic sinking—including important case details not previously reported—and weaves in the backstories of the Miss Ally‘s crew and the lingering effects of their disappearance.
Building for Justice The Historic Courthouses of the Maritimes
Publisher: SSP Publications$6.95In this beautifully illustrated volume, James Macnutt, Q.C. has succeeded in compelling us to look at courthouses in a different way. Courthouses are not only one of the most significant buildings in the cities, towns or villages in which they are located, they are also an excellent interpretation of the way justice is administered in each Maritime province.
Building for Justice is a celebration of a monumental architecture that, along with the buildings of church and state, forms one of the cornerstones of our society.
Shipwrecked: North of Forty
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Shipwrecked: North of Forty is a window into the fascinating undersea world of a career treasure hunter. Capt. Robert MacKinnon, professional diver and maritime salvor, takes you along with him into the waters off mainland Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and New England to the final resting place of hundreds of colonial era ships, some having wrecked on our shores as far back as the 1500s.
Electric City Second Edition The Stehelins of New France
$22.95This new edition tells the true story of the Stehelins, a prestigious family from Normandy, France, who came to Nova Scotia in the early twentieth century to carve out a new life in the wilderness. The family’s achievements were legendary–they built their own railway and installed their own electricity to the incredulity of all those around. Their amazing tale of creating an “electric city” in the wilds of Nova Scotia is the stuff of romance, challenge, and intrigue. Includes updates and a new chapter.
