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The First Violin The life and loss of the Titanic’s violinist John Law Hume
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95In Halifax’s Fairview Cemetery lies the body of John Law Hume, first violinist of RMS Titanic. As the ship sank that tragic night in April 1912, legend has it that the band played on right to the very end. The First Violin tells the story of the construction and sinking of the great ocean liner on her maiden voyage and also recounts the fascinating life and loss of the ship’s violinist John Law Hume. Written by Hume’s great-niece, Yvonne Hume, the book traces the first violinist’s early years in Dumfries, Scotland, the events that led him to play on board the Titanic, and the doomed voyage across the Atlantic. The book also recounts the chaotic aftermath, with the recovery of bodies and the eventually identification in the Halifax graveyard of body No. 193: John Law Hume. This illustrated edition includes over 100 photos, diagrams, and letters documenting the tragic story, and includes a short foreword by Millvina Dean, Titanic’s last survivor.
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Historic Saint John Streets
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Neither the Crow’s Nest tavern nor the boundary between Saint John East and West exist today, but Crow’s Nest Lane and City Line still do. In this pioneering excavation of the largest city in New Brunswick, authors David Goss (Only in New Brunswick) and Harold E. Wright (East Saint John) illuminate many of the stories inspired by and responsible for the curious collection of street names in Saint John, New Brunswick, past and present.
Culled from interviews with current and former residents, archival and original research, and a dash of local lore, Historic Saint John Streets is both a historians’ reference and readers’ miscellany. Featuring an ambitious sampling of over 100 roads and archival images, representative streetscapes run the gamut from secret shortcuts, to back roads, to main throughways, and offer a valuable new perspective of the historically rich Maritime city.
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Historic New Glasgow, Stellarton, Westville and Trenton An Illustrated History of New Glasgow and area
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Well known for its mining and manufacturing activities, New Glasgow, Stellarton, Westville, and Trenton, share a fascinating history. First settled by the Mi’kmaq and Acadians, and later by a large influx of Scots, the area became an important hub supported by coal and steel industries that attracted people from all walks of life.
Author Monica Graham outlines the towns’ coal and steel industries, their businesses and institutions, and their best-known people and landmarks. With over 180 historical black and white images from the 1870s to 1940s, Historic New Glasgow, Stellarton, Westville, and Trenton is an excellent addition to the Images of Our Past series.
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Halifax and Titanic
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The story of Titanic’s tragic sinking on April 15, 1912, has been told countless times in films and books, inscribing it into popular culture as perhaps the best-known disaster of all-time. When Titanic went down off the coast of Newfoundland, the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was the base from which recovery operations were mounted. Eventually, 337 bodies were recovered, the majority of them by ships dispatched from Halifax. Of this total, 128 were buried at sea and 209 were delivered to Halifax—150 of those buried in three Halifax cemeteries. They remain there to this day, the largest number of Titanic graves in the world, cared for in perpetuity by the city and visited by thousands of people each year.
On the one-hundredth anniversary of Titanic’s sinking, author John Boileau examines the relationship between the city and the unprecedented tragedy. This illustrated history includes over 100 historical photographs of the people and places involved in Halifax’s sombre recovery effort.
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The Town That Died
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95The Town That Died is a moving and detailed account of the greatest human-made explosion before Hiroshima, the terrible disaster known as the Halifax Explosion. It is the first documentary account, told from the personal experiences of survivors, to accurately chronicle the tragic events that led to the ill-fated collision between the Imo and the munitions-laden Mont Blanc in the harbour narrows and the dreadful consequences. Michael J. Bird’s passion for truth, supported by his engaging literary style, makes The Town That Died a classic in the annals of human courage and suffering.
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Sails of Fundy
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95A native of Kentville, Nova Scotia, Stanley T. Spicer is a graduate of the University of New Brunswick, Acadia University and Springfield College. He was New Brunswick’s first provincial Director of Physical Eduacation and Recreation from 1947 to 1966 before joining the federal Fitness and Amateur Sport Branch in Ottawa where he served until 1979. He was the first person from the Atlantic Provinces to receive the Honour Award of the Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation. Spicer is the author of numerous articles for Canadian and American publications and five previous books, including The Saga of the Mary Celeste.
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Too Many to Mourn
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95At nine o’clock on the morning of December 6, 1917, the close-knit family of James Jackson and Elizabeth (Halloran) Jackson-five sons, four daughters, their spouses, forty-eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren were happily engaged in their everday lives in Richmond, Halifax’s North End. The women had sent their children off to school; their husbands had gone off to work at Richmond’s dockyard, railyard or sugar refinery. Another day of activity and promise had begun. Within five minutes, forty-six members of the Jackson family were dead, and nineteen were badly injured. Within five minutes their homes, schools, and places of work were completely demolished. Within five minutes the hopes and dreams of a family and community were destroyed forever.
Too Many To Mourn tells the tragic story of the Halifax Explosion through the lives and deaths of the Jackson family. It is a meticulous reconstruction of the personal events of their lives in the face of this disaster, and an affecting account of a community’s endeavours to abide an unfathomable loss.
Now this winner of the Dartmouth Book Award in 1999 has been updated with a new cover.
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Pirates of the North Atlantic
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95Along miles of rugged coastline, in secret bays and hidden inlets, and even in the busiest ports lurk stories of the infamous pirates who visited the North Atlantic in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Peter Easton, and Black Bart all came here in search of plunder, supplies, and sanctuary. From Newfoundland to Boston, from Cape Breton to the Bay of Fundy, the North Atlantic was once teeming with highwaymen of the sea.
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Heroic Rescues at Sea
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95The sea can be a treacherous place. Fortunately for those who face disaster at sea there is a highly trained group of people who make it their life’s work to race to the rescue. These are the marine search and rescue workers of the Canadian Coast Guard. They do what most of us would not even contemplate; brave the elements in their rescue vessels, often acting as paramedics, midwives and firefighters on the water. They go out in unimaginable conditions and search long, harrowing hours for missing ships and sailors. These are their stories.
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Sable Island Shipwrecks
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95Over 300 ships have gone down on Sable Island. The first known wreck was in 1583. This best selling book tells the stories of disaster, danger, rescue and survival.
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The Little Tree by the Sea From Halifax to Boston With Love
Artist: Belle DeMontPublisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$17.95On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in wartime Halifax Harbour, creating what became the largest man-made explosion of its time. More than 2000 people died (500 of those children) and 9,000 were injured. A single little tree whispered from its branches the word “Help” that was carried by the wind to the people of Boston. Within 48 hours Boston and Massachusetts organized trains to carry 33 doctors and 79 nurses. To repay the City of Boston for its generosity, the little tree (which now had become huge and majestic tree) was given to the city of Boston as a way to say thank you, a tradition that continues to this day.
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Canadian Forces
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$19.95From soldiers on the ground, sailors on the seas, and fliers in the air, this is a history of those men and women our country has placed in harm’s way.From Siberia to Somalia, the Yukon to Yugoslavia, Korea, the Congo, the Middle East, Cyprus, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Canadian soldier has risked life and limb for reasons and causes that Canada and Canadians believe to be right.Canadian Armed Forces: A Salute spotlights some of our oft-forgotten history and individuals . . . the Canadian who won a Victoria Cross during the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Canadians who were involved in what was probably the last Cavalry charge, the Devil’s Brigade that signaled the formation of the first Special Forces unit, and the D-Day Dodgers without whom D-Day in France may have been as much a fiasco as the Dieppe landings.This is a book that chronicles the humble heroism and often unacknowledged bravery that are a part of the Canadian soldier’s story. The book captures the tragedy and the comedy that are part of daily life in the Canadian military. This is an unabashed salute.
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Prime Suspects: Canada’s Prime Ministers in Caricature
Publisher: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia$18.67Halifax-based artist and editorial cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon presents his recent suite of caricature-portraits of Canada’s prime ministers past and present. Included are examples of works-on-paper and paintings created by MacKinnon between 1993 and 2017 that together depict all 23 prime ministers, from Sir John A. Macdonald to Justin Trudeau. Through MacKinnon’s signature wit and brand of satire, these works make visible the politics and events that have helped shape our country’s history and the society in which we live today.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Titanic A Century of Remembrance
Publisher: Chronicle Herald$17.39On April 10, 1912, Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, bound for New York on its maiden voyage. The disaster that followed will be forever etched in history and seared on the psyche of Nova Scotians. One hundred years ago, when Titanic met its fate, we delivered the news as a breathless world waited. One hundred years later, as the world again turned its gaze toward Nova Scotia, The Chronicle Herald delivered an enduring tribute to an unthinkable tragedy. In words, pictures and graphics, we present a lasting collection of a century of news.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
