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Against the Grain A Biography of Dr. John Savage
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95John Savage was ready to leave Wales. Fed up with the National Health System, his frustrations grew daily. The back of a medical journal advertised that the town of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, was seeking medical professionals, and John was ready for a fresh start.
Many knew Dr. Savage as their physician. Others speak about his time as mayor of Dartmouth. Yet most remember him as Nova Scotia’s twenty-third premier. He entered politics because he didn’t like the way things were done. He had ideas, opinions, and a vision to transform a province drowning in debt and stuck in old ways. He was responsible for an amalgamation that is still of great debate, a controversial harmonized sales tax, a world-renowned emergency health system, two new casinos that met with petitions and scandal, and the list goes on. And while all of these historic reforms will forever be linked to John Savage, this is just a small fragment of a much larger legacy.
John Savage orchestrated the building of ball fields and medical clinics and pushed for sex education in the schools. Locally, he worked with addicts and alcoholics, but he also brought medical supplies and assistance to countries lacking basic necessities. He was never interested in doing what was popular. From tackling the health and education systems to making turn-the-province-on-its head decisions while premier, John was determined to change the way things were done. Against the Grain chronicles how he fought the status quo with unwavering conviction to leave a lasting legacy that would change the province of Nova Scotia forever.
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Awakening my Heart Essays, Articles and Interviews on the Buddhist Life
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95From Andrea Miller — an editor and staff writer at Lion’s Roar, the leading Buddhist magazine in the English-speaking world — comes a diverse and timeless collection of essays, articles, and interviews. Miller, whose writing is by turns earnest and irreverent, unadorned and lyrical, talks to Buddhist teachers, thinkers, writers, and celebrities about the things that matter most and she frames their wisdom with her own lived experience.
In Awakening My Heart, we hear Tina Turner on the power of song, Ram Dass on the importance of service, Jane Goodall on the compassion that exists in the natural world, and Robert Jay Lifton on the darkest deeds of humanity — and how to prevent such things from ever happening again. Moreover, Miller — with her gently probing questions — gets to the bottom of the friendship between Zen master Bernie Glassman and Hollywood’s Jeff Bridges and she takes a playful look at the difference between Michael Imperioli, the serious Buddhist practitioner, and the unhinged mobster character he played in The Sopranos.
Insight teacher Gina Sharpe coaches Miller on how to start facing the racism that exists even in the most liberal communities, while Robert Waldinger, a Zen priest and the leader of the world’s longest running study of human happiness, teaches her the key to being truly happy. Miller also brings the wisdom of a thirteenth-century Zen text into her very own galley kitchen and takes a look at animals through a quirky dharma lens. Finally, she goes on retreat with two of the world’s most beloved contemporary Buddhist teachers, Pema Chödrön and Thich Nhat Hanh, and travels to India to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha himself.
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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.
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In Two Voices A Patient and a Neurosurgeon Tell their Story
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95For a decade, Linda Clarke and Dr. Michael Cusimano had offices across from one another at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. She worked in Clinical Ethics and he was a staff neurosurgeon. They knew one another to say hello, to nod as they passed one another on the stairs, to wish each other a Merry Christmas. Michael’s patients sat in the chairs along that shared hallway, waiting for their appointment with him. For ten years, Linda heard their talk outside her door, smiled at them as she passed by, tried to give them their privacy. She was always impressed by the things people endured.
Ten years into her work, Linda got sick; she left her job and, weeks later, she sat in one of those hallway chairs, waiting for her appointment with Dr. Cusimano. In the blink of an eye, she was a neurosurgery patient and he was her surgeon.
Linda and Michael wrote In Two Voices together: it is the intimate account of Linda’s surgery with Michael as her surgeon. The story builds a piece at a time as Linda and Michael tell each other their experience and then respond to one another’s writing. As the relationship shifts from one of patient and surgeon to one of Linda and Michael as colleagues and friends, they encounter surprises as their trust and mutual understanding develop. Here is an unprecedented view into the experiences of illness, care, and compassion, an intimate picture of the experiences, challenges, skills, and commitment of a surgeon. The worlds of both surgeon and patient are framed by a most critical and delicate surgical procedure.
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The Legend of Gladee’s Canteen Down Home on a Nova Scotia Beach
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95“Everyone remembers the famous food at Gladee’s Canteen, especially Gladee’s fish and chips and her coconut cream pie.” — Calvin Trillin
Gladee’s Canteen, several times voted as one of the ten best restaurants in Canada, was a special example of co-operative and communal spirit. At the centre of the operation were Gladee and her sister Flossie, supported by the extended Hirtle family. They offered a warm welcome and a memorable menu, in a setting brashly open to the forces of nature.
The Legend of Gladee’s Canteen tells the story of a popular Nova Scotia beach and a pioneer family who, against the odds, constructed a simple canteen at Hirtle’s Beach in1951 and ran it for forty years. The book draws on the author’s family associations, personal memory, and the outlying stockpile of collective recollections — a tapestry of events woven through the evolutionary fabric of a small, relatively isolated Maritime coastal community.
The era of Gladee’s Canteen is remarkable story that takes place in a small coastal Nova Scotia community blessed with a spectacularly dynamic living beach. In its time, the Hirtle family and its sparkling enterprise thrived in spite of relative isolation, uncertain funding, and domestic demons. As a Nova Scotia epic, the success story of Gladee’s Canteen mirrors the recent history of Hirtle’s Beach, exemplifying the twists and turns locked up in legend.
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Around the Province in 88 Days One Woman, Two Pairs of Sneakers and 3000 Kilometers of Nova Scotia Coastline
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Early on a May morning, a young Nova Scotia woman straps on a small backpack and leaves the Halifax Common to start her journey along the coastal roads of Nova Scotia. Planning to cover almost a marathon a day, she will walk the perimeter of the entire province in just under three months to raise awareness for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Brigadoon Children’s Camp Society. She billets with locals each night and meets countless Nova Scotians who come out to walk with her, support her project, and tell their stories.
Along the way, fellow walkers share family folklore, tales of buried gold, lost fingers, and detailed instructions on how to catch a beaver by the tail. “We don’t wear make-up and we don’t dust,” explains one of the women Emily meets near Sable River, when asked how she found the time to rebuild the trails in her area and win the Community Spirit Award. Struggling with blisters, fatigue, and an encounter with a bear cub, Emily walks on, overwhelmed by the generosity of her hosts in each community and by the stunning coastal views at every turn. Around the Province in 88 Days details Emily’s beautiful and quirky experiences on the road as she develops an intimate connection with the province and its people, unsuspecting of the vast changes the trip will eventually set in motion in her own life.
Emily Taylor Smith has walked the perimeters of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, the coastlines of New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula, and also completed a 100-kilometre walk from Halifax to Truro in nineteen hours. Born in Salisbury, New Brunswick, she moved to Nova Scotia to study theatre at Acadia University, and perform with the Atlantic Theatre Festival. She is the founder Local Tasting Tours, a culinary walking tour in Halifax. She currently lives in Dartmouth with her husband, their poodle Woody and Wilson the cat.
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Threads in the Acadian Fabric Nine Generations of an Acadian Family
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Threads in the Acadian Fabric tells the story of the author’s paternal family, her line of ancestors that stretches back nine generations to the first Poirier who arrived from France and settled in Port Royal in the 1640s.
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One Strong Girl
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95One Strong Girl is a mother’s vivid account of what it is like to lose her daughter, India, to a rare debilitating disease. The story is a bold description of what it means to deal with deep sorrow and still find balance and beauty in an age steeped in the denial of death. At ten, India climbed the highest on the rope at gymnastics, yet by sixteen was so weak she was unable to even dress herself. The narrative follows the six-year fight for answers from the medical community. Finally, after the genetic testing of India’s DNA, it was discovered there were two mutations on her ASAH1 gene, a deadly combination. Today her cells are alive in a research lab at the University of Ottawa. This is a legacy that cuts both ways, a point of pride and pain. One Strong Girl is a story of what it’s like to outlive an only child. It describes the intensity of loving a dying child and most importantly, the joy to be found, even amidst the sorrow.
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The Tides of Time
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Set in northeastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons paints vivid portraits of contemporary labourers whose harvests mark the rhythms of the seasonal year. Each of the twelve monthly chapters tells the story of a labour unique to that month, including jobs like tuna fishing, cranberry farming, maple syrup production, sheep farming, beekeeping, lobster fishing, and foraging for wild mushrooms. Stewart revitalizes an older, contemplative view of the sacredness of time. In keeping with the genre of nature writing, her book offers a meticulous way of looking at the world as she blends first-hand observations of seasonal change with stories of the labourers. The Tides of Time offers a refuge from the rush of urban life. It turns to the seasons, rural life and literature for an alternative mode of time, which is fluid, rhythmic, and gentle. The symplicity is there—close at hand.
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Afraid of the Dark
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Through prose and poetry, Guyleigh Johnson tells the story of sixteen-year-old Kahlua Thomas. With a hard life at home, on the streets, and in school she finds an escape during her grade ten history class through writing poetry. Hiding in the back of the class, she writes, passionately expressing and releasing emotions about identity, home, community, culture, and forgiveness. All Kahlua wants is freedom, whatever that really means.
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Louisbourg or Bust A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95A rickety surf rig on wheels. A guide named Don Quixote. No cellphone. Louisbourg or Bust is RC Shaw’s spandex-free pilgrimage up a haunted coastline. Fuelled by Hungry Man Stew and blind optimism, Shaw battles potholed hills and remote waves en route to the Fortress of Louisbourg.
With a Nova Scotia road map in one hand and a fat copy of Don Quixote in the other, Shaw hatches a plan. He builds The Rig, a Frankenstein-inspired bicycle-plus-trailer to haul his camping gear and surf stuff. Then he circles Louisbourg with a black Sharpie and vows to take the fortress back from its malevolent tourist occupiers. Finally, on a clear June morning, he kisses his family goodbye and creaks off down the road in search of adventure for adventure’s sake. No cellphone, no safety net. Just the restless pulse of the Atlantic Ocean as it rips and tears at the coastline of the Eastern Shore.
As the lark gets real, Shaw is forever changed by the gnarly soul of Nova Scotia’s fogbound, fading coastline.
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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.
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Salt Fires
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Salt Fires is a volume of poems that embrace and reflect our human consciousness: our awareness, our blindness, our Shadow, our mythologies. They invite us to look at ourselves in ways that often are disconcerting, sometimes startling. Love of land infuses Salt Fires. Intimately inhabited and passionately shared, Nova Scotia’s farms, woods, and shores reveal themselves to be our Earth in microcosm.
A suite of Sable Island poems closes the book and affirms this notion—Sable Island, a strip of sand in a vast ocean, impossible, yet somehow here, like our planet, rich in life and beauty. This is the work of a mature poet who examines moral blindness and human frailties by inhabiting the experiences of the poems’ speakers with vulnerability and honesty. Accessible, clear, and alive with music, the poems inform and incite.
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The Smeltdog Man
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95“I brushed the crumbs off of the fish and back onto the counter, threw the smelts in the frying pan while I got the eggs out of the fridge and cracked one.”
The Smeltdog Man is the story of how a Cape Bretoner marshalled his accidental invention, a marijuana-induced, munchie-inspired Smeltdog, into the most successful fast food franchise in Canada. As president of his newly formed Good Karma Corporation, he tells the tale of how his business empire grows beyond his control, turning him into a billionaire.
While the business booms and the narrator’s wisdom is being constantly tapped for new ideas and strategies, he consults his Granddaddy Blue, whose pragmatic mixture of horse-trader economics and 1960s hippie ideals provide his grandson with the guiding principles and necessary scams he needs to survive in the corporate world.
From the simplicity of its origins to the ecological disaster of its success, The Smeltdog Man details the influences of country music on our narrator’s understanding of himself, the longing of unrequited love and the accumulation of wealth possessing more zeros than our hero can count.
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Through Sunlight and Shadows
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Through Sunlight and Shadows is an autobiographical novel about a young boy set in the small New Brunswick town of Bannonbridge in the 1940s and 1950s. The story is told from the perspective of an older man, Walt Macbride, a character well known to readers of other Raymond Fraser novels.
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Where Duty Lies A New Brunswick Soldier in the Trenches of World War I
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Frank Grimmer did not set out to earn honours on the field of battle nor did he readily choose to go to war. World powers were shifting. The future of nations was deemed dependant on their armies. It was left to the young men to face the gunfire of other young men who could have been friends under the right circumstances and in times of peace. Where Duty Lies tells the story of how a 23-year-old St. Andrews, New Brunswick, man ended up in the quicksand-like mud of Passchendaele labouring under heavy artillery fire helping construct supply lines that supported the Canadian advance during the Third Battle of Ypres, often referred to as the most horrific in a war of horrific battles.
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Toward the Country of Light New and Selected Poems 1978-2018
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95This collection brings together Allan Cooper’s best poems over the last forty years. He weaves visions of nature with insight into the workings of the human heart. Read them individually or read them as a single long, flowing and eloquent narrative. The meditative and compassionate observations will transport the reader from the chaos of everyday life into a healing realm of possibility.
In Toward the Country of Light, the author offers open sonnets, prose poems, ghazals, small poems inspired by the Chinese and Japanese, and poems influenced by Robert Bly and Francis Ponge. As Cooper observes, “Over the years I’ve come to understand that the poem itself usually demands the form it takes and that language uses us for its own secret purposes.”
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The Way We Hold On
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95The Way We Hold On is Abena Beloved Green’s debut book of poetry. Her poems address cultural, social, and environmental issues, relationships, and reflect on everyday life as a small-town raised, semi-nomadic, first-generation Canadian. Here are poems about holding on and letting go—of ideas, opinions, beliefs, people, places, and things.
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The Other Side of the Sun The True Story of One Refugee’s Journey
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95As one of the boat people refugees, Thien escaped war-torn Vietnam on a harrowing journey that landed him in a Malaysian refugee camp. Thien Tang had an ordinary childhood living in South Vietnam until it became a Communist state. His father feared persecution of his family and sent his fourteen-year-old son into hiding for over a year. Upon his return, Thien attended a local high school and found a classmate sweetheart. Life once again was good. But it wasn’t meant to last. Thien was forced to go back into hiding again with no hope of return. Like thousands of others, he fled Vietnam on a crowded boat in search of a new life. But first he had to cross the treacherous South China Sea to reach Malaysia.
Thien’s ship was attacked by pirates and shot at by police. On land, he and his fellow refuges were jailed, starved, and beaten, but survival only brought on tougher challenges. The soldiers forced them at gunpoint back into their damaged boat to be towed to sea. He sought asylum in the United States but found the refuge he was seeking in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where he lives today.
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Signs of Life Images Formed from Words and Clay
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Gerri Frager has spent much of her life working in the care of critically ill infants and children and integrating the arts into patient care and education. Poetry and pottery have each been a sanctuary during tough times as has noticing the everyday beauty found in nature. In Signs of Life: Images formed from Words and Clay, the author merges these passions to create a most unique and insightful book. Each poem is accompanied by an image of pottery created by Frager, one reflected in and mirroring the other. Signs of Life is a powerful exploration into matters of loss and love through poetry and pottery and the life experiences of a medical professional who has dedicated her life to healing and comforting those she works with.
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Never Speak of This Again
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95It is 1917 and Nellie, seventeen years old and pregnant, has just returned to Cape Breton from Boston to find her lover. Instead of a safe haven, she encounters rejection and humiliation and is told to clear out and never speak of this again. Nellie’s story reflects the lives of many Nova Scotia women who found their way to Boston. Her world becomes a matter of daily survival, while so many in the world, including the stranger from Truro, try to survive the catastrophic chaos of WWI and the Spanish Flu. Never Speak of This Again takes the reader from eastern Canada to western Canada, to Europe, and back again.
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Lucy Cloud
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Filled with engaging characters, with their unique and lively Cape Breton voices, Lucy Cloud follows the fortunes and heartaches of a family with secrets and the intense longing to live fully. Anne Lévesque delivers an authentic tale of a time and a place, where people must be strong and inventive to make a good life.
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Waking Up in my Own Backyard
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Join Sandra Phinney as she embarks on 31-day summer odyssey that takes place within a 100 kilometre radius from her home in rural Nova Scotia. This memoir is a journey of self-discovery wherein the author experiences the adventure of a lifetime in her own backyard. Two powerful themes flow throughout the narrative: the importance of friendships and the richness of rural living.
You won’t find what’s included in Waking Up In My Own Backyard in a typical visitor’s guide, but it will undoubtedly become an indispensable guide for locals and travellers alike. Phinney is an extraordinary tour guide. You will want to follow in her footsteps.
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The Mill Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$22.95The Mill –Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest explores the power that a single industry can wield. For fifty years, the pulp mill near Pictou in northern Nova Scotia has buoyed the local economy and found support from governments at all levels. But it has also pulped millions of acres of forests, spewed millions of tonnes of noxious emissions into the air, consumed quadrillions of litres of fresh water and then pumped them out again as toxic effluent into nearby Boat Harbour, and eventually into the Northumberland Strait.
From the day it began operation in 1967, the mill has fomented protest and created deep divisions and tensions in northern Nova Scotia. This story is about people whose livelihoods depend on the pulp mill and who are willing to live with the “smell of money.” It’s about people whose well-being, health, homes, water, air, and businesses have been harmed by the mill’s emissions and effluent. It’s about the heartache such divisions cause and about people who, for the sake of peace, keep their thoughts about the mill to themselves.
But it’s also about hope, giving voice to those who led the successive groups that have protested and campaigned for a cleaner mill–First Nations, fishers, doctors, local councillors, tourism operators, artists and musicians, teachers and woodlot owners. Their personal stories are interwoven into a historical arc that traces the mill’s origins and the persistent environmental and social problems it causes to this day.
Baxter weaves a rich tapestry of storytelling, relevant to everyone who is concerned about how we can start to renegotiate the relationship between economy, jobs, and profits on one hand, and human well-being, health, and the environment on the other. The Mill tells a local story with global relevance and appeal.
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The Legacy Letters How Trauma Affects Our Lives
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Halifax author and journalist Janice Landry returns to her roots, as she revisits high-profile Canadian police investigations she covered as a novice television reporter during the 1980s and 1990s. One story involves the unsolved murder of British Columbia teenager Andrea King, whose remains were found in 1992, in Nova Scotia woods, nearly a year after she disappeared. Landry also discusses the 1989 disappearance of Nova Scotia teenager Kimberly McAndrew, who was last seen leaving a Halifax Canadian Tire store where she worked. McAndrew remains missing.
The victims and families have had a major impact on Landry and the public. She hopes this book leads to a break in both cases, as well as other unsolved crimes. It will also shed light on the pain the families continue to endure.
Landry also speaks with Canadians from five provinces, including first responders and front-line workers. These men and women bravely discuss how trauma, in and out of their work, has profoundly affected their lives, loved ones, and outlook.
The author and her guests each have written a “Legacy Letter” for the public. Each letter is deeply personal and conveys a heartfelt message of loss and hope. This book is Landry’s attempt to help them regain some of what has been lost.
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Rescue at Moose River
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95On Easter weekend in 1936, three men went down into an old rundown gold mine at Moose River in a remote area of Nova Scotia. While below, they became trapped by a massive cave-in at the 141-foot level. One man was a pediatrician, the second a young lawyer, and the third the mining company timekeeper. They had entered the mine to assess its potential for possible sale to an unnamed United States interest.
With the heroic efforts of more than 150 men and women volunteers, including local miners, hard rock miners from Ontario, draegermen from Pictou County, and a tenacious young diamond drill operator from Pictou County, two of the men were recovered alive. The third man died underground on the eighth day of their entombment.
Halifax broadcaster J. Frank Willis made history with his live reports from the mine head that were broadcast on more than 700 radio stations around the world, including the major U.S. networks and the BBC. It marked the beginning of a new era in broadcasting and in journalism. Until then, radio was known chiefly as a music and entertainment medium; news gathering and reporting had been the bailiwick of newspapers and newswire services.
Little did Willis know when he filed his first report from the site that he was making broadcast history by pioneering live on-the-spot reporting. It would change the face of broadcasting forever. Rescue at Moose River is the story of how these two events, one tragic, one historic, came together in the backwoods of Nova Scotia more than 80 years ago.
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Random Shots
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Random Shots tells the stories of survival against the odds, the life of a well-travelled risking-taking Maritime son. Fortunate to have survived numerous near misses during the lead-up to his eightieth trip around the Sun, Mossman has much to be grateful for along the paths taken to adventure.
As a strong defense over the passage of time, memory is everything. As narrator, Mossman, aided by diaries and recordings across the years, shares with vivid insight his travelling experiences in and around Lesotho, Northwest Territories, Gabon, the Bay of Fundy, Australia, the Congo, Zambia, Nunavut, New Zealand, the offshore Atlantic Ocean, Ontario, and Brazil.
Survival–the act of staying alive despite the odds–is the theme of the book. Many of these stories of adventure took place in a world far from the one with which most people are familiar. They are at once both startling and revealing and told with a bold style and wit that the author’s fans will immediately recognize.
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Homecoming The Road Less Travelled
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95In these 13 carefully crafted short stories, Wayne Curtis explores the theme of homecoming, literally, spiritually, and metaphorically, and the many interpretations of the word “home”. The varied characters discover that home can be found in sometimes unlikely places. In “Night Riders” two teenagers find it on the highway in a stolen car, escaping an abusive institution, bonded together through their complicated love for each other. In “The Poet,” a man grasps for familiar old home feelings at a truck stop, where there is country music, drinks, and laughter. In “The Train,” an eleven-year-old boy finds that he longs to return home when his misjudged escape to town teaches him some hard lessons about who can be trusted.
With his characteristic eye for detail and his skillful ability to evoke emotion and atmosphere, Wayne Curtis once again takes readers into a different time, where people long for what makes them feel most anchored, loved, and valued in an ever-changing world.
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A Halifax Christmas Carol
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95It is December 1918. The old world–shaped by the values of Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens– is gone and the new world now wallows in post-war chaos and darkness.
A veteran of the gas attacks and trenches, Michael Bell has returned home to a city traumatized by war and devastated by an explosion, where he finds work at The Halifax Herald writing about what he sees as the truth, about an age defined only by lawlessness, disease, and disorder.
Then, four days before Christmas, Michael finds his truth-telling efforts challenged by a small, one-legged boy who arrives at the newspaper office with a single, silver twenty-five-cent piece for “the kids.” When the boy strangely disappears, the paper’s editor, Walter Stone, sees a potential Dickensian story for a city in desperate need of hope. He assigns Michael and new reporter Tess Archer the job of finding the boy and telling his story–all before the Christmas Eve edition.
At first, Michael objects, believing such stories to be dangerous lies in the face of the dark truths. However, after a mysterious dream of his mother leads to difficult questions, he accepts the assignment, if only to prove small acts of generosity are meaningless in the face of a growing darkness. Yet, as Michael follows his leads through an array of the city’s desperate people, he is increasingly haunted by the hidden meaning of his dream and soon realizes understanding will only come if he finds the boy. But for Michael and the city, time is fast running out.
Filled with a cast of compelling characters and vivid images, A Halifax Christmas Carol tells the story of a true age of darkness and the transformative power of hope.
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Caplin Scull Chronicles from a Newfoundland Outport on the Eve of Confederation
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Meet the unique people of Caplin Scull, a small village on Newfoundland’s sea-ravaged east coast, where life is hard and the times are changing as the province of Newfoundland is about to join the nation of Canada. Like the houses, those who live here must be sturdy, courageous and determined, able to withstand a rugged life in a world that still keenly feels the pull of its Irish ancestors and the influence of the powerful Catholic Church.
The collection is part oral history, part narrative, part documentary, part anecdote, all seasoned by time, memory, and reflection, and knitted together with love and a teaspoon or two of invention.
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Breaking Disaster Newspaper Stories of the Halifax Explosion
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95On December 6, 1917, the face of Halifax changed forever when the Imo, a Belgian Relief ship, collided with the French ship, the Mont Blanc. Shortly after 9:00 a.m., the Mont Blanc, which was carrying a large cargo of explosives, blew up. It destroyed much of the city’s north end and neighbouring communities like Tuft’s Cove and Dartmouth. The effect was catastrophic.
In Breaking Disaster, Ingram traces these details and stories as she pieces together the different narratives from the week that followed December 6, 1917, many of which have long faded into the larger story of the Halifax Explosion.
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Unpacked From PEI to Palawan
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95“I hadn’t always been lost, but Prince Edward Island had suddenly become too small for my grief. My grief needed the whole world.”
In 2008, Maureen and Mitch Cobb took drastic action in the wake of the stillbirth death of their second child, Tya. They packed up two-year-old Leila and set out on a journey through Southeast Asia, a trip of courage, love, and, ultimately, redemption.
Unpacked is the inspiring story of a mother in search of herself, a husband and wife fighting for a marriage, a young daughter who rises from confusion, and the scenes and revelations that bring Mo out of her paralyzing grief and into the perspective of a new world.
