-
Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador
Publisher: Downhomer$19.95This unique reference book combines definitions with illustrations, pronunciations and clever turns of phrases that reflect the colour and rhythm of the style of English commonly used in Newfoundland and Labrador. It includes 3,496 words, meanings, pronunciations and possible origins of words; 564 saying and expressions; folklore; weatherlore; a guide to celebrations and customs; and much more.
-
Italian Lives, Cape Breton Memories
Editor: A. Evo Dipierro, Sam MiglioriPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, is most often associated with a version of Scottish culture that has evolved in its own unique ways. Though worthy of celebration, that perception tends to overwhelm the realities of everyday life experiences by people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. A strong and vibrant Italian presence on the island, for instance, dates back more than 150 years.
Italian Lives, Cape Breton Memories conveys the rich and varied experiences of Italians living in Cape Breton in their own words?the immigration experience; work experience in the home, the steel plant and the coal mines, and life in business, politics and other areas of endeavour. As ethnographers, editors and analysts, Sam Migliore and Evo Dipierro help illuminate a variety of other important and sensitive subjects: the treatment of Italians during the Second World War; the maintenance of a sense of cultural identity and traditions; and the sorrow of watching family and friends leave the island for employment elsewhere.
First published in 1999, and long since out of print, Italian Lives, Cape Breton Memories is now re-released for a new generation.
-
Cape Breton Fiddle Companion
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Celtic music scholar and musician Liz Doherty is no stranger to Cape Breton music – in fact she has made a study of it. Doherty’s exposure to, and research of, the island’s music traditions was the germination for this encyclopaedia on the Cape Breton fiddle: the history, the people, the tunes, the recordings.
-
Reeling Roosters and Dancing Ducks: Celtic Mouth Music
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Though puirt-a-beul are popular with both Gaelic-speaking and non-Gaelic speaking audiences, this book offers the first comprehensive study of the genre. Heather Sparling considers how puirt-a-beul compare to other forms of global mouth music and examines its origins, its musical and lyrical characteristics, and its functions.
Sparling brings together years of research, including an array of historical references to puirt-a-beul, interviews with Gaelic singers in both Scotland and Nova Scotia, observations of puirt-a-beul performances on both sides of the Atlantic as well as on recordings, and analysis of melodies and lyrics. Her Nova Scotia viewpoint allows her to consider puirt-a-beul in both its Scottish and diaspora contexts, a perspective that is too often absent in studies of Gaelic song.
-
McCurdy and the Silver Dart (New Edition)
Artist: Patsy MacAulay-MacKinnonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95McCurdy and the Silver Dart recounts the thrilling story of J. A. McCurdy, Canada’s aviation pioneer. Born in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Douglas McCurdy had a unique childhood during which he assisted world-famous scientist and inventor, Alexander Graham Bell in fascinating and frequently dangerous experiments conducted with kites and airplanes. He was the first person to fly an airplane in the British Empire. Later he became a barnstormer and daredevil pilot, taking part in some of the earliest air races. He was the first person to fly out of sight of land and the first pilot to receive a wireless message while airborne.
-
Cape Breton Railways: An Illustrated History An Illustrated History
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95Cape Breton’s rail lines are perhaps best known for their substantial roles in the coal and steel industries-and their decline as those industries faded away. Yet, despite their prominent connections to coal and steel, railways played many other important roles in the life of the Island. From transporting mail and freight to giving Cape Bretoners the ability to travel to and from the Island, they were important to the community culture. This book looks at those railways in the contexts of what was happening on and beyond the Island.Cape Breton’s railways were shaped by factors such physical geography, availability of both capital and customers, and the distribution of population and industries. In response to those factors, railway builders and operators often had to make difficult choices and try to deal with factors they could not control.
-
Necessaries and Sufficiencies
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95The year 2011 marked the 250th anniversary of coming of New England and Irish Planters to Cobequid, Nova Scotia. Necessaries and Sufficiencies is a well-researched glimpse into the migration, settlement, religion, education, occupations, health and daily life of these settlers. This microhistory traces the evolution of New England and Irish peoples into a cohesive society with common social, political, cultural and material standards. While the distric’s pro-American response at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War pitted Cobequid against the King’s Government, moderation on both sides led to the assimilation of the Planers into the fabric of Nova Scotia and Feisty Cobequid became loyal Colchester.
-
In the Blood
Photographer: Gary SamsonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$28.95A representative set of individuals from Cape Breton provides personal narratives about life and culture on the Nova Scotia island. Cape Breton is a region known for its music (well represented here); its Scottish, French, and Mi’kmaq heritage; and its spectacular scenery, including that along the Cabot Trail through Cape Breton Highlands National Park and around Bras d’Or Lake. While traditional culture has a vibrant existence on Cape Breton, the island also faces serious economic and social challenges. With traditional mining, shipping, farming, and fishing industries depressed, tourism, though significant, is a less-than-adequate replacement as economic engine and the island has faced an ongoing decline in population. A cross-section of Cape Bretoners reflected on these issues and the sacrifices they make and joys they find living in such a culturally and scenically rich place. Among the better-known of them are Ginette Chiasson, Alistair MacLeod, Rita Joe, Buddy MacMaster, Joella Foulds, Bob MacEachern, Keith Brown, and Mary Jane Lamond.
-
Getting It Done
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95It’s often said that the future of Cape Breton depends on the vision and initiative of her sons and daughters. But when we go on a quest for leadership –what is it we’re looking for? Originally conceived as a series for CBC Radio and now adopted to book form, Getting It Done is an exploration of effective leadership through the experiences of people who have “been there.” From cabinet ministers to CEOs, a Juno winner to an Olympic medalist and two former premiers, Steve Sutherland delves into the habits and philosophies of some Cape Breton’s most prominent and influential figures. Featuring exclusive material that didn’t appear in the original radio interviews, Getting It Done is a compendium of insights about how these leaders got where they are, and what they do to make things happen.
-
Distinction Earned
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Distinction Earned highlights the accomplishments of significant Cape Breton fighters like George “Rockabye” Ross (about who MacDougall has also penned a play), Tyrone Gardiner, Blair Richardson and Francis”Rocky” MacDougall and trainers like Johnny Nemis. Between 1965 and 1967 five national boxing champions in different weight classes were from Cape Breton.Paul MacDougall has collected dozens of interviews from participants, enthusiasts and their heirs, from which has evolved this account of an amazing sporting record.
-
Elizabeth Lefort Canada’s Artist in Wool
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95The Cheticamp rug hooking tradition is prized the world over. The most celebrated fibre artist from this tradition is undoubtedly Elizabeth LeFort (1914-2005). LeFort’s remarkable talent for portraiture in wool resulted in purchases and commissions the world over; her work hangs in Rideau Hall, Buckingham Palace, the White House and the Vatican.
Daniel Doucet followed her life and her career for many years, with this biography in mind. Photographs of many of her pieces are complemented by photos of many of the public highlights of her career.
-
Malagawatch Mice and the Cat Who Discovered America
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95The Malagawatch Mice are well settled in their believed church, now at the Nova Scotia Highland Village in Iona, Cape Breton. But they are not alone–Henry, a stray cat with a mysterious past has taken up residence in the church and the mice are convinced that life will never be the same.
Yet, there is something familiar about this cat and, determined that there must be some good in him, Grandpa sets out to prove to Henry that he is much more than a no-good stray.
A monument in Halfway Cove, on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore, acknowledges that Prince Henry Sinclair of the Orkney Islands made the first transatlantic crossing and landed there in 1398, almost a century before Columbus. The monument describes his landing in Chebabucto Bay, and the fact that he spent a year exploring Nova Scotia, with the help of the kind Mi’Kmaq people.
-
Discovering Cape Breton Folklore
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95For more than two decades, Richard MacKinnon—Canada Research Chair in Intangible Cultural Heritage, Cape Breton University—has researched Cape Breton’s rich cultural heritage: from protest songs to company houses, from co-operative housing to nicknames, from log buildings to cockfighting.In Discovering Cape Breton Folklore, professor MacKinnon revists some of his research and exposes us to some new.
-
Famhair/Giant
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$15.95No contemporary work from a sole author of Gaelic poetry from the Nova Scotia perspective been published in this province – until now. Cultural identity, sense of place and expression are important elements in the work of any artist. This book of contemporary Nova Scotia Gaelic poetry spans the landscape of Gaelic Cape Breton, the eastern Nova Scotia mainland and indeed the broader collective consciousness of Nova Scotians within the confines of their own province and in the wider, diverse, multi-ethnic, North American reality.
-
Dance to the Piper
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$23.95Barry Shears is a native of Glace Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and an acknowledged expert on the history of traditional piping in Nova Scotia and its intrinsic connection to the Gaelic language, music and culture. An award-winning musician, Barry has performed at concerts and festivals throughout North America, as well as in Scotland and Europe. He has previously published several books of bagpipe music and history.
-
Percy Willmot: A Cape Bretoner at War
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$23.95When Britain went to war with Germany in August 1914, Canada and the rest of the British empire followed without question and without being asked. By the time the Great War finally ground to an end in November 1918, 619,636 Canadians had enlisted in the struggle. One of them was Percy Willmot.Percy wrote frequently to his sister, no matter where he was or what was going on and he was a gifted writer, whose sparkling personality still clearly emerges more than eighty years later.Willmot’s letters tell us much about the experiences of thousands of soldiers: progress of the war and daily experiences of the men, sometimes pointing out the contrast between the beauties of nature and the unspeakable horrors of modern warfare. They remind us of the intense intimacy of the shared experience of the trenches, perhaps especially for someone like Percy, serving in a unit with many comrades from his own community.
-
Tokens of Grace
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Beginning in the 17th-century Scotland, when Covenanters met in open defiance of religious repression, open-air communions –the Sàcramaid – evolved to become the social and spiritual highlight of the year. Primarily a mixture of prayer and religious and kinship feasting, open-air communions were an expression of core communal values and basic kin and religious loyalties.
Particularly between 1840 and 1890, but well into the 20th century as well, the sacramental season and its open-air communions was a dominant symbol in the lives of Cape Breton’s Scots Presbyterians. Whole communities, numbering in the thousands, converged for this great religious occasion, taking part in as many as five days of exhaustive preparatory self-examination.
-
Cape Breton Weather Watching
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$28.95Supported by stunning photographs of every imaginable weather phonomena familiar to us all, and diagrams that illustrate just how the weather works, Danielson bring’s Cape Breton’s natural history to life.
-
Voyage of Wood Duck
Artist: Patsy MacAulay-MacKinnonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95Some people say that dreams are foolish. Some people say that you can search you whole life long and never find what it is you are looking for. But long ago when dreams were more real than they are today; there was a young boy who lived by the sea. He was called Wood Duck. His people had always lived beside the ocean. Its salty water flavoured their days. Its currents flowed through their nights. The power of the sea ran very strongly in Wood Duck. In his dreams, fish swam and sea birds flew.
-
Heartsong
Artist: Patsy MacAulay-MacKinnonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95Heartsong is an illustrated children’s book which tells of the loving creation of a fiddle which is passed along and enjoyed through several generations. Told in English and Gaelic.
-
Storied Shores
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Cape Breton Island has many claims to fame, yet far too few people are familiar with the rich and storied past of the coastal areas of Richmond County.For centuries the Mi’kmaq, and later the early European explorers and settlers, shortened their journeys between the Bras d’Or lake and the Atlantic Ocean by means of the narrow isthmus at St. Peter’s. This portage area -eventually a canal – became a haul-over road in the mid-1650s. The portage area and the surrounding shores and waterways of Cape Breton were sites of early and prolonged interaction between the French and the Mi’kmaq during a time when dreams of expansion and empire among European nations, met head on with the realities of North America’s aboriginal peoples.The busy corridor between Chapel Island, St. Peter’s, and Isle Madame was the backdrop for a colourful and intriguing era of our shared histories. Storied Shores presents a history of that time and place – the story of the promise of prosperity and the hope for new lives and the story of the ravages of greed, rivalry, and war.
-
Malagawatch Mice and the Church that Sailed
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95When the Highland Village Museum adopted and moved Malagawatch Church across the Bras d’Or lake in 2003, children’s author-illustrator Caroline Stellings asked herself: “What about the church mice?”
The answer is an imaginative tale of The Malagawatch Mice who, after living under the church for generations, learn that they are about to lose the floorboards from over their heads.
Ms. Stellings’ soft watercolour illustrations and delightful rhyming narrative follow the Malagawatch Mice–and the church–to their new home in Iona.
-
Cape Breton’s Christmas, Book 6 A Treasury of Stories and Memories
Editor: Ronald CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$19.95A CHRISTMAS TRADITION IN BOOK FORM, Book 6 of Cape Breton’s Christmas is a fresh annual gathering of warmth, joy, and family love—50 well-told memories and stories shot through with sparks of humour, tears of longing, and small flames of faith. Good reading year-round, this Christmas tradition brings together Cape Breton writers—both well-known and lately inspired—presenting sparkling seasonal gems for readers of all ages. A rare collection that preserves some of the best of what it is to be human. This generous book will last.
-
In the Pit A Cape Breton Coal Miner
Publisher: Breton Books$17.95A RARE, EXCITING INSIDER STORY of coal mine life in Cape Breton, filled with humour, pride, terror, and humanity.
From shoveling at the coal face and hand-lifting tons of shaker pans, to hurtling through low narrow tunnels testing a diesel during early mechanization—you are not spared the details—or the laughs!
Here are the gripping drama and rich good humour of one man’s daily work underground—a rare, personal account that opens up the culture of coal, from a man who worked 15 years in Number 12 and 18 Collieries, New Waterford.
-
Sterling Silver The 25th Anniversary Edition Rants, Raves and Revelations
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95This 25th Anniversary Edition of Sterling Silver celebrates a marvellous collection of classic essays and stories by Silver Donald Cameron. Like visits with an entertaining and deeply committed friend, Sterling Silver takes on love and suicide, fear and community and craftsmanship—and a Canada in which a good life should still be possible. Cameron opened his archives of published and unpublished work—turning Sterling Silver into a rare opportunity for his fans and an extraordinary introduction for new readers. Editor Ronald Caplan has mined for treasure—and he’s brought it back alive!
-
Buddy MacMaster The Judique Fiddler
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95The renowned Cape Breton fiddler Buddy MacMaster grew up in Judique, Inverness County, influenced by musical giants including Bill Lamey, “Little Jack” MacDonald, Angus Chisholm and Mary MacDonald. By 1949, Buddy performed for local square dances, and by the 1960s he played across Canada, the U.S. and Scotland, sustaining old-time music and the dance tradition. A master fiddler, his awards include the Order of Canada, the Order of Nova Scotia, and honorary degrees from ST.F.X.University and Cape Breton University. Buddy adhered to the Gaelic fiddle tradition that he cherished as much as life itself.
-
A Stone for Andrew Dunphy Narrative Obituary Verse and Song in Northern Cape Breton Island
Publisher: Breton Books$17.95This rare book is about community, caring and pioneer survival. It brings to life Andrew Dunphy— a man who roamed northern Cape Breton, carried the news, nursed his neighbours—and wrote magnificent obituary poems that told their stories, comforted them in disaster, and helped their communities survive. Over one hundred years later, Ronald Caplan captured this story in its final hours. Told with the words of those who knew Andrew Dunphy — A Stone for Andrew Dunphy reveals the robust rural life that flourished as the 20th century dawned.
-
Cape Breton’s Christmas, Book 5 A Treasury of Stories and Memories
Editor: Ronald CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$19.95Now an annual holiday tradition, this fifth collection of Cape Breton’s Christmas delivers a batch of memories and rich holiday stories rooted in a beloved island. Here are the moments that take you back, the stories that encourage us to be all we can be. From family gatherings to loneliness to the joy of getting home in time—from parents who give even when they seem to have nothing—this is a generous book that will last.
-
Highland Settler The Classic Portrait of the Scottish Gael in Cape Breton and Eastern Nova Scotia
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95At the core of Charles W. Dunn’s pioneering work with the Canadian Gaelic-speaking community in the twentieth century, Highland Settler is the story of immigration, rural settlement, and the later dispersion to the industrial world–a thoughtful and entertaining history of an extraordinary people.
Dunn’s extensive interviews and the informed warmth of his approach make Highland Settler an essential book in the discovery of Cape Breton Island. Drawing on delightful storytelling, and local songs and poetry that settlers composed and loved, Dunn achieves a Gaelic settlers’ self-portrait as well as the historian and folklorist’s insight into the culture.
A fresh new edition of an elegant and accessible classic about folk ways vibrant in the 1940s and alive today in Cape Breton Island, with the details and historical perspective of this expert researcher.
-
Folk Tale Journey Through the Maritimes
Editor: Michael Taft, Ronald CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$21.95These are the folk tales from Dr. Helen Creighton’s life journey through the Maritime Provinces, collecting songs and ghost stories and old cures–and folk tales. Helen serves as our guide, introducing us to storytellers, setting the scene of the telling–and then she lets the person tell the story just as it was told to her.
The feel of the kitchen and the fish shed still cling to these stories. Some are long, really miraculous folk tales–miraculous in detail and in that they have managed to survive. Others are the brief riddle or the tantalizing quick-telling that a folklorist can expect along the way. Helen kept it all. And taken as a whole, the reality and intensity of those rare smaller pieces reveal their value in among the more finished, well-told tales.
Both Helen Creighton and A Folk Tale Journey Through the Maritimes are Atlantic treasures. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Michael Taft and Ronald Caplan, and a Motif Index by Michael Taft.
-
Cape Breton Book of the Night (Expanded Edition) Tales of Tenderness and Terror
Editor: Ron CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$18.95THE EXPANDED EDITION from over 25 years of Cape Breton’s Magazine. This book offers a tough, caring presentation of extraordinary experience.
-
Wake of the Aspy A Novel of Northern Cape Breton
Publisher: Breton Books$17.95Teeming with life and remembrance, Wake of the Aspy is a novel of family, passion, and the beauty of memory’s heart.The coastal steamer Aspy connected northern Cape Breton to the world. It was a lifeline, an escape route, and a threat to the old ways. Rooted in a woman’s hard-won independence, Stewart Donovan’s terrific, often hilarious storytelling—the sounds and rhythm and acid wit of daily life—faces with vitality the local life and its encounters with government and a tourism future. Despite expropriations, war, cutbacks and social injustice aimed at driving them out, these are survivors you still might be lucky enough to meet Down North.
