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Perseverance Will Triumph Cape Breton University at 50
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95Cape Breton University at 50: Perseverance Will Triumph details the history of Cape Breton University (CBU) and its deep commitment to the communities from which it arose. CBU owes its very existence to the support of Cape Bretoners.
What is now CBU was born in 1951, when St. Francis Xavier University agreed to establish a “feeder college” in Sydney, Cape Breton Island; the community wanted its own institution, and it persevered to create the College of Cape Breton in 1974. Within a decade it evolved as University College of Cape Breton and after another ten years became Cape Breton University.
CBU has embraced internationalization which has reshaped both the university and the Island. Now CBU is the second largest university in Nova Scotia and a force for change in its community, the province, and the country.
Cape Breton University at 50 honours the University’s golden anniversary (1974-2024) as a degree-granting institution and chronicles the people, events, developments, and innovations that got it there.
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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.
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Us and Them A Novel
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95Set in late-1920s Sydney Mines, Us & Them is the story of sixteen-year-old JW Donaldson, who interrupts his high school education to work in the coal mine to help support his family.
A fatal accident in the mine awakens JW to just how dangerous working conditions are and to how management seems to care more about production than about the men and boys who are the means of that production.
JW enlists the aid of union activist and local hero, JB McLachlan, and learns that even the young can be a positive voice for change.
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The Men of the Deeps A Journey With North America’s Only Coal Miners’ Chorus
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Formed in 1966 with a goal of performing at the World’s Fair in Montreal in 1967 (Expo ’67), the Men of the Deeps is North America’s only coal miners’ chorus. Over the span of fifty years, the choir has performed all across North America, in China and in Europe. As the choir’s musical director for more than forty years, John C. (Jack) O’Donnell marks the travels and performances of a half-century in the spotlight.
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Company Houses, Company Towns: Heritage and Conservation
Editor: Andrew Molloy, Tom UrbaniakPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Former company houses and towns have meaning. They can inspire attachment and a sense of place. They can be tight-knit but also quintessentially global; their resources and products have served far-off markets while housing a mosaic of newcomers from around the world; they speak to the diversity of Canada and the immigrant experience. Their landscapes, though often threatened with abandonment and decline, are a kind of language that conveys rich and layered stories. They are hands-on classrooms of culture, economics, architecture, politics and sociology.
Taken together, the case studies in this book speak to the heritage and enduring value of these places. Company towns mean a great deal to the people who put down roots there or passed through them. Many of the houses became homes. In Company Houses, Company Towns we also see how some of these places are being commemorated, conserved, regenerated and renewed–not as static museum pieces but as proud living communities aspiring to new economic opportunities and a quality of life.
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Charting the Darkness
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95American-born fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran, Nick Sullivan, is a broken man. Abandoned for dead by his family while he rotted in a Viet Cong prison camp, Sullivan finds solace in alcohol and flashbacks to war and prison.
The death of a nearly forgotten uncle takes Sullivan to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where he had spent many adolescent summers with his family and all that such a privilege entailed – beaches, fishing and first loves. His uncle’s bequest takes Nick by surprise and, in the process of refurbishing a salvaged sailboat, he too is salvaged.
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Immortal Air
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Bright and promising as a student, George Cameron was sent to live with his sister in Boston while he attended a prestigious Latin school and later the Boston School of Law. It was what his mother wanted for him and his brother, Charley. It was what any well-bred family would want for an intelligent son destined for greater things than his humble New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, upbringing. On his journey to find his voice among the great poets of the 19th century, George had to leave behind his first love, a muse who haunted his thoughts and fuelled his passion for poetry throughout his life.
Law clerk, journalist, poet, George’s life often seemed to fall short of the dreams of fame he secreted in his private journals, yet his poetry remained ever-present in a mind churning with words and feeling.
George Cameron teamed up with Oscar Telgmann to write the longest-running Canadian opera. Leo: The Royal Cadet. It was his steadfast brother Charley who shared George’s work in the posthumous publication of Lyrics on Freedom, Love and Death.
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One with the Music: Cape Breton Step Dance Tradition and Transmission
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Swedish-born traditional dancer and researcher Mats Melin has worked and performed extensively in the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, in their schools and communities promoting Scottish traditional dance. He has also taught and performed in Sweden, Canada, USA, Russia and New Zealand. Mats has a vast knowledge of all aspects of the Scottish traditional dance scene, but specializes in Cape Breton step dancing.
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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.
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Seanchaidhna Coille / Memory-Keeper of the Forest
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Gaelic-speaking communities could be found all over Canada from the late-18th century to the mid-20th century. This is the first anthology of prose and poetry – mostly literary, some more ‘historical’ in tone – to give voice to the experience of Gaelic Canadians, about a broad set of themes: migration, politics, religion, identity, family life, social organizations and more.
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Warmth of the Welcome
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95The allure of Atlantic Canada has been widely publicized to assorted, targeted groups alongside colourful pictures of stunning seascapes. Communities in Atlantic Canada have promoted the region’s purportedly high quality of life, contrasting it with the challenges of “big city” life. In the pitch to newcomers, healthy and safe communities and a lower cost of living, including lower housing prices, are featured in the hope that these considerations will entice immigrants to move to, and make new homes in the region. But for immigrants especially, how much of this is rhetoric, and how much of this is reality? Is Atlantic Canada truly welcoming, and what really makes it a home away from home for newcomers in the region?
The chapters in this volume underscore that a welcoming environment consists not simply of ordinary people’s reception of, and encounters with, newcomers and immigrants in everyday life. Beyond this human “warmth of the welcome” in official literature and by the general public, there are also several institutional and structural layers that constitute and frame such a welcoming environment: favourable political economic conditions; receptive community relations including inter-ethnic group relations; the existence of local, national and transnational family networks; and the presence of policies and practices that not only concern immigration, settlement and integration, but also around such issues as adequate, accessible, affordable housing or childcare. These layers of welcome for immigrants and newcomers ultimately lead and correspond to the dimensions of a broadly defined notion of encompassing the intertwined and interrelated economic, social, political and emotional dimensions and processes of citizenship.
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Tinker and Blue A Novel
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95At age 19 and 20, respectively, Tinker Dempsey and his oldest friend Blue figured it was time they followed generations of Cape Bretoners and crossed the Canso Causeway, if for no other reason than to find a few stories they could call their own when their wandering ways brought them back home. It had been Blue’s idea to drive their fourth-hand 1957 push-button Plymouth out to San Francisco to look at those Haight-Ashbury types.
Hitch-hiking hippies and homespun humour and wisdom, love troubles and trouble with the law – Tinker and Blue’s California adventures are a funny and poignant flashback.
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Rudan Mi-bheanailteach is an Cothroman/ Intangible Possibilites
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95LEWIS MACKINNON was born in Inverness, Cape Breton, to a Gaelic-speaking father and a French Acadian mother. He was raised in Antigonish County, on the Nova Scotia mainland. Educated in English, throughout his personal, academic and professional activities, Lewis has maintained an interest in his Gaelic roots. He is an accomplished singer as well as poet. His first collection Famhair agus dàin Ghàidhlig eile (Giant and other Gaelic poems) was published in 2008 (CBU Press). Since then he has been invited to numerous literary festivals internationally and, in 2011, was named Bard of the Royal National Mod (Mòd Nàiseanta Rìoghail) in Scotland, the first bard from outwith Scotland.
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William Roach: Folk Artist
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95William Roach’s interest – training, if you like – in carving and shaping wood into representations of the world around him, came naturally. When they weren’t making or repairing practical articles and tools, the older men in his life spent countless hours whittling curiosities that delighted children, neighbours and friends.After years working in Ontario, Roach and his family moved home to his Acadian birthplace, Chéticamp, Cape Breton, striving for the stability of family and community. A new life, turning a new leaf, William began expressing himself through his gift – a diversion at first, his passion for creating objects of beauty and value became an obsession and later a business.From his Sunset Gallery and studio on the outskirts of Chéticamp, Roach works tirelessly at his entertaining creations.
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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.
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These Were My People: Washabuck, An Anecdotal history The Cape Bretoniana Research Series
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Most of the people, places and events that Vince MacLean brings to life in these pages are not there anymore – the Washabuck on these pages is the Washabuck that was. MacLean’s lifetime of listening to oral traditions and of his research of every written source he could find, combines for a compelling examination of both the place and its time. Washabuck the place is much more than geographical coordinates on a map; its time spans a few centuries.
Mr. MacLean’s approach to the history of his community is unique and satisfying; we learn of its people by way of the stories they told and the stories told about them – a history rich in character without sacrificing facts and figures. These Were My People is Vince MacLean’s celebration of his community, his people.
These Were My People was awarded the inaugural Robert J. Morgan Grant-in-Aid Program and the Cape Bretoniana Research Series administered by the Beaton Institute at Cape Breton University.
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Governance and Social Leadership
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Governance and Social Leadership examines the inadequacies of current theories on leadership in order to help us better understand the process of leadership and to suggest mechanisms for change.
The proliferation of examples of poor political, religious, corporate and even grass roots leadership is troubling, to say the least. Perhaps more troubling is the resulting cynicism—and apathy—on the part of populations who sorely desire, and deserve, better leadership and governance.
There are many and varied sources of theories and practical advice on leadership but, as Robert A. Campbell suggests, too many simply play into our need for quick fixes and novelty and do not reflect what is actually going on in the world. In Governance and Social Leadership, Campbell examines the dynamic nature of organizations and humans systems and our capacity, or incapacity, to act.
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Clay Pots and Bones
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95The poetry of Clay Pots and Bones is Lindsay Marshall’s way of telling stories, of speaking with others about what things that matter to him. His heritage. His people. His life as a Mi’kmaw. For the reader, Clay Pots and Bones is a colourful journey from early days, when the People of the Dawn understood, interacted with and roamed the land freely, to the turbulent present and the uncertain future where Marshall envisions a rebirth of the Mi’kmaq. The poetry challenges and enlightens. It will, most certainly, entertain.
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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.
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Celtic Threads: A Journey In Cape Breton Crafts
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95In Celtic Threads, Eveline MacLeod shares her lifetime of research and collecting the history, methods, patterns and people of Cape Breton’s considerable tapestry of practical and ornamental weaving and other fibre art and crafts.
For more than sixty years, Eveline MacLeod’s life has been inextricably woven into the art and the craft of weaving in Cape Breton. An avid weaver herself, Eveline became an ardent student of the art and a teacher of the craft, tracing its roots from the glens of Cape Breton to the Highlands of Scotland and beyond.
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The Manager A Novel
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95Tina is short, but she packs a wallop.
And she knows every move a boxer needs to get to the top.
It’s 1979, and the glory days of the sport are over. With the family gym about to fold, and her father unwilling to listen to a word she says, Tina explodes and takes off, leaving Sydney’s Whitney Pier behind her for good.
But it isn’t her temper that turns things around, it’s a road trip with her sister, and a Mi’kmaw light-heavyweight they meet along the way. Tina’s convinced he’ll go the distance –with her as Manager.
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Fogradh, Faisneachd, Filidheachd/ Parting, Prophecy , Poetry
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95In the original Gaelic, with English translations by John Alick MacPherson, Fògradh, Fàisneachd, Filidheachd / Parting, Prophesy, Poetry includes Blair’s articles about the Highland Clearances, a number of his poems, an account of a 16th-century seer who some say foretold of the Clearances and articles about Blair’s travels around the Maritimes – all published in Mac-Talla.
Although some of Blair’s poems have been included in various collections, his prose writings have not previously been published.
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Extraordinary Life of Anna Swan
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95On a balmy August morning in 1846, a child was born to Ann and Alexander Swan in the couple’s small wood cabin in Millbrook, Colchester County, Nova Scotia. This in itself was not odd, as home was where babies where most often born in the mid 19th century. What was surprising, however, was that Anna Swan weighed an amazing 6 kilograms (13 pounds) –almost twice the size of an average newborn.
Anna Swan grew to an astonishing size –nearly 2.5 meters (almost 8 feet) tall. She was billed as “The Nova Scotia Giant Girl” at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York. But despite her unusual and challenging physical attributes, she rose above adversity and led the life of love, happiness and great accomplishments. This is her remarkable story.
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Celts in the Americas
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Celtic-speaking peoples of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Scottish Highlands and Wales played a vital role in the history of Europe and the Americas. Immigrant Celtic communities enjoyed many significant accomplishments explored in this volume: continuing and developing literary traditions, establishing organizations to represent their origins and concerns, and negotiating the political and cultural issues of the day in their own languages.
A new crop of scholarship is reinvigorating Celtic Studies in the Americas by addressing issues of relevance and interest in this geographical and cultural context: race, ethnicity, immigration, imperialism, (post)colonialism and linguistic revitalization. While being firmed rooted in the languages and cultural expressions of Celtic communities, they extend research beyond the conventional framework of the field.
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Jeanne Dugas of Acadia
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95Born of Acadian parents at Louisbourg, Jeanne Dugas (1731-1817) and her husband Pierre Bois were among the founding families of the Acadian village of Chéticamp in 1785. Descended from one of the three most prominent families in Acadia, Jeanne Dugas and her family lived for more than thirty years under the threat of capture and deportation by the British militia and attacks by pirates and privateers.
In this historical fiction, we follow Jeanne Dugas’s trials and tribulations from Louisbourg to Grand Pré (NS), to Port Toulouse and Mira (Cape Breton), Île-Saint-Jean (PEI), Remshic (NS), Restigouche (NB) and back again – often more than once. Finally captured by the British militia, she and her family were imprisoned for three years on George’s Island, where three of her four children died. When released, they sought refuge on Île Madame (Cape Breton) and finally to the area now known as Chéticamp.
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Trapper Boy
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95Set in a 1920s coal-mining town, Trapper Boy is the story of 13-year-old JW Donaldson, a good student with a bright future. As school ended for the year in 1926, JW was looking forward to summer. Sure, he would have chores – feeding the horse and milking the goat, tending the garden, that kind of thing – but he would also have lots of time for fishing, building his cabin and reading. Lots of reading.But there is something worrying his parents. His father works in the mine, and there is a lot of talk around town about the mines. JW doesn’t know the details – Adults had a lot to worry about, and he was in no hurry to become one.Slowly, JW’s parents reveal the truth: his father’s hours at the mine have been reduced and they face difficult decisions to try to make ends meet. One such decision will have a previously unimagined impact on the young man’s life.
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Blood Brothers In Louisbourg
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95As the son of an officer, Jacques was expected to pursue a career in the military. In the spring of 1744, at the age of fifteen, Jacques and his father leave France for Louisbourg, the French capital of Île Royale, where Jacques is to learn the military arts – a far cry from his books and music and the comforts of his mother’s home. In the Acadian forests that surround the French fortress of Louisbourg, a young Mi’kmaw man named Two-feathers watches the strange comings and goings of soldiers and citizens. Two-feathers is hoping to find his father who, he has been told, is an important man among the French – they have never met. From his discreet camp outside the walls of the fortress, Two-feathers watches, believing that he will know his father when he sees him. At night, he moves silently about the city, including the Governor’s apartments, where he befriends a beautiful young French woman. Jacques’ life in Louisbourg is a curious mixture of military duties and his visits to the Governor’s apartments where he teaches the daughter of a visiting merchant to play the violoncello. The two young men follow very different paths – one formally educated and refined, the other curious and skilful – both seeking to understand their father. Their paths and their worlds collide during the violent siege by British forces in 1745.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
