-
Grandfather’s House Returning to Cape Breton
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95Grandfather’s House is Clive Doucet’s follow-up to My Grandfather’s Cape Breton, published in 1980 and continuously in print. Now a grandfather himself, Doucet muses about this role. While he believed as a child that to be a grandfather was to own a farm by the sea, he now realizes that his job as a grandfather is to tell stories. In doing so, he traces the history of the Doucets back to Acadie, then to the early years of the Cape Breton village of Grand Étang and to modern-day Ottawa.
Doucet’s musings are interspersed with poetry, short stories, and with summer adventures with his grandchildren in Grand Étang. He paints a loving portrait of his grandfather’s village and the people, past and present, who make it a vibrant community. The themes of resilience and rejuvenation permeate the memoir, which is both rooted in nostalgia and filled with hope for a more sustainable future.
-
My Grandfather’s Cape Breton (new edition)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$20.95This is the timeless story of a young boy and his grandfather. It is a voyage of discovery that starts for both of them when young Clive arrives one summer at his grandfather’s farm in Cape Breton. Clive, with all the uncertainty of approaching adolescence, has only the vaguest impression of what a cow looks like and what is expected of him. Under the gentle guidance and wry wit of his Acadian grandfather he learns how to gallop a horse without falling off, how to save the hay crop from from an approaching storm, and how to assist with the birth of a calf. This is a story of Grand Étang, a humorous, sensuous vibrant place, and of a boy growing up wise one summer in Cape Breton.
