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Woman Talking Woman
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$9.95Maxine Tynes is a poet who has lived all her life in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Her heritage goes back to the time of Black Loyalists in that province and Maxine has drawn heavily on that rich cultural past. Her writing is intense, personal, evocative and accessible in nature which earned her the titles of Milton Acorn People’s Poet of Canada for 1988. When her first book, Borrowed Beauty, was published by Pottersfield Press in 1987, it received rave reviews and sold out in a few months. Now in its third printing, Borrowed Beauty has provne to be a bestselling Canadian title, reaching far beyond the usual audience for poetry.
Woman Talking Woman is a new and varied collection of poetry and fiction by this vibrant voice from Atlantic Canada.”Maxine Tynes is a woman/teacher/poet whose life is shaped by the pride and passion of her own strongly held beliefs and an absolute commitment to her personal politics.” Sharon Fraser, Atlantic Insight
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Courage in the Storm
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$9.95She urged the horse on with a jerk at the reins. Judy went on a few steps and stopped again. The object stretched right across her path. It was close and clear now, and Greta gasped. Her very heart seemed to stop beating. For there, like a ghost risen out of the ice, lay a ship. A ship, of all things! A big schooner with three tall masts, all crusted with snow. What was it doing here? Slowly her mind filled with awful suspicion. She tried to put it aside, but it came back. At last she faced the truth.
The little mare had been lost all this time. Instead of crossing the ice, they had been wandering down the river, towards the open sea.
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Mi’kmaw Daily Drum Mi’kmaw Culture for Every Day of the Week
Artist: Alan SyliboyPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Mi’kmaq artist Alan Syliboy’s daily drum artworks paired with a different day of the week in an accessible and beautiful baby board book.
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Nova Scotia and the Great Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1920 A Remembrance of the Dead and an Archive for the Living
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$32.95The definitive academic resource on the Great Influenza at the beginning of the twentieth century threaded with the human stories of the people that lived and died in the three year pandemic in Nova Scotia.
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A Giant Man from a Tiny Town A Story of Angus MacAskill
Artist: Christopher HoytPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$13.95Angus MacAskill, known far and wide as the Cape Breton Giant, travelled the world performing for crowds, but never stopped longing to return to the place he loved the best: his Cape Breton home.
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The Lookout Tree A Family’s Escape from the Acadian Deportation
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$11.95The Acadian Deportation is told through the eyes of twelve-year-old Fidèle, in the new English version of this Hackmatack Award-winning novel by author Diane Carmel Léger. The Lookout Tree, an English translation of the Acadian bestseller La butte à Pétard, is a testament to the will of the Acadian people, determined to not only survive the two decades of the Deportation, but reunite and rebuild afterward.
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Imagining Anne L. M. Montgomery’s Island Scrapbooks
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$32.95Fall in love with Anne of Green Gables and the Island all over again through L. M. Montgomery’s scrapbooks, annotated by Montgomery scholar Elizabeth Epperly. Covering a period from 1893 to 1910, these full colour pages give the reader insight into the young author during the period when Anne Shirley came to life.
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Nova Scotia’s Historic Harbours The Seaports that Shaped the Province
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95With twenty-five historical photos, and featuring profiles of more than fifty harbours—from the Bedford Basin to Shelburne Harbour to Cobequid Bay, Louisbourg, and Canso—Nova Scotia’s Historic Harbours explores each harbour’s historical significance and explores how these communities have been shaped by the sea, and how Nova Scotia’s growth has been driven by its harbours.
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Évangéline The Many Identities of a Literary Icon
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$34.95Sociologist Joseph Yvon Thériault presents three versions of the literary heroine: Évangéline the Acadian, Évangéline the Canadian, and Évangéline the American. Can these three distinct identities be merged, and will survive the effects of globalization?
CBC most anticipated non-fiction of Spring 2021
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It’s Our Time Honouring the African Nova Scotian Communities of East Preston, North Preston, Lake Loon/Cherry Brook
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The Black Loyalists were the first large group of people of African ancestry to settle in Halifax, in 1782. In 1796 the Jamaican Maroons arrived. Then in 1813, Black refugees fleeing the United States came. These Loyalists, Maroons, and refugees settled in the Preston area, and although some subsequently left for Sierra Leone, many stayed and established the largest community of African Nova Scotians in the province. Since then, the Preston township—comprising North Preston, East Preston, and Lake Loon/Cherry Brook—has become a web of vibrant neighbourhoods with a rich and complex history.
With care and precision, award-winning writer Wanda Lauren Taylor delves into the history and development of this area, the organizations and churches that helped bolster the population, and the struggles, successes, and personal stories of several Preston-area residents. Through interviews and archival documents, Taylor shows how a resilient group of marginalized people built a thriving community that generations of African Nova Scotians can be proud of. Contains seventy-five images, both contemporary and archival, of the people and places around Preston.
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Nova Scotia Folk Art An Illustrated Guide
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95There may be many folk artists in Canada, but there is only one integrated folk art scene: the one in Nova Scotia.
Classic folk art is the work of artists who did not think of themselves as artists, who made art that they never considered to be art at all. There were no festivals, no galleries, and no touring exhibitions when they started—just a sign by the side of the road, a painted house, or colourful sculptures in the yard to attract the attention of passers-by. Today in Nova Scotia, contemporary folk art has become a distinct style, one which stresses individual creativity over collective utility. The maker, and their stories, is central to the appeal.
Written by former Art Gallery of Nova Scotia curator Ray Cronin, Nova Scotia Folk Art features profiles of fifty artists—some obscure and some well known—from the first, second, and third waves of folk art. The list includes Barry Colpitts, Laura Kenney, Ralph Boutilier, Craig Naugler, Joseph Norris, and Maud Lewis. With more than 150 colour images, this illustrated guide explores the exhibitions, collections, and festivals that allowed a group of Nova Scotia artists to move their creations from the roadside to the museum, and in so doing to create its own genre: Nova Scotia Folk Art.
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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.
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Cod Collapse The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95It’s 1992 in Newfoundland and Labrador and the cod moratorium has put some thirty thousand fishers out of work. Journalist Jenn Thornhill Verma blends memoir and research in this gripping account of the enduring legacy of the largest mass layoff in Canadian history. Tracing the early history of the fishery to the present, Verma considers what lies ahead and what was lost along the way.
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Anne of Green Gables : The Original Manuscript
Editor: Carolyn Strom CollinsPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95This fascinating book presents the original text of Montgomery’s most famous manuscript, including where the author scribbled notes, made additions and deletions, and other editorial details. L. M. Montgomery scholar Carolyn Strom Collins offers a rare look into Montgomery’s creative process, providing a never-before-published version of the worldwide phenomenon.
This book differs from previous versions of Anne in that it provides a transcription of the text and notes from Montgomery’s original manuscript, and shows how they were integrated to form the full novel. The culmination of years of research, Anne of Green Gables: the Original Manuscript is a necessary addition to any Montgomery lover’s collection. This volume features scans of the first page of each chapter from the original archived document (showing editorial notes in Montgomery’s handwriting) and an appendix of rare foreign-language covers.
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Ultimate African Heritage Quiz 10th Anniversary edition
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95The Ultimate African Heritage Quiz Book will test your knowledge of the many notable people, places, and events that have shaped African culture in the Maritimes. Based on the immensely popular African Heritage Youth Quiz contest held at Halifax North Memorial Public Library every year, The Ultimate African Heritage Quiz Book is a great way to bring the fun and excitement of the game home.
Packed with over three hundred questions about black literary figures, civil rights leaders, sports stars, historical events, and a wide variety of other topics, The Ultimate African Heritage Quiz Book is sure to challenge and entertain trivia fans of all ages and ethnicities.
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Living Treaties – Narrating Mi’kmaw Treaty Relations
Editor: Marie BattistePublisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95First Nations, Métis and Inuit lands and resources are tied to treaties and other documents, their relevance forever in dispute. Contributors share how they came to know about treaties, about the key family members and events that shaped their thinking and their activism and life’s work.
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As British as the King Lunenburg County During the First World War
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95The Great War comes to Lunenburg County in this gripping and detailed historical account from award-winning author Gerald Hallowell. In 1914, Germans in Lunenburg County, despite deep roots, faced suspicion as Canada waged war with Germany. Hallowell’s meticulous research breathes life into the World War I home front, in a time of blackouts, rumours of spies and naval skirmishes.
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Before the Parade
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing Limited$29.95Before the Parade traces the beginnings of Halifax’s gay, lesbian, and bisexual community. Journalist and activist Rebecca Rose melds insights and perspectives from the people at the forefront with a thoroughly researched, narrative history. Rose brings her queer femme, feminist perspective to this compelling—and never before told—history of Halifax’s early LGB community.
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I Place You into the Fire Poems
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$18.95In Mi’kmaw, three similarly shaped words have drastically different meanings: kesalul means “I love you”; kesa’lul means “I hurt you”; and ke’sa’lul means “I put you into the fire.” Spoken word artist Rebecca Thomas’ first poetry collection is at once a meditation on navigating life and love as a second-generation Residential School survivor, a lesson in unlearning, and a rallying cry for Indigenous justice, empathy, and equality.
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I’m Finding My Talk
Artist: Pauline YoungPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95I’m Finding My Talk reflects on the destructive effects on colonialism, rediscovering community and finding culture. Former Halifax Poet Laureate and second-generation residential school survivor Rebecca Thomas writes honestly and powerfully in this companion piece to Rita Joe’s I Lost My Talk. With vibrant illustrations from Mi’kmaw artist Pauline Young.
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I Lost My Talk
Artist: Pauline YoungPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95Rita Joe’s essential poetry is presented anew in this children’s picture book with illustrations from Pauline Young. Joe, known as the Poet Laureate of the Mi’kmaw, tells her childhood story of losing her language at Shubenacadie’s residential school. Mi’kmaw culture and language are celebrated in this collection, which joins current conversations about Canada’s shameful history, truth and reconciliation.
Published simultaneously with the companion book I’m Finding My Talk by Rebecca Thomas.
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The Thundermaker
Artist: Alan SyliboyPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Mi’kmaw artist Alan Syliboy’s The Thundermaker is based on Alan’s spectacular mixed-media exhibit of the same name. In the book, Big Thunder teaches his son, Little Thunder, about the important responsibility he has making thunder for his people. Little Thunder learns about his Mi’kmaw identity through his father’s teachings and his mother’s traditional stories. Syliboy’s spectacular, vibrant artwork brings the story of Little Thunder to vivid life.
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A Change of Heart
Artist: Erin Bennett BanksPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Finally, the remarkable story of honourary Newfoundlander Lanier Phillips is available for young children in this heartwarming picture book.
A young African American and the son of sharecroppers, Lanier Phillips escapes the violence, racism, and segregation of his Georgia home by joining the navy during the Second World War. But tragedy strikes the USS Truxtun one February night off the southeastern coast of Newfoundland, and Lanier is the lone Black survivor of the terrible shipwreck. Covered in oil when he arrives onshore, the community’s kindness and humanity brings him back to health and changes his outlook on life. He would go on to march for Black rights with Martin Luther King, and remained forever grateful to the small town of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland.
With vibrant illustrations by celebrated artist Erin Banks, A Change of Heart vividly depicts Lanier’s life-changing experiences in Newfoundland that fateful February.
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Maud’s Country Landscapes that Inspired the Art of Maud Lewis
Photographer: Bob BrooksPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Maud Lewis stayed close to home: the rugged coastlines and gentle valleys of Nova Scotia’s southwest knew—but they provided ample material for her joyful creative spirit. Now revered as Canada’s foremost folk artist, Maud Lewis (1903-1970) transformed her world of poverty and deformity into a magical kingdom of happy children, contented animals, and a peaceful and charming rural environment.
Maud’s Country offers unique insight into the landscapes that inspired Lewis’s works and her own special way of representing them. The materials she had at hand were primitive—particleboard, crude brushes, marine or house paints. But these were all she needed to convey her message that happiness and harmony exist all around us, for those who have eyes to see.
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Mi’kmaw Animals
Artist: Alan SyliboyPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Alan Syliboy, author of The Thundermaker, showcases his vibrant artwork in this new baby board book. Colourful images depicting Canadian animals like moose, whales, and caribou, and more makes this vibrant book a perfect introduction to the Mi’kmaw language. With English and Mi’kmaw translations for the animal names on every page, babies will enjoy the vivid paintings while they learn new words and discover a bit of Mi’kmaw culture in a fun way.
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Indigenous Business In Canada Principles and Practices
Editor: Keith G. Brown, Mary Beth DoucettePublisher: Nimbus Publishing$34.95Students who study business in university are not likely to hear about or discuss examples of Indigenous business successes from across the country. Rarely would one see references to Aboriginal communities, let alone examples of them growing multi-million dollar businesses and partnering to lead innovative economic development projects that positively impact the national economy. Resources are scarce and inadequate, an oversight that is to our detriment.
Somewhere between a textbook and a book of collected essays, this collection of articles is an effort to build on and share the research of Aboriginal practitioners and scholars working in their respective fields. Where possible we share not only concepts, but also the voices of Aboriginal leaders, officials, Elders and other members of Aboriginal communities.
Indigenous Business in Canada addresses contemporary concerns and issues in the doing of Indigenous business in Canada, reveals some of the challenges and diverse approaches to business in Aboriginal contexts from coast to coast to coast, and demonstrates the direct impact that history and policy, past and present, have on business and business education.
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Mayann prend le train
Artist: Tamara Thiebaux HeikaloPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95Nine-year-old Mayann Francis and her family are travelling from their home in Cape Breton to New York City by train. Everything is exciting to young Mayann, from the beds that fold down to the stop in Montreal to visit friends. Most exciting of all is the chance to show off her brand new purse.
When the Francis family arrives in big, bustling New York City, Mayann visits with relatives, goes to the zoo, and rides the subway. She even receives a beautiful black doll, something she has never seen before. But one subway ride, she loses her beautiful purse. At first she’s heartbroken, but she just might learn a lesson that makes the whole trip worthwhile.
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Fiddles and Spoons (pb)
$14.95Cecile Souris and her mouse family live under the floorboards of a little Acadian house in Grand Pré, owned by the Dubois family. The house—above and below the floor—is full of good food, laughter, and wonderful music, made with fiddles and spoons. But one day soldiers arrive and take the Dubois family—and the Souris family with them—far away from Grand Pré. Join them on an unforgettable journey in this heartwarming tale of courage, love, and joy as the Acadians continue to celebrate life with fiddles and spoons!
This beloved story is now available in a second edition with a new design, including some new illustrations.
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Traditional Newfoundland English The First English Language of North America
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$13.95The rich heritage of Newfoundland English, influenced by the dialects of the English, Irish, and Scottish immigrants to the province, receives well-deserved attention in this well-crafted dictionary. author R. A. Bragg aims to elevate Newfoundland English from being thought of as mere slang or accent to a standardized language, and to preserve the heritage of North America’s first English language for the future.
This dictionary offers both Newfy to English and English to Newfy translations with 1,500 fully annotated entries. The dictionary is completed by usage and pronunciation guides that present a regularized language structure, as well as three maps. As this dictionary shows, traditional Newfy talk is unique, relevant, and altogether “wunnerfo.”
