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Halifax Warden of the North
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95In this new, redesigned, highly readable trade paperback format, Nimbus presents Thomas Raddall’s fascinating historical portrait of Halifax. The story begins with the city’s first inhabitants, the Mi’kmaq, and follows Halifax through time, from the earliest settlers to prohibition and the wartime boom to life in the later half of the twentieth century. It focuses on the city’s historic military role and the effects of its strategic position, chronicling colourful characters, heroes and scoundrels, and the adventure and intrigue of their exploits.
One of Canada’s most popular novelists, Thomas H. Raddall won the Governor General’s Award three times. He is the author of sixteen books, including His Majesty’s Yankees and The Nymph and the Lamp.
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Saint John Facts and Folklore
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Saint John Facts and Folklore is filled with anecdotes about the city’s history, unbelievable incidents, and local sayings that showcase the unique identity of Saint John. With a focus on the city’s long history and spirited citizens, David Goss leads readers through the rowdy port city and centre of the nineteenth century lumber trade. The book is scattered with facts and stats that surprise and teach. The latest addition to the Facts and Folklore series, this entertaining and informative book is perfect for those wanting an alternative guide to Saint John and its sights. Includes 20 black and white photos of Saint John past and present.
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Along Lot Seven Shore
Publisher: Acorn Press$14.95Often, folksongs are left to stand alone, with no record as to the events, visions and principles that inspired them. Rarely do we get a glimpse of the poet’s view of the community and people he or she writes about. However, Donnie Doyle, in wanting to give something back to his community, has done just that. Along Lot Seven Shore is a fascinating combination of memoir, anecdote, narrative song and poetry, created by someone who has experienced that which he has written. In so doing, he shares glimpses of a way of life that makes and defines “community”; this particular community happens to be along Lot Seven Shore of Prince Edward Island (named so when the Island was divided into 67 lots and given in a Land Lottery to the English King’s patrons in 1767), but it could be anywhere in rural Canada.
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Le cycle M
Publisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$14.95Melanie, an Acadian, and her French friend Garence arrive in Marseilles. An obscure family curse looms over Melanie’s trip, which takes quite a turn when she gets her first period. The two friends are mysteriously taken back to the Middle Ages and unwillingly dragged onto the trail of a shady character. Who is the Maure? Where is he hiding? And how will the two return to the 21st century?
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Les mathémagiciens
Publisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$14.95Vacations have just begun, and already these four friends are bored. Professor Mathou steps in and with him they will discover the Golden Ratio, and a few exciting “magical” tricks with numbers. But best of all, they will be taken for a ride on the longest Moebius strip in North America. Numbers can sometimes be daunting, but nothing is more magical than solving problems using your brain.
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Our Grandmothers’ Words Traditional Stories For Nurturing
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95Traditional child-raising practices recognize that you begin to raise a child from the moment you know you are pregnant. Through traditional stories, Grandmothers’ understandings guide and nurture parents and children as they grow together.
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An Inuk Boy Becomes a Hunter
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95For hundreds of years, Inuit of northern Labrador employed their ingenuity, courage, and deep sense of community to meet the challenges of living in a harsh environment. In the process, they developed a rich culture of customs and traditions that strengthened their family and community life as well their relationship with the natural world.
But with the encroachment of the modern world and the depletion of wildlife and fish stocks, the Inuit way of life has changed dramatically. In the authentic voice of a storyteller, John Igloliorte describes the Inuit way of life and the changes that are breaking down their time-honoured traditions. He shares with us the wondrous experiences of an Inuk boy’s life- from his earliest childhood memories, to when, at thirteen, he became a hunter. -
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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New Brunswick Book of Everyting 2nd edition
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$14.95Everything you wanted to know about New Brunswick and were going to ask anyway can be found in this revised and updated classic. From the number of kilometers of coastline, to the stories behind those weird place names (hello Skeedaddle Ridge), to profiles of Stompin’ Tom and Frank McKenna, no book is more comprehensive than the New Brunswick Book of Everything. No book is more fun.
Whether you are a life long resident or visiting for the first time, there simply is no other book that delivers the goods. If you love New Brunswick, you’ll love the New Brunswick Book of Everything.
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Jean-le-Chasseur et ses chiens
Artist: Denis GallagherPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$14.95Warning: this book contains heart-pounding and mildly bloody adventure, taken right from the wonderful oral storytelling style of Francophone Louisiana. Zombie-dogs and witch-princesses ahead!
Jean-the-Hunter is never apart from his tracking dogs. One day, he meets a young enchantress in an orchard. She agrees to marry him, but only if Jean gets rid of his dogs. Luckily, Jean’s mother distrusts her…and the dogs won’t stay dead for very long.
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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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Allons à Tantramar
Publisher: Chocolate River Publishing$14.95In Allons à Tantramar loveable Camelia Airheart is looking for “leg bling,” just like the kind her Aunt Tilly has. This picture book is a prequel to Follow the Goose Butt, Camelia Airheart! and tells the story of how Camelia came to acquire her very own leg band. It is bound to delight Camelia fans, both young and old.
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Counting in Mi’kmaw / Mawkiljemk Mi’kmawiktuk
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95One is Ne’wt, for one bear. Two is Ta’pu, for two women making offerings. Counting from one to ten in English and Mi’kmaw, baby is introduced to both the ancestral language of Mi’kmaki and to Mi’kmaw culture and legend, through beautifully rendered illustrations of important animals, like turtle, bear, and beaver, to concepts integral to the Mi’kmaw world view, like the Four (Ne’w) Directions, and the Seven (L’luiknek) Mi’kmaw teachings. Features bright and detailed illustrations from celebrated Waycobah-based Mi’kmaw illustrator, Loretta Gould.
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Coquelicot sur un rocher
Publisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$14.95Carla, journalist covering the war in Afghanistan, is on a quest. She’s searching for something significant to bring back for her son Théo.
For his part, Tom, a nineteen-year-old American, try to make sense of this war for which he embarked without knowing why. His mother deeply worried at the thought of her son.
Laïla and Amir, living in a dusty Kabul, are separated by the conflicts.
These mothers and their child are bound by the same fight, the one for love.
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Une journee poney! Pemkiskahk’ciw ahahsis!
Artist: Paul LangPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$14.95Joséphine looks at her grandfather and wonders whether he’s serious. After all, he loves to joke around! A pony has neither a steering wheel to drive it, nor seat to sit in… how will she ever stay on a pony and guide it to the pond?
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Return of the Wild Goose
Publisher: Island Studies Press$14.95Return of the Wild Goose explores the life of writer and activist Katherine Hughes. Set against the intimate relief of a PEI landscape, these poems are inspired by what is known—and unknown—about her contradictory life and character as Catholic teacher, journalist, public servant, and Irish nationalist. This (auto) biographical dialogue between Jane Ledwell and Katherine Hughes offers the reader a fierce remembrance of a PEI radical.
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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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Africville
Artist: Eva CampbellPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$14.95When a young girl visits the site of Africville, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the stories she?s heard from her family come to mind.
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Fairy Dells and Rustic Bowers The Creation of Victoria Park, Truro NS
Publisher: SSP Publications$14.95The development of Truro’s magnificent Victoria Park is a very compelling read. Full of romance, little known facts (the Olmsteds, of New York’s Central Park fame were involved) and vintage Notman photographs, Joe Ballard’s study is an eye-opener.
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The Life of Boston King
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing Limited$14.95In the summer of 1783, at the end of the American Revolution, several thousand Black men, women and children left New York City with the British Army, bound by ship for Nova Scotia. Now uniformly called “Black Loyalists”, regardless of their status at leaving New York, theirs is a rich and fascinating history. One of the most well-documented of these Black Loyalists was a man named Boston King, born a slave to Richard Waring, a rice-planter in South Carolina.
King experienced a religious revelation while in Nova Scotia, and became a Methodist preacher; he went to Sierra Leone in 1792 to spread the Gospel; and from there was invited to England to study at a Methodist school. While there, he wrote the story of his life and conversion. This was published in the Methodist Magazine of the times.
Thus survived one of only three autobiographies of a Black Loyalist, full of details of the Loyalist settlement of Nova Scotia. It is reprinted here as “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher,” edited by Ruth Holmes Whitehead and Carmelita Robertson. An introduction by Ruth Holmes Whitehead presents new research findings about King’s life, and her Afterword examines particularly his life as a slave on the Waring Plantation, near Charleston, SC. Whitehead and Robertson revisited the ruins of two Waring plantations, where King would have worked as a child and young man, and photographed the dirt road, still running through one plantation, down which he would have ridden away to freedom.
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Peggy’s Cove The Amazing History of a Coastal Village
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$15.95Here is the complete history of the famous cove and the unique village that hosts thousands of visitors each year. The story begins with the formation of the rocks along these shores and the impact of the glaciers. The Mi’kmaq were the first to live here in the summers, harvesting the riches of the sea. A land grant in 1811 brought the first hardy settlers, who built homes and wharves and discovered that the sea could provide bounty but was also a source of great danger.
The story includes the origin of the name, Peggy’s Cove, and details about the everyday life of nineteenth-century families living here. A history of the famous lighthouse is included and there are excerpts from many of the famous and not-so-famous visitors who have written about the Cove through two centuries.
The author explores the most damaging storms and the shipwrecks, the reports of sea monsters and other strange phenomena. Fishing was always a source of income, but it changed over the years. At times the fish prices were so low it was not worth the effort and, in recent years, dramatic changes to the ocean have seen the collapse of several important species of fish.
In the twentieth century, Peggy’s Cove attracted artists, writers and ultimately thousands of tourists. Sculptor William de Garthe made his home here and created his monument to the coastal fishermen out of the sheer granite outcropping in his backyard. In 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed off the shores of Peggy’s Cove and the community opened its doors to the world in an effort to provide support for the rescue workers and the families of the victims. From the earliest days to the present, the story of Peggy’s Cove has been a tale of natural wonder and human endurance. -
Sable Island the Wandering Sandbar
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95Though it was discovered almost 500 years ago, few people have visited Sable Island. Despite modern navigational tools, excessive fog and stormy weather still make travelling to Sable a challenge. Add government restrictions limiting visitors to the remote island and prohibitive travel costs, and Sable is virtually inaccessible.
But the island is part of Maritime lore–dubbed the “graveyard of the Atlantic” because of the number of ships wrecked on its shores. Sable Island also hosts wild horses, tens of thousands of seals, and enchanting “singing” sands and “wandering” dunes. With 18 species of sharks patrolling Sable Island’s waters and the regular fights between bands of horses, not to mention the treacherous patches of quicksand, the island is as dangerous as it is alluring.
In this colourful book, author Wendy Kitts introduces the wonders and stark realities of this wild place. Full of photographs and sidebars, Sable Island: The Wandering Sandbar is an accessible and exciting look at this unprotected, untamed ecosystem.
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Taste of Water
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95The taste of water is something we all know but need to be reminded of once in a while: how it tastes of shared memory, and of what it means to be human, and of the earth.Prince Edward Island’s second Poet Laureate, Frank Ledwell, invites us to enter his words and world, seeking to share a sense of our common humanity and our interdependent fates, and to recognize communal experience in the particularities of personal experience.The traditional role of the Poet Laureate is to mark occasions, and Ledwell’s poems masterfully make quotidian Island events and lives into special occasions that sing with the “spirit of the spoken word taking hold.”
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Long Reach Home
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Reaching back through a family full of stories and characters, from Newfoundland on her mother’s side to New Brunswick on her father’s, the poems in Long Reach Home are characteristically personal, warm, and accessible- by turns humorous, by turns enraged- but always engaged with the world, distilling simple pleasures and fundamental human struggles from everyday experience.
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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.
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Lure of the Labrador Wild
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95The improbable collaboration between an ambitious young writer, Leonidas Hubbard, and a forty-year-old New York attorney, Dillon Wallace. They set off in the spring of 1903 with George Elson, an Aboriginal guide with no first-hand knowledge of their destination—the incompletely mapped Lake Michikamau region of interior Labrador. Beset by delays, the men paddle past their intended route, the Naskaupi River, and head up the dreadful Susan River instead. When in early September they finally glimpse the vast waters of Michikamau from atop an unknown mountain, the cold winds have already begun. With almost no food left the three begin a desperate struggle against starvation and the quickening pace of a cruel winter, heading homeward in a race for their lives.
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We Keep A Light
$15.95In We Keep A Light, Evelyn M. Richardson describes how she and her husband bought tiny Bon Portage Island and built a happy life there for themselves and their three children. On an isolated lighthouse station off the southern tip of Nova Scotia, the Richardsons shared the responsibilities and pleasures of island living, from carrying water and collecting firewood to making preserves and studying at home. The close-knit family didn’t mind their isolation, and found delight in the variety and beauty of island life.
We Keep A Light is much more than a memoir. It is an exquisitely written, engrossing record of family life set against a glowing lighthouse, the enduring shores of Nova Scotia, and the ever-changing sea.
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Molly Kool First Female Captain of the Atlantic
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95Born and raised in Alma, New Brunswick, Molly Kool started her life at sea helping her father sail the lumber scow the Jean K through some of the most challenging waters in the world, including the changing tides of the Bay of Fundy and the Reversing Falls in Saint John. When it came time for Molly to choose her own career, her first instinct was to get her captain’s licence, but doing so would involve more than just hard work—it would also mean changing some of Canada’s oldest laws. But thanks to her inspiring example and the tireless efforts of contemporaries in the 1930s and ’40s, the Shipping Act of Canada was changed and Molly became the first female sea captain in North America. With interviews, colour photos, and background on other women pioneers and shipping practices in the early twentieth century, Molly Kool: Captain of the Atlantic also includes an interview with the first woman to command a Canadian warship, Commander Josee Kurtz.
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Elizabeth Bishop Nova Scotia’s “Home-made” Poet
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is best known as an American author, but she spent formative years in Great Village, Nova Scotia, and in fact called herself “3/4ths Canadian.” In recent decades there has been a growing movement in Nova Scotia to reconnect appreciation of Bishop with the landscape of her childood. This pictorial biography highlights the early influence of Bishop’s maternal family and the cultural community of Great Village, and the poet’s lifelong ties to Nova Scotia.
Author Sandra Barry takes readers through the significant chapters in Bishop’s life, from her ancestry and early years in Great Village to her first publications, her extended stays in Florida and Brazil, and her final years teaching at Harvard University. The book concludes with an overview of some of the Bishop-inspired work made since her death, and the commemorative efforts undertaken in Nova Scotia and around the world.
With photos throughout, sidebar features on historic events, Bishop’s publications and travels, and background on her awards and other achievements, the book provides a fascinating introduction and important new angle on one of the best-loved poets of the twentieth century.
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Just Wait…There’s More Surviving Cancer
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$15.95Here is a true story of one woman’s experience with surviving the life-altering effects of cancer. Linda Yates is an ordained United Church minister. During her final year in seminary, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy. She graduated from university but was unable to be ordained until 1999. After being given a clean bill of health, she became an active minister in rural Nova Scotia.
Two years later, Linda was told that the cancer had spread to her bones and was incurable. Her research revealed a life expectancy of two years. Reeling from the diagnosis, Linda became aware of other women who had received similar terminal diagnoses. She gathered the women together where they supported one another, prayed for each other and, eventually, buried one another. Two years from the point of diagnosis of advanced cancer, Linda was told that a mistake had been made and she did not, in fact, have cancer. A year later, as minister, she buried the last member of that wonderful group of women sojourners.
Feeling that something amazing and rare had occurred within that group, Linda began to think about writing about her experience. Her concern about how the Canadian health care system functions (or doesn’t), the particularities of being a woman with cancer and the special position of having been given up for dead and then resurrected again all combined to inspire her to record her experience. Just Wait…There’s More is a sometimes humourous, sometimes deadly serious look at the bizarre and often crazy life of living in the land of cancer.
Linda Yates is a slightly irreverent United Church minister. Prior to going into ministry, she managed the Dalhousie Infectious Disease Research Laboratory. Today, she lives and works as a minister in rural Nova Scotia, focussing on women’s issues, family violence, and youth.
