The Hermit of Gully Lake The Life and Times of William Kitchener MacDonald
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95The world knew him as the Hermit of Gully Lake, a lean and bearded elderly man in rags who lived on his own for more than half a century in the deep woods wilderness of northern Nova Scotia. By the time he disappeared in December 2003, his legend had spread across Canada and beyond.
The Mill Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$22.95The Mill –Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest explores the power that a single industry can wield. For fifty years, the pulp mill near Pictou in northern Nova Scotia has buoyed the local economy and found support from governments at all levels. But it has also pulped millions of acres of forests, spewed millions of tonnes of noxious emissions into the air, consumed quadrillions of litres of fresh water and then pumped them out again as toxic effluent into nearby Boat Harbour, and eventually into the Northumberland Strait.
From the day it began operation in 1967, the mill has fomented protest and created deep divisions and tensions in northern Nova Scotia. This story is about people whose livelihoods depend on the pulp mill and who are willing to live with the “smell of money.” It’s about people whose well-being, health, homes, water, air, and businesses have been harmed by the mill’s emissions and effluent. It’s about the heartache such divisions cause and about people who, for the sake of peace, keep their thoughts about the mill to themselves.
But it’s also about hope, giving voice to those who led the successive groups that have protested and campaigned for a cleaner mill–First Nations, fishers, doctors, local councillors, tourism operators, artists and musicians, teachers and woodlot owners. Their personal stories are interwoven into a historical arc that traces the mill’s origins and the persistent environmental and social problems it causes to this day.
Baxter weaves a rich tapestry of storytelling, relevant to everyone who is concerned about how we can start to renegotiate the relationship between economy, jobs, and profits on one hand, and human well-being, health, and the environment on the other. The Mill tells a local story with global relevance and appeal.
Seven Grains of Paradise A Culinary Journey in Africa
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Seven Grains of Paradise tells the fascinating and much neglected story about many kinds of food in Africa, a continent with a rich farming tradition, intricate cuisines, and a multitude of food cultures.
Here is the story of Baxter’s personal quest to learn about some fascinating and new (to her) foods in a handful of countries in sub-Sahara Africa as she visits African farms, markets, restaurants, and kitchens. The people who grow, sell, buy, prepare, and serve the foods help her explore the riddles of a continent better known for hunger than for its plentiful food resources. The author draws on stories and research conducted over the more than thirty years she has lived and worked in Africa.
From the fabled city of Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert to the rainforests of Central Africa, readers are invited along on a delightful journey of learning and eating–and some drinking too, of invigorating indigenous beverages, brews, and palm wine straight from the trees. The culinary journey takes the reader down garden paths, into forests that double as farms, through the chaos of markets, and into modest little roadside eateries.
Hermit of Gully Lake
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$18.95The Hermit of Gully Lake is a thought-provoking, intimate and respectful look at the life and times of American-born but Nova Scotia-raised Willard Kitchener MacDonald (1916-2003), better known as the Hermit of Gully Lake. For sixty years, MacDonald endured hardship and extreme isolation, living as recluse in a cave-like shelter six feet by nine feet in the deep woods wilderness of northern Nova Scotia.
He moved far into the woods after jumping from a troop train that would have taken him to Halifax and on to Europe for World War II. In the past thirty years, as his legend grew, many people began to seek him out, squeezing into his tiny shelter to play fiddles and guitars with the man they call Kitchener, marvelling at his wisdom, his wit and his intriguing views of events in the wider world, which he chose not to be part of. Even when his friends urged him to sign up for his old age pension in the 1980s, he steadfastly refused to sign his name to any document, even a government cheque. He was reluctant to speak about his past, saying only that he had refused to go and fight in World War II because the Bible told him, “Thou shalt not kill.” When he died, however, there was enough national interest in this unique individual that both the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star sent reporters to cover the event.
Joan Baxter is an award-winning Nova Scotian author who has written extensively about Africa. She is now living in northern Nova Scotia where she has turned her attention to this incredible story of a man of enormous strength and character who became a legend. She is back home after two decades of living in and reporting from Africa for the BBC World Service and Associated Press. Her most recent book, A Serious Pair of Shoes, won the Evelyn Richardson Award.
