-
Scottish Lights
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95A wonderful collection of essays by the best-selling author of The Harvest Train and The Irish in Cape Breton. A popular public speaker, A. A. (Tony) MacKenzie brings that same brisk, informed voice to Scottish Lights, casting new light on the Celtic heritage of Cape Breton and Eastern Nova Scotia. He takes us to pioneer settlements and to the heart of Gaelic tradition, to the battles and passions of heroes and bards and scoundrels, both the well-known and those nearly forgotten.
-
Chéticamp (French)
Publisher: Breton Books$19.95Long out of print, Chéticamp is an award-winning treasure chest of the history and folklore of an extraordinary people and place the Acadians of Cape Breton Island. For this newly designed and expanded edition of the prize-winning classic in its original French, Anselme Chiasson has written an additional chapter bringing the history up to date. Written with clarity and love, and hailed as a rare local history with wide appeal, Chéticamp is a passionate, informative and entertaining guide to this little-known corner of the Maritimes.
-
The Midnight Murder
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95In his short, vigorous life, McKinnon was the courageous editor of three Cape Breton newspapers, and a successful novelist. He fearlessly found a voice in the Boston literary world. Then he became a Methodist minister and tried to burn his “evil” novels. He died at 33-after a life as romantic and passionate as any of his characters.
-
Cape Breton Christ
Publisher: Breton Books$12.95An extraordinary, brave and provocative story told in the form of poetry that reads like a brisk, short novel. Denise Aucoin’s Cape Breton Christ is rare, risky, lighthearted and down-to-earth writing that challenges and encourages us all.
-
Pattie Pitter She Hates Litter
Artist: Jeffrey DommPublisher: Breton Books$7.95Pattie Pitter HATES LITTER. She picks up everyone’s candy wrappers and pop cans. But no one wants to help. So, Pattie quits. Soon the school is filled with garbage and the schoolyard is buried. NOW everyone is ready to help!
-
Hidden Heritage
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95From 1629 to the 1821 settlement of Rev. Norman McLeod, St. Ann has a rich and diverse history. Captured here with zest and detail.
-
Listen to the Wind
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95A rare and fascinating story of a life with schizophrenia. With the power of a novel, and laced with her small, strong poems, this book is a pleasure as well as art.
-
Wild Honey
Publisher: Breton Books$9.95Stark and sensual, funny and frightening by turns, these are poems you can read and read again, for enjoyment and for insight.
-
John R and Son
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95No one has ever written about Cape Breton quite like this! A rich daring short novel, plus 5 stories. A troubling, brutal, and compassionate book that is a riveting classic.
-
-
SpecialLink Book
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95The Mainstream is nothing more than life in the real world. SpeciaLink is devoted to seeing every child wit special needs a full participant in the mainstream. Evidence supports the value of full mainstream childcare for all children, regardless of the challenges. This means that from now on, the work of childcare includes Advocacy –promoting what we already know to be right.
The SpecaiLink Book is the story of the road to the principles of full mainstream childcare, and of the SpeciaLink Symposium which made those principles the national agenda for mainstream advocates. “The Mainstream is the right stream” is the battle cry. Achieving full mainstream childcare for every child is the goal.
The Book Also Includes a Canadian Directory of Mainstream Childcare Advocates, Further Readings, information about joining SpeciaLink, and other forms for the SpecaiLink Newsletter and videos.
-
Echoes from Labor’s Wars
Publisher: Breton Books$9.95Rooted in Cape Breton’s industrial wars these are songs of rebellion, indignation, hatred of oppression, full of humour, courage and love of honest work are a powerful compelling testament to courage, peace and community. A collection of Dawn Fraser’s poetry and writing. Includes his war poetry and biography.
-
-
-
Cape Breton Quarry
Publisher: Breton Books$7.95Born in Ingonish, Cape Breton, Stewart is the author of the popular comic novel, ‘Maritime Union’. He teaches at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, and is the founding editor of The Nashwaak Review.
-
Cape Breton Captain
Publisher: Breton Books$9.95This is the true rough-and-tumble story of the life of David McLeod, a robust autobiography of saltwater and guts and passionate romance. Well-told story by the man himself.
-
Archie Neil
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95Born in 1943 in Plattsburg, New York, Mary Anne Ducharme came to Cape Breton in 1979, with her husband Richard and their children, Richard and Kathryn. For the past twelve years she has edited Participaper, produced through the Inverness County Department of Recreation. Mary Anne has a Master’s Degree in English, and has been a schoolteacher and a playwright and director. With her husband, she raises acres of strawberries in Whycocomagh
-
Stories From the Woman From Away
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95A novel of a woman’s rural life, and of the people whose weaknesses and wit enrich her Cape Breton community.
-
Sterling Silver
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95The personal essay has so much potential as a literary form that it’s gratifying to see it being skilfully and engagingly employed in this book. Silver Donald Cameron has plenty on his mind, and he knows how to hold our attention. Cameron easily entices us into his essay “Rocky Mountain High” with this for openers:”Downhill skiing is a certifiably silly sport, I whimper to myself as the chair-lift bears me inexorably over the treetops and gullies, like a slab of beef going around the overhead conveyors in an abattoir. “.
-
The Seven-Headed Beast and Other Acadian Tales from Cape Breton Island
Publisher: Breton Books$12.95This is the first book of Acadian tales now told in English, and establishes these stories as a part of Cape Breton heritage.
-
Moonlight Skater 9 Cape Breton Stories and The Dream
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95A mischievous blend of Scottish and Acadian, these stories blossom, or explode softly, in your life.
-
God & Me
Publisher: Breton Books$6.95In God & Me Sheila Green of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, offers a series of sort, unpretentious poems meant to share the experience of questions, answers an mysteries in discovering relationship with one another, and with God. The ease and caring of this little book make it a rare find for wide range of people. Alison R. Grapes has contributed drawings that, rather than illustrate, try to maintain the calm, urgent joy.
-
A Photographer’s Guide to Prince Edward Island
Photographer: John Sylvester, Stephen DesRochesPublisher: Acorn Press$24.95New by award-winning photographer team.
There are very few places as photogenic as Prince Edward Island. With its sweeping landscapes, scenic vistas and miles upon miles of beaches, the Island is a haven for photographers. Taking advantage of potential stunning images of the Island in all seasons, these two award-winning photographers know the best places to set up, when and how best to photograph each corner of the Island and how to get there. The thousands of visitors from all over the world who travel to the Island learn the secrets of these two seasoned experts.
-
Prince Edward Island National Park Past and Present
Publisher: Acorn Press$16.95Since Prince Edward Island National Park was first created in 1937 it has welcomed visitors from around the world, captivating the hearts of all who experience its serene and tranquil beauty. Stretching for about 40 km along the north shore of Prince Edward Island between New London and Tracadie Bays and the tip of the Greenwich Peninsula in St. Peters Bay, this dynamic coastal landscape is constantly changing, shaped by the wind and waves. The sand dunes and beaches, wetlands and forests provide a home for many plants and animals. Wildflowers add colour everywhere and marram grass glistens in the sunlight, rippled by the coastal breezes. Great blue herons grace the ponds and marshes and shorebirds feed along the water’s edge. Several species at risk are protected in the park, including the endangered piping plover. People have been part of this coastal landscape for thousands of years. At Greenwich, archaeological evidence reveals 10,000 years of cultural history, from early Aboriginal peoples to the Mi’kmaq, early French and Acadian settlers and immigrants from the British Isles. Once an elegant summer home built in 1896, Dalvay-by-the-Sea National Historic Site is now a heritage inn. Green Gables Heritage Place, also part of L. M. Montgomery`s Cavendish National Historic site, inspired L.M. Montgomery’s setting for Anne of Green Gables. This book, with stunning new photography by the Island’s best photgraphers complimented with archival photos, captures the essence of this special place, preserved and protected for you to return to again and again.
-
This Navy Doctor Came Ashore
Publisher: Acorn Press$17.95Dr. Read entered the Royal Canadian Navy in 1943 and worked for three years as a flight surgeon. When the war was winding down, he realized that his career as a flight surgeon was also over. But he remembered how much he had enjoyed the three weeks he spent in Charlottetown when he relieved the medical officer at HMCS Queen Charlotte. This city of 20,000, in which this landship was ‘moored’, was much to his liking partly because he had grown up in Amherst, Nova Scotia, just across the Northumberland Strait, where he thought the culture was very similar. He also knew that as the only medical officer there would be independence, significant responsibility and virtual freedom from naval protocol and politics. One couldn’t ask for more. But this was during prohibition on the Island and little did he know that a great deal of his time would be spent writing “prescriptions” for alcohol so that the officers could be allowed to drink. Nor did he know that because of the lack of family physicians on the Island, he would be asked to open a general practice in a rural area of the province. For a flight surgeon who had little experience in family medicine, this would be a whole new adventure. This book chronicles some of the noteworthy events of the time he spent spent as a country doctor.
-
I am an Islander
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95No man is a Prince Edward Island. That’s a good thing, because the tiny province is eroding a metre per year. In the collection I am An Islander, Patrick Ledwell explores the hilarity of life viewed from the country’s crumbling Eastern edge. Raised in a big family, the Island comedian looks back at his rural roots and asks: I am an Islander is a funny and heartfelt stockpile of standup, sketches, and rants, banked up to defend your good humour against everything that might erode it.
-
Riptides New Island Fiction
Publisher: Acorn Press$21.95A call was sent out asking writers to submit unpublished short stories for a fiction anthology featuring newer writers with a significant P.E.I. connection. There were no boundaries for setting or genre, only a limit of 5,000 words. PEI is strong on tradition, which includes out-migration and immigration. Thus, its culture and demographics are changing, and these PEI writers both are Island-born and hail from away – Australia and Calgary, Newfoundland and Ukraine. The result is twenty-three stories, which take the reader from a ritual gathering of PEI widows to Chernobyl in the nuclear disaster’s aftermath, from a menacing marital game of hide-and-seek through the Maritime landscape to gender clashes on an outback sheep ranch, from a religious commune in Alberta to the Enlightenment Tour bus into Quebec. Whether the characters are struggling for dear life in breaking surf, gasping for emotional air at a ladies’ candle party or fearing the Tall Tailor’s scissors, the authors demonstrate a rich variety of fictional talent and imagination emerging from what Island poet Milton Acorn called the “red tongue…In the ranged jaws of the Gulf,” and revising our perception of “the land of Anne.”
-
What Really Happened is This A Poetry Memoir
Publisher: Acorn Press$18.95This collection of moving poetry puts into words the heartbreak and triumphs of looking after ailing parents.What Really Happened is This is a poetry memoir that focuses on the ten-year journey of an adult “only child” as her beloved parents face declining health and death. The wry, poignant, humorous, and sometimes heartbreaking, poems chronicle the poet’s struggle to find balance in her life, as she juggles the needs of her family with her own work and creative life. The poems touch on the universal in specific experiences, as the poet faces the death of each parent, and realizes she is now next in line.
-
Great Day Fer Livin’
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95After living in Australia for 18 years, Juliet Wilson returned to Prince Edward Island for an extended stay. The Island’s allure hit her front on: not just the vibration of the gently rolling landscape, with its patchwork quilt of red soil and emerald fields, but the beauty of the people who make up the rich fabric of the Island, their sense of place, and their way of being.She spent the summer of 2009 driving the back roads of Prince Edward Island, introducing herself to people she met on the wharves and in the fields and in their shops, and getting to know them by listening to their stories and eventually photographing them. Like an informal anthropological study, this 48-page book gives a glimpse into the culture, belief, and practices of the primary producers who make up the backbone of Prince Edward Island.
-
Mud, Sweat and Tears
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Mud, Sweat and Tears tells the story of Bud Ings’ adventures as a rural veterinarian in the 1950s. As one of Prince Edward Island’s first professionally trained veterinarians, Ings set up his practice in the eastern town of Souris before moving to Montague.
Farms were rarely close at hand, however, and the sight of Bud Ings behind the wheel of his Volkswagen Bug became a familiar one on the Island’s highways and muddy back roads. And whether he was helping to deliver a calf, giving shots of penicillin to a pig, or putting down a beloved horse, Ings treated each animal- and each farmer- with dignity and respect.
Ings’ memoir is a rich, often humorous account of his first decade as a vet, at time when there were few vacations, no modern tools of the trade, and no request too strange to attend to. It’s also the story of a past era, when PEI’s farms flourished and the animals were not only the backbone of the economy, but part of the family.
-
Growing Up With Julie
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Growing Up With Julie is the story of Gerry Steele’s childhood with a French-speaking mother in an English-speaking community. Set in Miscouche, near Summerside, Prince Edward Island, in the early part of the 20th century, the story is an historical snapshot of a life heavily influenced by the Catholic church, poverty and the Depression, alcoholism, and cultural tensions between the Acadians and the Scots. At the head of the family is Steele’s grandmother, a woman unwavering in her beliefs—regardless of their merit, validity, or tendency to offend. It is also a story of one woman’s determination to educate her children in a hard-living rural society coming to terms with modernity.
Gifted with an excellent memory for detail, Gerry Steele delivers a story that is rich in integrity and precision, with a good dose of humour to brighten up the dark corners.
-
Landmarks: An Anthology
Editor: Brent MacLainePublisher: Acorn Press$16.95Poetry by 50 of the Atlantic region’s finest poets
