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Island at the Centre of the World The Geological Heritage of Prince Edward Island
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Prince Edward Island has a history. But its story begins far, far beyond the birth of the nation, the arrival of European settlers, the Mi’kmaq, or even the first humans. Its story is older than the Island itself, which was born of climate change and rising seas just 7,000 years ago.
The red cliffs of the Island have their origins in a world before the dinosaurs, in a time some 290 million years ago. Its red soils, and the sands and dunes of its shores, are reborn from the rocks of this primeval world. The rocks of the island province were deposited as rivers coursed their way through the tropical heart of Pangea, a giant landmass formed by moving continents. The part of the Earth that would one day become Prince Edward Island lay at the centre of this world, and felt the heat of the tropical sun, its intense monsoon rains and withering dry seasons. This was the beginning of the Age of Reptiles that preceded the dinosaurs, and the landscapes, dryland forests, and animal life of that time are all recorded here across Prince Edward Island, from Tignish through Malpeque Bay and Hillsborough Bay to Annandale. Consider too, that people—the L’Nu’k, or Mi’kmaq, witnessed the birth of this Island thousands of years ago. All of this has been our best kept secret. Until now.
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Summer in the Land of Anne
Artist: CarolynPublisher: Acorn Press$22.95Six-year-old Elspeth’s mother has a surprise in store for her daughters. She’s taking Elspeth and her eleven-year-old sister on a surprise vacation. When she starts reading Anne of Green Gables aloud to the girls, they catch on–they’re going to Prince Edward Island!
Elspeth proudly dons her Anne hat on the ferry, ready to explore the Land of Anne. Although she knows she’s really visiting Lucy Maud Montgomery?s house, she feels like she recognizes everything from the books and is thoroughly enchanted. At first devastated that Montgomery’s first house was torn down by Montgomery’s uncle, Elspeth sees signs of life–chipmunks living in the old cellar.
Elspeth’s imagination is ignited. No longer satisfied with pretending to be Anne, Elspeth is instead inspired to become more like Montgomery: famous writer Elspeth of Cavendish, writing about the world she loves.
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Minegoo the Mi’Kmaq Creation Story of Prince Edward Island
Publisher: Acorn Press$13.95A long time ago, the Great Spirit created all of the sky and stars but it wasn’t enough. He then made a beautiful place called Minegoo, a place so beautiful that He almost placed it amongst the stars. He decided that instead, he would place Minegoo in the most beautiful spot on earth. He summoned Kluskap and asked him to find this spot. After searching the whole world, Kluskap found the Shining Waters, the spot in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that would be home of the Mi’kmaq people created in his own image.
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Acadian Women of Prince Edward Island Three Centuries of Action
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95From the time of their arrival on Isle Saint-Jean in the early 1700s,Acadian women played a major role in the survival of the colony.Over the generations, they have been active in the home and in the community. They have nursed, taught, worked, sung, prayed, and served. Integrated into a well-documented text with numerous photographs, their testimonies provide a history of the Acadie of Prince Edward Island. This book relates how that history was lived by Acadian women and influenced by their action and determination.
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You Know You’re an Islander When….
Publisher: Acorn Press$14.95<
You might be an Islander if…
- You cried when Stompin’ Tom died
- You still give directions based on the purple house on St. Peter’s Road
- You were born knowing how to break down a lobster
A book about the Island for Islanders.
“Prince Edward Island is far more than postcard vistas, bountiful food and literary heroines with red hair. This book is full to the scuppers with everything that makes it unique and colourful!” – Chef Michael Smith
“Brilliant!” – Brad Richards, 2 time Stanley Cup Champion and PEI’s best hockey player ever.
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Door to the Past Abandoned Properties of Prince Edward Island
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95If you have ever gone for a drive around rural Prince Edward Island, you would have noticed that the rural landscape is littered with abandoned buildings. Tony Gallant began to get curious about these properties and started investigate them, looking for signs of thier past. He began to not only photograph the homes, buildings or barns that have been abandoned on P.E.I, but post what he found on his Facebook page. The result is a curious collection of images of the homes and what is left of the former inhabitants, leaving the reader to only imagine the stories they hold.
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Prince Edward Island: Landscape and Light
Photographer: John SylvesterPublisher: Acorn Press$29.95In 2014, John Sylvester is celebrating his 30th year of photographing some of Canada’s most remarkable places. This book is a retrospective of his main inspiration — Prince Edward Island. It includes much new material, but also includes many beloved classic images that have graced the pages of his previous books. Prince Edward Island: Landscape and Light takes us on a journey showcasing John Sylvester’s approach to photography, not only making images at the edge of day and night, but also the nature of photographing on an Island, where both the landscape and the light inspires his spectacular work. Â
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Charlottetown: Then and Now
Photographer: W.Blair MacDonaldPublisher: Acorn Press$19.95D. Scott MacDonald’s father, W. Blair MacDonald had a keen interest in the changing landscape of Charlottetown, and documented a number of these changes with his slide camera. Instilled with a keen sense of history at an early age, Scott and his family have always treasured the work that their father did to preserve Charlottetown’s history. So, over 50 years later, Scott has nowretraced his father’s steps to record how the city has changed over that time. Standing in the exact spot where his father stood, Scott has captured how the streets and buildings of Charlotttown have changed and remained the same. Scott has also researched the history of the buildings he protrays, both back to his father’s time and much earlier. The result is a fascinating glimpse into why and how even a small city can change so much.
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Ni’n na L’nu The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95- Winner of APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book AwardÂ
- Winner of PEI Book Award for Non-fiction
This lavishly-illustrated book tells a story through words and images that has never before been told, not in any single book. The focus is entirely on the Mi’kmaq of the Island, an island which for thousands of years has been known to the Mi’kmaq and their ancestors as Epekwitk. That name means “cradle on the sea” and no more poetic description of PEI has ever been penned. The story of the PEI Mi’kmaq is one of adaptation and perseverance across countless generations in the face of pervasive change. Today’s environment is far from what it was millennia ago. So too, the economy, society, lifestyle, language and religion of the people has witnessed some dramatic shifts. Nonetheless, despite all the changes, today’s Mi’kmaq feel deeply connected to the Island in its entirety and to their ancestors and the values they still share. This book tells those many stories, and communicates much more. While the book is a stand-alone publication, it is also a companion to a travelling exhibition of the same name.
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Acadian Traditions on Candlemas Day Candles, Pancakes and House Visits
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Georges Arsenault’s latest edition to the Acadian Traditions series Most English-speaking people just associate the 2nd of February, or Groundhog Day, with superstitions related to the weather. In Acadian communities, however, it was known as Candlemas Day and at one time was an important religious and social festivity. Pancakes were the symbolic food of choice. In many villages, young Acadians went from door-to-door collecting food for a communal feast or to give to the poor. This book by Georges Arsenault enables us to discover a festivity rich in traditions and a significant part of the cultural heritage of Acadians everywhere.
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All is Clam A Shores Mystery
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95It’s Christmas at The Shores. There’s no snow yet, but there are so many outdoor lights that the tiny coastal village can be seen from space. Apart from Ian Simmons’ place, and he’s considered odd, there’s only one house in the village that isn’t lit up. It’s been dark for years. That’s about to change. Wild Rose Cottage is about to come to life, and death, once again. Meanwhile, the villagers wish for snow to complete the Christmas portrait. When it comes, it’s with the body of newcomer, Fitz Fitsimmons, a former acrobat turned bully and drunk. Mountie Jane Jamieson has seen murder here before, but none where she’d rather not catch the killer.
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Elaine Harrison: I am an Island that Dreams I am an Island that Dreams
Publisher: Acorn Press$24.95Elaine Harrison was born in Petite-Rivere in Nova Scotia, but moved to Prince Edward Island to teach in 1938. There, she and her companion spent their summers at “Windswept,” the 200 year-old farmhouse on the cliffs near Seacow Head, where they lived a simple life, and for over fifty years were involved in the intellectual life of the Island and beyond, playing host to numerous summer visitors and corresponding with some of Canada’s top writers. In 1968, retirement gave Elaine the freedom to turn to her interests: her poetry, the campaigning for favoured causes, but above all her painting. Inspired by the Group of Seven, she found her subject matter in the cliffs and waves at Windswept, the sunflowers in her garden, the trees of the local hardwoods, and latterly her own cats and kitchen. In the early days she frequently gave her paintings away to anyone who appreciated them, but from the 1970s she began to get the recognition and financial returns they merited. She died in 2003, but her work is still much-loved by Islanders.
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An Island Christmas Reader (Updated edition)
Artist: Dale McNevinPublisher: Acorn Press$17.95An Island Christmas Reader is a book about Christmas past and present on Prince Edward Island. In 22 stories and essays, David Weale combines reminiscences of Islanders with his own musings to rekindle the memory of Christmas, where imagination and magic work hand in hand to create the “unsullied wonder of childhood vision.”
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Mind Over Mussels A Shores Mystery
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Nothing big ever happens in The Shores. Ceilidhs, yes. Killings, no.
That all changes when amateur sleuth, Hy McAllister trips over a body on the beach and tumbles head first into a murder case. Cottager Lance Lord, dressed like Jimi Hendrix, has had his head split open with an axe. As Hurricane Angus storms up the coast, Hy and Mountie Jane Jamieson vie against the elements to uncover the murderer in a village where almost everyone has something to hide.
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The Little Book of Prince Edward Island
Photographer: John SylvesterPublisher: Acorn Press$19.95Award-winning photographer John Sylvester is back with a new book of stunning photography. Sylvester captures Prince Edward Island like no other photographer. With beautiful images of every corner of the Island in all seasons, The Little Book of Prince Edward Island is a charming and captivating look at the Island in all its colours. From the red dirt roads and green fields to the surrounding blue waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, John Sylvester’s imagery portrays the landscape that thousands of visitors from all over the world travel to see.
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Prince Edward Island Seafood : Local Fare, Global Flavours
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95Paul Lucas is the executive chef of a world-famous seafood restaurant on the Charlottetown waterfront. He draws on local, classical, and international flavours to inspire and create original true fusion cuisine that is truly his own. He lives in Stratford with wife Bethany and their two children.
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Vet Behind the Years
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Bud Ings was born in 1926 on Prince Edward Island and graduated from the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, ON. He practised in rural King’s County, was a Liberal member of the legislative assembly, and served as agriculture and health ministers. A long-time member of the Queens County Fiddlers, Bud lives in Montague.
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Revenge of the Lobster Lover A Shores Mystery
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95It’s lobster season at The Shores, a fishing village isolated from The Island in a storm surge. Parker, a collector of antiquities, has moved there with his partner Guillaume, a chef just out of rehab. “Hy” McAllister, a website writer looking for lobster recipes for a client’s newsletter, also needs a speaker for her Women’s Institute meeting. Enter Camilla, founder of the Lobster Liberation Legion, spouting crustacean right-to-life rhetoric. The legion starts freeing lobsters from their traps, angering the villagers and the man who runs Parker’s fisheries empire. In the tragic events that follow, the hidden connection between Parker, Guillaume and Camilla reveals itself.
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Afternoon Horses
Publisher: Acorn Press$16.95Deirdre Kessler teaches creative writing and children’s literature at the University of Prince Edward Island. Her poetry has appeared in a number of collections, including The New Poets of Prince Edward Island and Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land, and in chapbook form: Subtracting by Seventeen. She is the author of five children’s novels, including the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Award-winning Brupp Rides Again, and six picture books, including perennial favourites Lobster in My Pocket, and Lena and the Whale.
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Fixer-Upper
Publisher: Acorn Press$16.95Funnyman Lorne Elliott’s take on Island life. When Bruno MacIntyre decides to rent his ramshackle cottage to summer tourists, the wacky merriment begins. Lorne Elliott, comic master of mirth and mayhem, takes us to Savage Bay on the south shore of Prince Edward Island, where the hapless Bruno turns to his clever and caustic Aunt Tillie for help in securing tenants. First, the cottage, inherited with a bad reputation from Bruno’s ne’r-do-well father, must be renovated. Then, Bruno must duel with his aunt’s wry insults and sly plans, a sardonic would-be author, and two torrid tenants. Elliott’s celebrated gifts for sharp-witted repartee and vivid characterizations are in full force. So, too, are Elliott’s keen eye and ear for our fumbling aspirations, bittersweet banterings, self-deceptions, hard-won wisdom, surprising tenderness, and zany outcomes. The Fixer-Upper–the novella adaptation of his play, Tourist Trap–is classic Lorne Elliott, with a brash and cheeky Maritime flavour.
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Acadian Mi-Carême
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95The rich traditions associated with Mi-Car’me or Mid-Lent are firmly anchored in the folkways of Acadian communities. To celebrate Mi-Car’me, people visited each other’s homes dressed up in masks and costumes. In the midst of the merrymaking, a mysterious character called the Mi-Car’me gave candies to little children and sometimes even delivered babies. But this strange individual scared many young Acadians because they feared he would take them away if they misbehaved.
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Shades of Green
Editor: Brent MacLainePublisher: Acorn Press$16.95Brent MacLaine is Professor of English and a 3M Teaching Fellow at the University of Prince Edward Island where he teaches twentieth-century literature. He was born and grew up in the rural community of Rice Point, PEI, to which he returned after teaching at universities in Vancouver, Edmonton, China, and Singapore. In addition to numerous articles on modern literature and the literature of Atlantic Canada, he has published two volumes of poetry, Wind and Root (Vehicule 2000) and These Fields Were Rivers (Goose Lane 2004). He has also edited with Hugh MacDonald Landmarks: an Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land (Acorn 2001).
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House of Bears
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95When Luba Kassim reluctantly returns home to Northern Ontario, the strained relationship with her traditional Ukrainian mother only heightens her feelings of alienation and isolation. A family crisis reunites her extended family and reignites old rivalries and the pain of long-held family secrets. Slowly, Luba begins piecing together her family’s unspoken past, starting in the 1930s in Ukraine, followed by emigration to England and settlement in Canada. In the process, she uncovers some startling truths about her own identity, and learns that she and her mother have much more in common than she thinks.
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Acadian Christmas Traditions
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Based on written sources and interviews with Acadians throughout the Maritimes, Acadian Christmas Traditions offers a fascinating look at the evolution of Christmas. This very readable book shows how customs, both spiritual and secular, take hold in families, in villages, and in a culture as a whole. Georges Arsenault, the well-known historian and folklorist, examines all the aspects of the feast of Christmas, from midnight mass to holiday foods. As he chronicles the cultural changes that have taken place over the centuries, he proves that Acadian Christmas today is the result of a wonderful blending of old, new, and borrowed traditions.
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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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A Long Way From the Road
Publisher: Acorn Press$13.95A collection of 77 anecdotes, this book is humorous and sardonic, insightful and witty, with the warmth and charm for which Atlantic Canada has become famous. Subjects that come under the microscope include politics, religion, sex, human foibles, and insularity that can come from living on a small island.
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North Shore of Home
Publisher: Acorn Press$18.95Since it was first published in 1986, Frank Ledwell’s The North Shore of Home has had an enduring place in Island literature. In warm-hearted prose and poetry, in a voice keenly tuned to the music of Prince Edward Island English, Ledwell explores the Island’s North Shore, and especially the richly historied community of St. Peter’s Bay. Taken together, his poems and stories create a portrait of a community surviving through the Depression and the Second World War – a community at the Island’s edge and at the very cusp of the dramatic changes that would affect all small Prince Edward Island communities in the postwar years.
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Island Sketchbook
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95With characteristic warmth, generosity, and humour, Frank Ledwell seamlessly weaves personal memoir and communal folk wisdom into 60 prose sketches of Island characters, anecdotes, and traditions. The stories are based on real people or incidents; others are fictionalized, evoking the true, remembered landscape of Ledwell’s childhood at St. Peter’s Bay on the North Shore of Prince Edward Island, his experience as a student, teacher, and professor at St. Dunstan’s University, and his later life as a professor, husband, and parent in rural Queen’s County. The sketches also evoke the author’s love of people and place and mark his point of view as that of an inveterate Islander.
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Jean Pierre Roma
Publisher: Acorn Press$9.95During the four years poet Jill MacLean lived in Prince Edward Island, she researched Jean Pierre Roma’s settlement at Trois Rivières. Her first collection, The Brevity of Red, was published in 2003. She now lives in Bedford, Nova Scotia.
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Atlantic Schooners
Publisher: Brunswick Press$6.95Noted marine artist and historic illustrator L.B. Jenson has produced a number of publications that feature the history and heritage of Nova Scotia’s ocean-going traditions including his most ambitious work, Bluenose 11, Sage of the Great Fishing Schooners.
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Mi’kmaq
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Another in the series of books detailing the culture of the many people who make up the population of the Maritimes. A history of origins, settlement and contribution to Maritime life.
