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Song of Rita Joe Autobiography of a Mi’kmaw Poet
Publisher: Breton Books$21.95Song of Rita Joe is a book of exceptional courage and insight, the words of a gentle woman who fought for her family, justice, and her own independent voice. She faced intolerance, ignorance, and abuse, searched her inheritance for strength, and wrote poems of clarity and encouragement that continue to inspire not only her people but all people.
Finally, she was a humble woman, an honoured Mi’Kmaw elder, poet, and member of the Order of Canada.
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The Keys
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95Theresa O’Brien was born in Ireland and writes in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. This compelling first collection presents O’Brien as an accomplished storyteller.
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Magnificent Obsessions
Editor: Ron CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$17.9514 provocative chapters by writers who go a little further out, a little deeper, and bring back treasures for the rest of us. Each chapter stands on its own and each on is part of the portrait of Cape Breton Island. Magnificent Obsessions is essential and utterly enjoyable bedside reader.
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Sister to Courage
Publisher: Breton Books$19.95In Sister to Courage, Wanda takes us inside the world she shared with Viola and ten other brothers and sisters. Through touching and often hilarious stories, she traces the roots of courage and ambition, good fun and dignity, of the household that produced Viola Desmond.
Tough and compassionate, Viola shines through beyond the moment she was carried out of Roseland movie theatre for refusing to sit I the blacks-only section. Viola emerges as a defender of family and a successful entrepreneur whose momentum was blocked by racism.
With honesty and wit, Wanda Robson Tells her own brave story, giving new life to two remarkable women and the family the loved.
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Canada’s Forgotten Arctic Hero
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95This is the terrific true adventure of an unjustly forgotten Cape Bretoner, Canada’s first photographer of the High Arctic. George Rice emerged as a leader on an American Arctic expedition and died a herosearching for food for his starving comrades. This gripping and painful story is told through George Rice’s previously unpublished diaries. Packed with humour, pathos, and magnificent description, this book is a powerful historic and literary event, masterfully presented by Jim Lotz who, seventy-five years later on Operation Hazen, served in the footsteps of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition.
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Rise Again Book Two
Publisher: Breton Books$23.95Robert J. Morgan has been Senior Historian at the Fortress of Louisbourg and Professor of History at Cape Breton University.
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For the Children
Artist: Burland MurphyPublisher: Breton Books$19.95Born in 1932, in Whycocomagh, RITA JOE lived a hardscrabble existence, from foster home to foster home, experiences that helped her decide to admit herself to Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, a place most Mi’kmaq people had come to dread. It was a rare example of the child choosing Shubie, “to better myself,” to get an education. That same determination compelled her to write about her personal combination of traditional Mi’kmaw spiritualism and Catholic faith, carrying forward her ‘gentle war’. Her last poem, unfinished, was found in her typewriter when she died in March 2007.
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Rise Again
Publisher: Breton Books$21.95The first full-scale history of Cape Breton Island in nearly 150 years!
RISE AGAIN! Is the story of Cape Breton Island told by beloved historian, archivist, and teacher Robert Morgan. From the geological roots to Mi’kmaw life before discovery, the planting of French Louisbourg, and the island’s first economic boom, this is a rich and accessible new book.
Morgan takes us from the battle for control of the island and Britain’s deliberate schemes to withhold opportunities for significant growth, through the opening of Cape Breton to provide a new home for the Loyalists, the forced marriage of the Colony of Cape Breton to the Colony of Nova Scotia and with it the birth of the never-ending Separatist movement. Book One takes the reader through the 19th century and sees Cape Breton as a new home for the Acadians, the Irish, and the Scottish, preparing the ground for the second economic boom as world markets were found for Cape Breton’s coal and then steel. A marvellous book, built to last. -
Archie the Pit Rat Hero
Artist: Louise Brooking-McDowPublisher: Breton Books$16.00This is the story of the friendship between a Miner named Milton and a Pit Rat named Archie—and how Archie became a hero.
Based on the stories miners tell about rats in the coal mines, Dave Muise, a miner’s son, tells the story of Archie the Pit Rat.
Louise Brooking-McDow’s paintings bring Archie’s underground world to life.
An Enchanting book for early readers, and those lucky enough to read with them.
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Cape Breton’s Lillian Crewe Walsh
Editor: Ron CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$12.95Ghost of Bras d’Or, Kelly’s Mountain, The Wreck of the John Harvey or The Brave Belleoram Boy, The Lady of the Loom, Susan Emma Pynn, Cape Breton’s Winter Port, and 42 more.
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Views from the Steel Plant
Editor: Ron CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$21.95Jimmy Hines is just one of the many voices that tell stories of Cape Breton’s 100-year adventure in Steel. Told with passion and conviction, Views from the Steel Plant is a proud, vigorous collection of memories of steel plant life. Along with historic photographs, here are stories of racism, bigotry and brotherhood-women who did the dirtiest work, keeping the plant alive while the men were at war-the fight for union and the community protest to save the embattled plant. Steelworkers talk about the skill and courage, about hard work in a hot, threatening and very productive twentieth century industry.
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That Bloody Cape Breton Coal
Publisher: Breton Books$17.95Rennie MacKenzie is the author of ‘In the Pit: A Cape Breton Coal Miner’.
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L’histoire des tapis «hookés» de Chéticamp
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95An esteemed Canadian folklorist, Father Anselme Chiasson’s award-winning books include the songs, tales and history of the Acadians of Cape Breton and the Magdalen Islands.
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The Cape Breton Giant
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95James Gillis was born on July 11, 1870, at Strathlorne, not far from the residence of John MacIssac, Donald’s son. In early childhood he moved to Upper Margaree. He attended school there and later on became proficient enough to teach.
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Ships and Men
Publisher: Breton Books$21.95A new collection of some of the best writing from Capt. John Parker, including the life and death of his deep-sea commercial vessel (St. Clair Theriault) and his classic history of wooden shipbuilding throughout Cape Breton Island.
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Harvest Train
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95One of Canada’s great adventure stories, when young men went west to work on the booming grain farms of the Prairies. Here are some of the stories and tales
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As True As I’m Sittin Here
Editor: Ron CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$17.95The wit and good humour—ghost tales-comebacks and outrageous happenings—over 200 Cape Breton stories by 34 storytellers, collected by Archie Neil Chilsholm.
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Chéticamp
Publisher: Breton Books$19.95An esteemed Canadian folklorist, Father Anselme Chiasson’s award-winning books include the songs, tales and history of the Acadians of Cape Breton and the Magdalen Islands.
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The Story So Far
Publisher: Breton Books$12.95These stories take the reader from the sparse, tense writing of the prequel to Glace Bay Miner’s Museum, through the author’s other stories drawn from his Cape Breton home. A critically acclaimed success.
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Highland Heart in Nova Scotia
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95A new edition celebrates 50 years of a remarkable Cape Breton classic. A wonderful, exuberant, rich, overstated and humble piece of writing, which tries to tell us of the peace and invincibility and raw humour of Celtic Cape Breton.
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Glace Bay Miner’s Museum
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95In a colliery town, sirens from the mine can mean cave-ins, explosions, or, as in the Westray disaster, sudden death.Sheldon Currie, author of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum was born in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, and judging by the headlong intensity of this novel, he still hears those sirens.The story begins as shy, awkward Margaret MacNeil meets a strapping miner named Neil Currie. She’s already had her father and a brother die in the coalpits, but she hopes that Neil will be more lucky.
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L’étoile dans la pomme
Artist: Gilles CormierPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$13.95Somewhere on a fertile land, a love-struck apple plays around with a moonbeam.
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Petit Pico
Artist: Nathasha PilottePublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$9.95“Crick, crack, crickety-crack! A baby chick is born.”
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Sur la rue de Tout-le-Monde
Artist: Emma FitzGeraldPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$16.95“If ever you go walking on Everybody street you will see everyone’s different.”
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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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La nouvelle vie de Madame Bouteille
Artist: Jacinthe ChevalierPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$9.95During an incredible trip, Madam Bottle and her friend Mister Paper, are in for a… transformative experience! What will Madam Bottle look like after her beauty treatment?
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Ce n’etait pas nous les sauvages Le choc centre les civilisations europeennes et autochtones
Publisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$29.95As a person of First Nation ancestry I cannot help but wonder if the failure of Caucasian Americans and Canadians to reveal and teach about the horrors their ancestors carried out against North American First Nation Peoples is a deliberate cover-up, or an indication they hold within their minds a notion the life of a First Nation person is valueless—not worthy of human considerations. The latter is probably the more plausible, because it is an unchallengeable fact that the crimes against humanity committed against our peoples over the centuries by people of European descent are not viewed with the same abhorrence by Caucasians that such crimes against other races of people are viewed. If such were the case there would be unconditional condemnation of it, and the knowledge would be readily available and taught in schools. -FROM THE INTRODUCTION
This updated edition incorporates Daniel Paul’s ongoing research. It clearly and profoundly shows that the horrors of history still rain upon the First Nations people of the present.
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A Boy From Acadie Roméo Leblanc’s Journey to Rideau Hall
Artist: Maurice CormierPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$19.95Young Roméo LeBlanc, from Cormier Cove, New Brunswick, did not expect that one day, thanks to his family and sisters, he would have the chance to go to high school and university, become a history teacher, then a journalist, and finally a politician, climbing up the ladder to the highest position! Nevertheless, he stayed modest and kept his great sense of humour all his life.
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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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Sous mon arbre
Publisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$8.95Robins, swallows, sparrows, and chickadees… Birds are frolicking on the grass, but in the tree, a cat is watching. Will their songs sing its vigilance to sleep? Writer and seasoned teacher Chantal Duguay Mallet and young local illustrator in high demand Danica Brine are back with a third charming book in the Sous mon… series…, made of rhymes, short sentences and a rich vocabulary combined with colourful and amusing illustrations!
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Appi et le parfum puant
Artist: Pauline DugasPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$10.95When you’re a skunk, stinking is a musk-t. Priscille has no smell, and at the Great Muskyrade Ball, she will fade next to her gloriously stinky sisters. Her friend Appi wants to help the sad little skunk. In this second quest, she will go looking for the smelliest smell possible! On the way, there will be brambles bushes, a cooking witch and a carnivorous plant with a bad temper.
