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Failures and Fiascos
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95Do you remember the invasion of Newfoundland’s hydroponic cucumber? How about New Brunswick’s ill-fated space-age sports car?In this dynamic collection, Dan Soucoup follows the money trail up the political ladder to deliver the dirt on the most devastating failed business ventures, political scandals, and industry fiascos in Atlantic Canadian history. Presented in concise, entertaining vignettes, Boondoggles exposes two centuries of debacles in regional, national, and international scope.Exposed is the downfall of many local industries including steel, coal mining, nuclear and hydro-power, oil, heavy-water, and even rum-running. Relive the tragic fall of Sydney Steel in Cape Breton, PEI’s flawed immigrant investor program, the controversial (and ongoing) Churchill Falls project in Newfoundland, New Brunswick’s doomed Chignecto Ship Railway, and plenty more. From the coal mines of Cape Breton to the dry docks of Esquimalt, rediscover the stories that made headlines and continue to baffle Atlantic Canadians today.Includes 40 historical and contemporary images.
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Acadia University
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95Acadia University explores the illustrious institution from the ground up: from its humble beginnings as Acadia College, a Baptist school established in 1839 in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to one of the top-ranked undergraduate universities in the country. This newest addition to the Images of Our Past series is an entertaining and enlightening history for anyone connected to the celebrated university
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Nova Scotia’s Historic Rivers The Waterways That Shaped the Province
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95While Nova Scotia may be known as “Canada’s Ocean Playground,” the tributaries and meandering streams that flow through the province have a significance that runs just as deeply. In Nova Scotia’s Historic Rivers, Joan Dawson takes us on an insightful expedition around the province. From the original portage routes of the Mi’kmaq, such as the Margaree and Shubenacadie Rivers; to shipbuilding, logging, and mill-based industries along the LaHave and Sackville Rivers; to the settlers and communities that flourished along their banks, Dawson demonstrates the myriad ways in which Nova Scotia’s rivers have always been imperative to the sustenance and survival of the province. Featuring over 50 archival and contemporary photographs and illustrations, Nova Scotia’s Historic Rivers is a fascinating glimpse into the settlement an development of the province, and the ever-evolving rivers that continue to shape its landscape and culture.
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Rogues and Rascals True Stories of Maritime Lives and Legends
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Open Rogues and Rascals to any page, and you’ll find yourself drawn into the fascinating lives of ordinary Maritimers. A natural storyteller, Bob Kroll relates more than 200 true tales of our very own ancestors, and introduces us to heroes, failures, murderers, and soul savers who bring the everyday history of the Maritimes to vivid life.
The stories in Rogues and Rascals are loosely arranged into five sections, but can be read in any order you please. With tales from the 1700s through the mid-twentieth century, there are plenty of good starting points–a crime-ridden town on Prince Edward Island where residents take justice into their own hands; a daring escape from the Nova Scotia penitentiary; the tale of a New Brunswicker who smuggles tea for fun and profit; a captain whose ill-timed fit of laughter lands his entire crew in prison…and that’s just to name a few. Interesting, unusual, and always entertaining, these historical anecdotes are an enjoyable window into the feats and follies of Maritimers of the past.
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Miracles and Mysteries The Halifax Explosion December 6, 1917
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Mary Anna Monnon’s father was one of the lucky survivors of the Halifax Explosion, the great World War One disaster that devastated Halifax and killed over two thousand people. His personal story, along with the stories of other survivors, are woven into this captivating account of the events leading up to and following the explosion of the munitions ship Mont Blanc in Halifax Harbour. Monnon begins the story in the days just prior to the explosion, providing news items, ads, and public notices that give readers fresh insight into life in the city at that time. Monnon’s interviewees provide candid recollections of where they were and their initial responses to the disaster. What emerge are unusually personal stories of confusion, injury, loss, and the eventual resurgence of hope-raw remembrances that bring back into sharp focus those first days on the ground.
Miracles and Mysteries is a reminder of the tragedy of war, and how ordinary people respond to overwhelming and inexplicable events.
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Corvette Navy
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95At the beginning of World War Two, Britain stood alone, relying on the vital supplies transported by convoy across the North Atlantic. The pride of Hitler’s navy, the U-boat wolf-packs, waited there to pick off the slow, unarmed convoys. What stood between the U-boats and their prey were the corvettes. They were small, battered, under-equipped, and in need of repair. They were manned not by naval professionals but by a group of skilled and dedicated amateurs, many still in their teens, their officers often in their mid-twenties. Yet this little band of amateurs took on and beat the German U-boat professionals, and won a vital portion of the war.
James B. Lamb, an ex-corvette officer, captures the excitement as well as the inevitable tragedy involved when teenagers who had never even seen the sea were shoved aboard aged and ill-equipped ships and forced to grow up fast. Trapped in a world gone mad, the crews of the corvettes countered with individualism and a unique sense of the absurd. Amid the antics and fear, these men banded together to become a highly efficient fighting unit. They witnessed history and created some history of their own.
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Shattered City 3rd Edition
$24.95This book, the most comprehensive ever written on the Explosion, details the terrific devastation, the aftermath and the restoration. It encompasses dozens of previously unpublished stories, photographs, and documents, along with some thought-provoking coverage of the inquiry into the disaster. A best-selling book from its first printing in 1989, this new edition has an updated cover and is sure to be a must-have for readers.
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A Watch in the Night
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95A Watch in the Night chronicles the struggles of one Nova Scotia family to survive on a tiny windswept island without running water, electricity, or reliable communication with the mainland. For thirty-six years, George and Ruth Millar tended the Pomquet Island light, raised generations of livestock, brought up their six children, and lived through violent storms and other weather disasters.A Watch in the Night is not a dry account of lightkeeping life, but rather a tale in which faith, ingenuity, and tenderness triumph over adversity.
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Remembrance Road A Canadian photographer’s journey through European battlefields
Publisher: SSP Publications$6.95Nova Scotian photographer Justine MacDonald’s poignant impressions from her 2001 and 2017 tours of western European battlefields are indelible reminders of the horror and utter futility of war. While they inform and memorialize, they do not take sides. One cannot read this book and not be profoundly moved.
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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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Called to Serve Georgina Pope, Canadian Military Nursing Heroine
Publisher: Island Studies Press$27.95Georgina Pope is one of the 14 Valiants whose bronze bust at Confederation Square, Ottawa, is viewed by thousands of people every day. The Canadian Mint issued a $5 coin bearing her image. How does a young woman, born in 1862 into privileged circumstances in Prince Edward Island, rise to the top echelons of Canadian military nursing leadership and become a national hero?
Called to Serve details Pope’s path to power through the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th. It addresses the significance of her privileged and powerful lineage, the influence of her parents on her world view, and the inspiration of Florence Nightingale.
Featuring photos from Georgina Pope’s personal photo album with handwritten notes illustrating her wartime experiences PLUS biographies of the Pope family.
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Those Splendid Girls The Heroic Service of Prince Edward Island Nurses in the Great War
Publisher: Island Studies Press$27.95Over 115 women from Prince Edward Island women served as nurses in the First World War. They were fullblooded, complex women living in a tumultuous time in our history, doing their duty on distant battlefields. Their courage, and the courage of all Canadian nurses, is saluted in a powerful new book about wartime nursing called Those Splendid Girls. It features many wartime nursing photos from private albums, a 35-page biography section, an index, and bibliography.
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Short History of Moncton
Publisher: Maritime Lines$15.95A Short History of Moncton is the story of the city’s remarkable past from early times to the end of the 20th century. As a historic aboriginal campsite, Moncton began its European settlement period as a small Acadian agricultural village until the expulsion of the Acadians banished the French-speaking settlers. New settlers arrived and the little village eventually grew into a sizeable town with a bustling shipyard and a thriving waterfront.Despite an economic recession in the mid1800s, Moncton’s impressive growth in the late 19th century was mainly due the Intercolonial Railway that transformed the small village into a large city with the motto Resurgo: I rise again.Moncton’s continued expansion throughout the twentieth century was not without controversy as war, depression, and social upheaval all challenged the stability of the community. And the growth of the Acadian presence placed demands for bilingual services that were not initially adopted by the city fathers. But with the closure of the city’s major industries in the late 1900s, Moncton was again threatened with economic decline but managed to embrace the economics of bilingualism and diversify its economy.This book includes over 50 historic images that reveal scenes of a vanished era, a once small town with a thriving waterfront, bustling railway, and fascinating streetscapes.
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The Men of the Deeps A Journey With North America’s Only Coal Miners’ Chorus
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Formed in 1966 with a goal of performing at the World’s Fair in Montreal in 1967 (Expo ’67), the Men of the Deeps is North America’s only coal miners’ chorus. Over the span of fifty years, the choir has performed all across North America, in China and in Europe. As the choir’s musical director for more than forty years, John C. (Jack) O’Donnell marks the travels and performances of a half-century in the spotlight.
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Company Houses, Company Towns: Heritage and Conservation
Editor: Andrew Molloy, Tom UrbaniakPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Former company houses and towns have meaning. They can inspire attachment and a sense of place. They can be tight-knit but also quintessentially global; their resources and products have served far-off markets while housing a mosaic of newcomers from around the world; they speak to the diversity of Canada and the immigrant experience. Their landscapes, though often threatened with abandonment and decline, are a kind of language that conveys rich and layered stories. They are hands-on classrooms of culture, economics, architecture, politics and sociology.
Taken together, the case studies in this book speak to the heritage and enduring value of these places. Company towns mean a great deal to the people who put down roots there or passed through them. Many of the houses became homes. In Company Houses, Company Towns we also see how some of these places are being commemorated, conserved, regenerated and renewed–not as static museum pieces but as proud living communities aspiring to new economic opportunities and a quality of life.
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One with the Music: Cape Breton Step Dance Tradition and Transmission
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Swedish-born traditional dancer and researcher Mats Melin has worked and performed extensively in the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, in their schools and communities promoting Scottish traditional dance. He has also taught and performed in Sweden, Canada, USA, Russia and New Zealand. Mats has a vast knowledge of all aspects of the Scottish traditional dance scene, but specializes in Cape Breton step dancing.
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Seanchaidhna Coille / Memory-Keeper of the Forest
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Gaelic-speaking communities could be found all over Canada from the late-18th century to the mid-20th century. This is the first anthology of prose and poetry – mostly literary, some more ‘historical’ in tone – to give voice to the experience of Gaelic Canadians, about a broad set of themes: migration, politics, religion, identity, family life, social organizations and more.
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These Were My People: Washabuck, An Anecdotal history The Cape Bretoniana Research Series
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Most of the people, places and events that Vince MacLean brings to life in these pages are not there anymore – the Washabuck on these pages is the Washabuck that was. MacLean’s lifetime of listening to oral traditions and of his research of every written source he could find, combines for a compelling examination of both the place and its time. Washabuck the place is much more than geographical coordinates on a map; its time spans a few centuries.
Mr. MacLean’s approach to the history of his community is unique and satisfying; we learn of its people by way of the stories they told and the stories told about them – a history rich in character without sacrificing facts and figures. These Were My People is Vince MacLean’s celebration of his community, his people.
These Were My People was awarded the inaugural Robert J. Morgan Grant-in-Aid Program and the Cape Bretoniana Research Series administered by the Beaton Institute at Cape Breton University.
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Fogradh, Faisneachd, Filidheachd/ Parting, Prophecy , Poetry
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95In the original Gaelic, with English translations by John Alick MacPherson, Fògradh, Fàisneachd, Filidheachd / Parting, Prophesy, Poetry includes Blair’s articles about the Highland Clearances, a number of his poems, an account of a 16th-century seer who some say foretold of the Clearances and articles about Blair’s travels around the Maritimes – all published in Mac-Talla.
Although some of Blair’s poems have been included in various collections, his prose writings have not previously been published.
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Celts in the Americas
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$27.95Celtic-speaking peoples of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Scottish Highlands and Wales played a vital role in the history of Europe and the Americas. Immigrant Celtic communities enjoyed many significant accomplishments explored in this volume: continuing and developing literary traditions, establishing organizations to represent their origins and concerns, and negotiating the political and cultural issues of the day in their own languages.
A new crop of scholarship is reinvigorating Celtic Studies in the Americas by addressing issues of relevance and interest in this geographical and cultural context: race, ethnicity, immigration, imperialism, (post)colonialism and linguistic revitalization. While being firmed rooted in the languages and cultural expressions of Celtic communities, they extend research beyond the conventional framework of the field.
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Highland Settler The Classic Portrait of the Scottish Gael in Cape Breton and Eastern Nova Scotia
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95At the core of Charles W. Dunn’s pioneering work with the Canadian Gaelic-speaking community in the twentieth century, Highland Settler is the story of immigration, rural settlement, and the later dispersion to the industrial world–a thoughtful and entertaining history of an extraordinary people.
Dunn’s extensive interviews and the informed warmth of his approach make Highland Settler an essential book in the discovery of Cape Breton Island. Drawing on delightful storytelling, and local songs and poetry that settlers composed and loved, Dunn achieves a Gaelic settlers’ self-portrait as well as the historian and folklorist’s insight into the culture.
A fresh new edition of an elegant and accessible classic about folk ways vibrant in the 1940s and alive today in Cape Breton Island, with the details and historical perspective of this expert researcher.
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Great Cape Breton Shipwreck Stories
Editor: Ronald CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$18.95One lasting value of any shipwreck is the marvelous stories that come out of those terrible events. Ronald Caplan has collected a terrific batch of stories ranging from the gut-wrenching 1761 winter trek of survivors of the Auguste to John Angus Fraser’s hilarious 1955 adventures aboard the abandoned Kismet II. Walter Boudreau delivers his harrowing account adrift in a lifeboat while his companions died around him, and survivors of the Marine Atlantic Caribou ferry tell of being torpedoed by a Nazi submarine between Cape Breton and Newfoundland.
Filled with courage and humanity–stories of people determined to live, told by people determined to keep these stories alive.
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Dieppe Canada’s Forgotten Heroes
Publisher: Breton Books$19.95Gripping in its intensity, this 75th Anniversary edition of the 1942 Canadian raid on a well-fortified German-held French town with fairness, eloquence, and compassionate detail. Mellor fought at Dieppe, and puts the reader in landing craft and on the beaches with individual Canadians who formed the bulk of the attackers. He follows survivors into P.O.W. camps, where courageous leadership and successful tunnel escapes sustained men for three long years. Terrific reading!
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Cape Bretoners in the First World War In Their Own Words
Editor: Ron CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$19.95IN THEIR OWN WORDS, rare conversations with survivors of World War One are the heart of these stories, letters, and vivid news accounts of Cape Breton’s participation. From enlistment and training to trench warfare, an intimate account from soldiers and nurses who dared to serve. Much more than Cape Breton, it speaks for Canada’s Great War soldiers — their patriotism and desire for adventure, victories and tragedies, and their scars — beautifully shared in this remarkable compilation.
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Yankees at Louisbourg The Story of the First Siege, 1745
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95“The best and fullest account of the first siege of Louisbourg,” wrote historian W.S. MacNutt. The reader is there for the planning and the rabble-rousing and the day-by-day details of this essential event in Canadian history and in Americanconsciousness. L.E. DeForest called “the capture of Louisbourg in 1745 the most important military achievement of the American Colonists prior to the War of the Revolution.” Told in considerable depth and detail, this extremely readable book accounts for and describes that colonial achievement, and George Rawlyk’s telling is considered the most complete and best book on the subject.“An excellent, fair, comprehensive history of the 1745 Siege of Louisbourg.” — Goodreads
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Ice King
Artist: Naomi MitchamPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$8.95Because they did not know how to defend themselves against the Ice King, the inhabitants of a Mi’kmaq village risked death every winter – until a day when a brave Mi’kmaq dared to stand up to him. Will he manage to subdue this formidable enemy? The moral of this American Indian tale is evident. The wise and farsighted man knows how to cope with even the greatest difficulties.This book is in English, French, and Mi’kmaq.
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Glooscap, the Beavers and the Sugarloaf Mountian
Artist: Réjean RoyPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$8.95After creating the Mi’kmaqs, the great Glooscap was certain that he had established harmony on earth. But a problem remained: the beavers had built a huge dam across the Restigouche River, preventing the salmon from swimming upriver as far as the camp of the Mi’kmaqs who had come to fish there. Young Mi’kmaq men were convinced they could remedy the situation. However, completely failing to put things right, they asked the loon to call Glooscap to helpthem. Will the beavers once more outmaneuver Master Glooscap?
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Making Adjustments Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759-1800
Publisher: Acadiensis Press$9.95Insights into the geopolitical forces transforming the Atlantic world in the late 18th century, from economics and politics to religion, literature, music and material culture. Still available at a new low price, this is an excellent companion to our most recent title in the Planter Studies series, Nova Scotia Planters in the Atlantic World.