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Tokens of Grace
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Beginning in the 17th-century Scotland, when Covenanters met in open defiance of religious repression, open-air communions –the SÃ cramaid – evolved to become the social and spiritual highlight of the year. Primarily a mixture of prayer and religious and kinship feasting, open-air communions were an expression of core communal values and basic kin and religious loyalties.
Particularly between 1840 and 1890, but well into the 20th century as well, the sacramental season and its open-air communions was a dominant symbol in the lives of Cape Breton’s Scots Presbyterians. Whole communities, numbering in the thousands, converged for this great religious occasion, taking part in as many as five days of exhaustive preparatory self-examination.
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Storied Shores
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Cape Breton Island has many claims to fame, yet far too few people are familiar with the rich and storied past of the coastal areas of Richmond County.For centuries the Mi’kmaq, and later the early European explorers and settlers, shortened their journeys between the Bras d’Or lake and the Atlantic Ocean by means of the narrow isthmus at St. Peter’s. This portage area -eventually a canal – became a haul-over road in the mid-1650s. The portage area and the surrounding shores and waterways of Cape Breton were sites of early and prolonged interaction between the French and the Mi’kmaq during a time when dreams of expansion and empire among European nations, met head on with the realities of North America’s aboriginal peoples.The busy corridor between Chapel Island, St. Peter’s, and Isle Madame was the backdrop for a colourful and intriguing era of our shared histories. Storied Shores presents a history of that time and place – the story of the promise of prosperity and the hope for new lives and the story of the ravages of greed, rivalry, and war.
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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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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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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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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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Who Departed This Life
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95George Wright has had a long history of interest in the Burying Ground, with at least nine direct ancestors buried there (great-great-great- and great-great-grandparents). The launch of the book coincides with the 150th anniversary of the founding of the City of Charlottetown.
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Wrecked and Ruined
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Robert C. Parsons was born in Grand Bank, one of the great Newfoundland seaports for sailing schooners in the salt fish, hook and line era. He attended an all-grade school in his community and later graduated from Memorial University with a master’s degree in Language. Wrecked and Ruined is Robert’s twenty-third book. He frequently contributes sea stories to magazines, journals and newspapers and has appeared on the TV series Disasters of the Century.
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Ocean of Storms, Sea of Disaster
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Here are over sixty stories of piracy, fire, explosions, disappearances, rum running, shipboard mutiny and murder. There are also stories of collisions with whales, icebergs and other ships, as well as wrecks on rocks, islands and sand bars. Vessels, large and small, were struck by lightning, shelled or torpedoed by enemy vessels, crushed by Arctic ice, and even swallowed up whole by unexpected intense gales and hurricanes. These true tales of shipwrecks delve into strange and curious marine disasters. The setting, primarily the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, was the main trading route for passenger steamers and treading schooners plying their way to and from Europe and also the site of the much frequented fishing grounds. It is said to be the “stormiest ocean on earth.” The time range in Ocean of Storms, Sea of Disaster is one hundred years, between the 1850s and the 1950s but the stories themselves are timeless.
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A Land of Discord Always
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95From 1604 to 1755, the Acadian settlers of present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were the focus of political, economic, and military rivalries between France and Britain. Their stubborn nonconformity and political neutrality baffled and infuriated both European powers fighting for the upper hand. Finally, Britain’s drastic solution was to expel them from their homes.
Little his been published about early Acadia (which included much of the Maine coast and the Maritimes) and the origins of the Acadians. This rich story, peopled with memorable men and women whose lives make fascinating reading, is skillfully chronicled by retired attorney and historical writer, Charles Mahaffie. -
Gentlemen & Jesuits
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95This is the definitive account of early life in Acadia. The reprint of this outstanding book (originally published by the University of Toronto Press in 1986) coincides with the resurgence of interest in Acadian culture.
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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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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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The Fundy Vault A Rosalind Mystery
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Linda Moore’s longÂawaited sequel to Foul Deeds is another highly engaging mix of art and environmental justice. Finally working a real job as a researcher for the Public Prosecution Service, Roz is on her first paid vacation. She has rented a cottage on Nova Scotia’s beautiful Minas Basin with plans to explore ideas for her next theatre production. Accompanied by her cat and a stack of Beckett plays, she has no sooner settled in than she spots what looks like a woman’s body tangled in the roots of a floating tree. Before the local RCMP can send a boat out, the body is retrieved by helicopter, and Roz watches it disappear over North Mountain. It’s time to call in her old sleuthing partner, McBride.
When McBride completely disappears, Roz and her longtime theatre friend Sophie roam the backroads and small towns of the Annapolis Valley in search of clues, narrowing in on the out-ofÂtheÂway quarry no one seems to want them to visit, the tanker trunks that nearly run them off the road, and a young journalist who seems to have come too close to the truth.
The Fundy Vault is a lightning-paced literary mystery that will keep the heart pumping and the brain ticking long after the final page.
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Distinction Earned
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Distinction Earned highlights the accomplishments of significant Cape Breton fighters like George “Rockabye” Ross (about who MacDougall has also penned a play), Tyrone Gardiner, Blair Richardson and Francis”Rocky” MacDougall and trainers like Johnny Nemis. Between 1965 and 1967 five national boxing champions in different weight classes were from Cape Breton.Paul MacDougall has collected dozens of interviews from participants, enthusiasts and their heirs, from which has evolved this account of an amazing sporting record.
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A Breed Apart
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95This is the best-selling story of Nova Scotia’s famous tolling dog. The legends and stories of the old tolling men and their dogs of Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, is part fact and part fiction. Here, at last, is the full story of the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever and the men and women who bred them, trained them and brought them to prominence.
The Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever is Canada’s first and only true Canadian bred dog. For almost two hundred years the dog was unknown outside of southwestern Nova Scotia. The dog’s particular hunting technique – tolling – was first recorded in North America by Nicholas Denys and became part of the folklore of the Maritimes. Straight out of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” is the dog’s astonishing ability to lure waterfowl.
This powerful and mesmerizing effect in drawing waterfowl toward the shore is just one of the many intriguing secrets associated with this amazing canine. Gail MacMillan became enthralled with Tollers many years ago and became determined to unlock the dog’s engaging past.
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The Old Place
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The Old Place Describes the plants and animals that live about the author’s property, and encourages readers to become familiar with the large variety of living things that live around their communities.It discusses the wonderful ways in which plants and animals are adapted to life in their particular habitats,and emphasizes the importance of protecting those habitats.
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Toward the Country of Light New and Selected Poems 1978-2018
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95This collection brings together Allan Cooper’s best poems over the last forty years. He weaves visions of nature with insight into the workings of the human heart. Read them individually or read them as a single long, flowing and eloquent narrative. The meditative and compassionate observations will transport the reader from the chaos of everyday life into a healing realm of possibility.
In Toward the Country of Light, the author offers open sonnets, prose poems, ghazals, small poems inspired by the Chinese and Japanese, and poems influenced by Robert Bly and Francis Ponge. As Cooper observes, “Over the years I’ve come to understand that the poem itself usually demands the form it takes and that language uses us for its own secret purposes.”
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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.
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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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Shipwrecks of New Brunswick
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95In the past 20 years, Robert Parsons has become one of Atlantic Canada’s most popular and prolific writers, specializing in the stories of shipwreck, rescue and survival. He devotes much of his time to researching, writing and promoting the sea-going history of Canada’s eastern provinces, their ships and the people who sailed them. His books include Ocean of Storms, Sea of Disaster, In Peril on the Sea and The Edge of Yesterday: Sea Disasters of Nova Scotia.
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We Belong to the Sea
Editor: Meddy StantonPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Nova Scotia’s marine heritage is rooted in the very fibre of the people. In this anthology of the best writing about Nova Scotia and its historic relationship to the sea we hear from numerous well-known authors.
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Black Snow
$19.95Black Snow is a love story set during the Halifax Explosion. The 1917 disaster was the largest man-made blast the world had ever known, and it cut Halifax off from the rest of the world for the darkest thirty-six hours in its history. Rich in fact and shocking images, the story sets a blistering pace following one man’s search through a ruined city for the love of his life as he confronts the wreckage of his past.
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Nova Scotia: A Traveller’s Companion
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95A varied and provacative array of writing about this province by residents and visitors through the centuries.
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Halifax Haunts
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The streets of Historic Halifax are paved with the dark and eerie tales of its colourful and gruesome past. Shadowy secrets and hints of the unknown are lurking around every corner and in the mist that rolls in from the Atlantic. Centuries of tragic happenstance have left behind many restless spirits that are awaiting your discovery: the ghost of an eighteenth-century French admiral has been spotted marching- to the beat of his own missing heart- across the harbour and through the streets of Halifax; the haunting profile of a victim of the Halifax Explosion has been seen in the window of the city’s oldest church; a spectral tall ship has been sighted plying the waters just off Point Pleasant looking for a rematch with its War of 1812 opponent.
Halifax Haunts presents the spooky history behind thirty-three of the city’s scariest places. Master storyteller Steve Vernon serves as your trusted guide and offers phenomenal detail while winding you through the ghostly and ghastly happenings that still haunt Halifax to this day. -
Ghosts of Nova Scotia 10th Anniversary Edition
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Proclaimed “Canada’s ghost hunter” by the Ottawa Citizen, parapsychologist Darryll Walsh is a lecturer in parapsychology at the Nova Scotia Community College. He is also the host of the popular television series Shadow Hunter on the Space Channel. Incorrigibly curious since childhood, he has spent most of his life in pursuit of the mysterious and unknown and is the author of Ghost Waters: Canada’s Haunted Seas and Shores, also published by Pottersfield Press.
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Maritime Mysteries (revised edition)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95In this new edition of the classic book, Bill Jessome brings together over eighty of the region’s most spine-tingling tales–both old and new–that you wouldn’t believe in your wildest dreams–maybe in your spookiest nightmares! Featuring a new cover design and updated foreword from journalist and nephew Phonse Jessome.
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The Stories that Haunt Us
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95This latest collection by Maritime Mysteries’ former TV host and actor Bill Jessome includes forty of the best stories collected from around the Maritimes. Using his journalist’s skills, Jessome weaves incredible stories that charm readers and chill our nerves. Maritime Canada has an extensive storytelling tradition and a large part of that storytelling lexicon consists of stories of the supernatural. Many of these stories are told over the generations and Jessome has acquired these chilling accounts by listening to Maritimers at the kitchen table, around the flickering campfire, and when the moon is full.
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More Maritime Mysteries
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95This second book of the spooky, scary and the unexplained by popular Maritime writer Bill Jessome uncovers more strange appearances, occurences and ghostly antics from the Maritimes. These chilling tales and hair-raising spine-tinglers are sure to grip your imagination.
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Une étoile sur la dune
Publisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$19.95Written and illustrated by a painter who knows from personal experience how it feels for a child to be locked within oneself; this book travels a unique path. An artist’s book, accessible to the whole family, where imagery and words draw us towards the healing sea. No miracle cures, just a simple story of love, patience, and self-discovery, woven by mother, father, brother and the seashore.
