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Cape Breton Railways: An Illustrated History An Illustrated History
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95Cape Breton’s rail lines are perhaps best known for their substantial roles in the coal and steel industries-and their decline as those industries faded away. Yet, despite their prominent connections to coal and steel, railways played many other important roles in the life of the Island. From transporting mail and freight to giving Cape Bretoners the ability to travel to and from the Island, they were important to the community culture. This book looks at those railways in the contexts of what was happening on and beyond the Island.Cape Breton’s railways were shaped by factors such physical geography, availability of both capital and customers, and the distribution of population and industries. In response to those factors, railway builders and operators often had to make difficult choices and try to deal with factors they could not control.
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Necessaries and Sufficiencies
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95The year 2011 marked the 250th anniversary of coming of New England and Irish Planters to Cobequid, Nova Scotia. Necessaries and Sufficiencies is a well-researched glimpse into the migration, settlement, religion, education, occupations, health and daily life of these settlers. This microhistory traces the evolution of New England and Irish peoples into a cohesive society with common social, political, cultural and material standards. While the distric’s pro-American response at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War pitted Cobequid against the King’s Government, moderation on both sides led to the assimilation of the Planers into the fabric of Nova Scotia and Feisty Cobequid became loyal Colchester.
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In the Blood
Photographer: Gary SamsonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$28.95A representative set of individuals from Cape Breton provides personal narratives about life and culture on the Nova Scotia island. Cape Breton is a region known for its music (well represented here); its Scottish, French, and Mi’kmaq heritage; and its spectacular scenery, including that along the Cabot Trail through Cape Breton Highlands National Park and around Bras d’Or Lake. While traditional culture has a vibrant existence on Cape Breton, the island also faces serious economic and social challenges. With traditional mining, shipping, farming, and fishing industries depressed, tourism, though significant, is a less-than-adequate replacement as economic engine and the island has faced an ongoing decline in population. A cross-section of Cape Bretoners reflected on these issues and the sacrifices they make and joys they find living in such a culturally and scenically rich place. Among the better-known of them are Ginette Chiasson, Alistair MacLeod, Rita Joe, Buddy MacMaster, Joella Foulds, Bob MacEachern, Keith Brown, and Mary Jane Lamond.
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Getting It Done
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95It’s often said that the future of Cape Breton depends on the vision and initiative of her sons and daughters. But when we go on a quest for leadership –what is it we’re looking for? Originally conceived as a series for CBC Radio and now adopted to book form, Getting It Done is an exploration of effective leadership through the experiences of people who have “been there.” From cabinet ministers to CEOs, a Juno winner to an Olympic medalist and two former premiers, Steve Sutherland delves into the habits and philosophies of some Cape Breton’s most prominent and influential figures. Featuring exclusive material that didn’t appear in the original radio interviews, Getting It Done is a compendium of insights about how these leaders got where they are, and what they do to make things happen.
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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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Elizabeth Lefort Canada’s Artist in Wool
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95The Cheticamp rug hooking tradition is prized the world over. The most celebrated fibre artist from this tradition is undoubtedly Elizabeth LeFort (1914-2005). LeFort’s remarkable talent for portraiture in wool resulted in purchases and commissions the world over; her work hangs in Rideau Hall, Buckingham Palace, the White House and the Vatican.
Daniel Doucet followed her life and her career for many years, with this biography in mind. Photographs of many of her pieces are complemented by photos of many of the public highlights of her career.
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Malagawatch Mice and the Cat Who Discovered America
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$14.95The Malagawatch Mice are well settled in their believed church, now at the Nova Scotia Highland Village in Iona, Cape Breton. But they are not alone–Henry, a stray cat with a mysterious past has taken up residence in the church and the mice are convinced that life will never be the same.
Yet, there is something familiar about this cat and, determined that there must be some good in him, Grandpa sets out to prove to Henry that he is much more than a no-good stray.
A monument in Halfway Cove, on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore, acknowledges that Prince Henry Sinclair of the Orkney Islands made the first transatlantic crossing and landed there in 1398, almost a century before Columbus. The monument describes his landing in Chebabucto Bay, and the fact that he spent a year exploring Nova Scotia, with the help of the kind Mi’Kmaq people.
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Discovering Cape Breton Folklore
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95For more than two decades, Richard MacKinnon—Canada Research Chair in Intangible Cultural Heritage, Cape Breton University—has researched Cape Breton’s rich cultural heritage: from protest songs to company houses, from co-operative housing to nicknames, from log buildings to cockfighting.In Discovering Cape Breton Folklore, professor MacKinnon revists some of his research and exposes us to some new.
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Famhair/Giant
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$15.95No contemporary work from a sole author of Gaelic poetry from the Nova Scotia perspective been published in this province – until now. Cultural identity, sense of place and expression are important elements in the work of any artist. This book of contemporary Nova Scotia Gaelic poetry spans the landscape of Gaelic Cape Breton, the eastern Nova Scotia mainland and indeed the broader collective consciousness of Nova Scotians within the confines of their own province and in the wider, diverse, multi-ethnic, North American reality.
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Dance to the Piper
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$23.95Barry Shears is a native of Glace Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and an acknowledged expert on the history of traditional piping in Nova Scotia and its intrinsic connection to the Gaelic language, music and culture. An award-winning musician, Barry has performed at concerts and festivals throughout North America, as well as in Scotland and Europe. He has previously published several books of bagpipe music and history.
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Percy Willmot: A Cape Bretoner at War
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$23.95When Britain went to war with Germany in August 1914, Canada and the rest of the British empire followed without question and without being asked. By the time the Great War finally ground to an end in November 1918, 619,636 Canadians had enlisted in the struggle. One of them was Percy Willmot.Percy wrote frequently to his sister, no matter where he was or what was going on and he was a gifted writer, whose sparkling personality still clearly emerges more than eighty years later.Willmot’s letters tell us much about the experiences of thousands of soldiers: progress of the war and daily experiences of the men, sometimes pointing out the contrast between the beauties of nature and the unspeakable horrors of modern warfare. They remind us of the intense intimacy of the shared experience of the trenches, perhaps especially for someone like Percy, serving in a unit with many comrades from his own community.
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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 Sàcramaid – 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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Cape Breton Weather Watching
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$28.95Supported by stunning photographs of every imaginable weather phonomena familiar to us all, and diagrams that illustrate just how the weather works, Danielson bring’s Cape Breton’s natural history to life.
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Voyage of Wood Duck
Artist: Patsy MacAulay-MacKinnonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95Some people say that dreams are foolish. Some people say that you can search you whole life long and never find what it is you are looking for. But long ago when dreams were more real than they are today; there was a young boy who lived by the sea. He was called Wood Duck. His people had always lived beside the ocean. Its salty water flavoured their days. Its currents flowed through their nights. The power of the sea ran very strongly in Wood Duck. In his dreams, fish swam and sea birds flew.
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Heartsong
Artist: Patsy MacAulay-MacKinnonPublisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95Heartsong is an illustrated children’s book which tells of the loving creation of a fiddle which is passed along and enjoyed through several generations. Told in English and Gaelic.
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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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Malagawatch Mice and the Church that Sailed
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$11.95When the Highland Village Museum adopted and moved Malagawatch Church across the Bras d’Or lake in 2003, children’s author-illustrator Caroline Stellings asked herself: “What about the church mice?”
The answer is an imaginative tale of The Malagawatch Mice who, after living under the church for generations, learn that they are about to lose the floorboards from over their heads.
Ms. Stellings’ soft watercolour illustrations and delightful rhyming narrative follow the Malagawatch Mice–and the church–to their new home in Iona.
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Sibley’s Raptors of Western North America – Folding Guides
Publisher: Earth, Sky + Water$13.95• Must order minimum of 10
• Laminated, indestructible, beach & waterproof
• Instant access to just what you need to know
• Written and illustrated by local experts
• Perfect for backpack, beach bag, boat, or tacklebox
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Sibley’s Birds of the Pacific Northwest Coast- Folding Guides
Publisher: Earth, Sky + Water$13.95• Must order minimum of 10
• Laminated, indestructible, beach & waterproof
• Instant access to just what you need to know
• Written and illustrated by local experts
• Perfect for backpack, beach bag, boat, or tacklebox
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Sibley’s Backyard Birds of the Pacific Northwest-Folding Guides
Publisher: Earth, Sky + Water$13.95• Must order minimum of 10
• Laminated, indestructible, beach & waterproof
• Instant access to just what you need to know
• Written and illustrated by local experts
• Perfect for backpack, beach bag, boat, or tacklebox
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Cape Breton’s Christmas Book 9 A Treasury of Stories and Memories
Editor: Ronald CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$19.95 -
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Cape Breton’s Christmas, Book * A Treasury of Stories and Memories
Publisher: Breton Books$19.95“We sit under the tree on Christmas morning and read these stories aloud..”
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Pearleen Oliver Canada’s Black Crusader for Civil Rights
Editor: Ronald CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$18.00In a winning new book, Pearleen Oliver: Canada’s Black Crusader for Civil Rights brings to life a compassionate and passionate African Nova Scotian, the story of her growth and activism—a book that shows how one woman’s voice changed the course of Nova Scotia’s history.
