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I’m Just Sayin’ My Shorter Writings
Publisher: Breton Books$17.00I’m Just Sayin’ is a collection of short essays about Cape Breton life and David Muise’s own childhood in Cape Breton—a book that keeps alive the joy of growing up in this rare world that once was Industrial Cape Breton. A generous river of good humour and empathy flows through this book.
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Going Over A Nova Scotian Soldier in World War I
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Going Over is the biography of Titus Mossman, a veteran of the “Great War” who served with the 85th Canadian Infantry Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders) on the Western Front. This book blends social, political and historical issues of those turbulent times with the story of one young Canadian turned soldier, caught at the sharp edge of history.
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Oceans of Rum
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$22.95Prohibition, legislated in the U.S. in 1921, was intended to ban the manufacture, transport and sale of intoxicating liquor. However, it soon became obvious that successfully policing the entire coastline of the Pacific, Atlantic, and the Great Lakes was impossible. In eastern Canada the door was suddenly wide open for fishermen willing to make the remarkable switch to smuggling. Even with the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, rum-running remained a profitable venture in Atlantic Canada up until World War II.
Excitement, camaraderie, drama on the high seas, love affairs, big payoffs, and fast cars – these were the returns for a life of smuggling in Atlantic Canada during Prohibition for those who dared. And David Mossman’s uncle Teddy, Captain Winfred “Spinny” Spindler, certainly dared. Like so many others, the former deep-sea fisherman seized the opportunity to turn use his sea-going skills for rum-running between the years 1923 to 1938. Adventuresome and resilient, charismatic and resourceful, Captain Spindler matured and endured through necessity, hard work and tragedy, toward the end persevering like proverbial Job through his allotted ninety-three years.
In Oceans of Rum, Mossman once again draws on family, community and Canadian history, this time to bring the story of rum-running in Atlantic Canada to vivid, pulsing life through his uncle’s actual experiences. Mossman’s book is a three-cornered chronicle involving Spindlers, Ritceys and Romkeys – all South Shore families. It is an account tinged with tragedy and intrigue and shows how seemingly ordinary folk can find themselves thrust into the most extraordinary activities.
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Random Shots
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Random Shots tells the stories of survival against the odds, the life of a well-travelled risking-taking Maritime son. Fortunate to have survived numerous near misses during the lead-up to his eightieth trip around the Sun, Mossman has much to be grateful for along the paths taken to adventure.
As a strong defense over the passage of time, memory is everything. As narrator, Mossman, aided by diaries and recordings across the years, shares with vivid insight his travelling experiences in and around Lesotho, Northwest Territories, Gabon, the Bay of Fundy, Australia, the Congo, Zambia, Nunavut, New Zealand, the offshore Atlantic Ocean, Ontario, and Brazil.
Survival–the act of staying alive despite the odds–is the theme of the book. Many of these stories of adventure took place in a world far from the one with which most people are familiar. They are at once both startling and revealing and told with a bold style and wit that the author’s fans will immediately recognize.
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The Legend of Gladee’s Canteen Down Home on a Nova Scotia Beach
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95“Everyone remembers the famous food at Gladee’s Canteen, especially Gladee’s fish and chips and her coconut cream pie.” — Calvin Trillin
Gladee’s Canteen, several times voted as one of the ten best restaurants in Canada, was a special example of co-operative and communal spirit. At the centre of the operation were Gladee and her sister Flossie, supported by the extended Hirtle family. They offered a warm welcome and a memorable menu, in a setting brashly open to the forces of nature.
The Legend of Gladee’s Canteen tells the story of a popular Nova Scotia beach and a pioneer family who, against the odds, constructed a simple canteen at Hirtle’s Beach in1951 and ran it for forty years. The book draws on the author’s family associations, personal memory, and the outlying stockpile of collective recollections — a tapestry of events woven through the evolutionary fabric of a small, relatively isolated Maritime coastal community.
The era of Gladee’s Canteen is remarkable story that takes place in a small coastal Nova Scotia community blessed with a spectacularly dynamic living beach. In its time, the Hirtle family and its sparkling enterprise thrived in spite of relative isolation, uncertain funding, and domestic demons. As a Nova Scotia epic, the success story of Gladee’s Canteen mirrors the recent history of Hirtle’s Beach, exemplifying the twists and turns locked up in legend.
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Rum Tales Down Home Yarns Around a Pot-Bellied Stove
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Welcome to The Shop.
Arthur Benjamin Lohnes was proprietor of a small country store known locally as The Shop in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, from 1919 through 1957. AB, as he was called, provided a welcoming haven to people eager to indulge in the venerable art of loafing and storytelling. The yarns were spun by some of the most colourful characters of the first half of the twentieth century.
With the blessing of their wives, menfolk met there regularly around the warmth of AB?s pot-bellied stove, a cozy forum in which to relate experiences and share their concerns of the day. The practice was carried out almost to the point of ceremony. Starring actors in this pageant of patriarchs ranged from grizzled old blue water sea captains through ordinary seamen to shore fishermen, a preacher, store owner, and a part-time postmaster. The tales are spliced with a biographical narrative – glimpses of adventures and misadventures ? of a gentle, kindly woman, once a child, to whom the book is dedicated.
The tales recounted within the walls of AB?s store take the reader back to a bygone era of daily poverty and everyday adventures in a coastal Nova Scotian community. Thanks to these storytellers, the past survives and comes alive for the modern reader.
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Nature & Hiking Guide To Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$18.95Complete with easy-to-use maps, plant lists, glossary, and index, and illustrated with line drawings and woodcuts, A Nature and Hiking Guide to Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail is your complete guide to this natural treasure trove.
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A Guide to Whale Watching in the Maritimes
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$9.95In this easy-to-use guide, you will find interesting facts about a total of sixteen whale, dolphin, and porpoise species that frequent the waters from Brier Island to northern Cape Breton, the Golf of St. Lawrence, the Atlantic Coast, and the Bay of Fundy.
With illustrations for each species and their field marks, and quick reference fact boxes, this useful guide will assist identification of the cetaceans in our waters, providing information about behaviour, diet, habitat, and physical features. Complete with a glossary and a select listing of Maritime whale-watching tours, you’ll want this guide in your pocket when you set out to watch these magnificent mammels. -
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Historic Saint John Streets
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Neither the Crow’s Nest tavern nor the boundary between Saint John East and West exist today, but Crow’s Nest Lane and City Line still do. In this pioneering excavation of the largest city in New Brunswick, authors David Goss (Only in New Brunswick) and Harold E. Wright (East Saint John) illuminate many of the stories inspired by and responsible for the curious collection of street names in Saint John, New Brunswick, past and present.
Culled from interviews with current and former residents, archival and original research, and a dash of local lore, Historic Saint John Streets is both a historians’ reference and readers’ miscellany. Featuring an ambitious sampling of over 100 roads and archival images, representative streetscapes run the gamut from secret shortcuts, to back roads, to main throughways, and offer a valuable new perspective of the historically rich Maritime city.
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Tall Tales & Curious Happenings
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95A wonderfully entertaining collection of the best tales of the strange and weird occurrences that have been happening in New Brunswick for years.
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It Happened in New Brunswick
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95It Happened in New Brunswick features more than fifty stories about New Brunswick heroes and oddballs, funny happenings and tragic moments, by the province’s favourite storyteller, David Goss.
The stories span New Brunswick’s history and geography, bringing to light unknown characters and events, from the record-breaking bowlers of Saint John to the McAdam pharmacist who invented his own miracle flu medicine, and from Alex Haley’s surprise sojourn in Dalhousie to Campobello Island’s remarkable hermit. The book is divided into six thematic sections, including one of Acadian stories told in English, plus a section of amusing clippings and tidbits collected from old New Brunswick newspapers and archives. -
Saint John Curiosities
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Saint John Curiosities is a collection of short and interesting glimpses of the city’s people, places, and events from its very beginning to the present day. Author and well-known storyteller David Goss brings together little-known, fascinating findings that he has uncovered during forty years of research, drawing stories from newspaper articles, maps, and museum and library archives.
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Only in New Brunswick
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95IN HIS LATEST VOLUME of offbeat New Brunswick history and lore, popular Saint John storyteller David Goss delivers over forty-five new stories gleaned from his years as a columnist and tour guide. Goss introduces readers to local personalities like Perth Andover, artist Violet Gillett, chainsaw carver Albert Deveau, and the key-collector of Neguac. Other New Brunswickers have shared their memories of some of the province’s oddities, including Deer Island’s town clock, a quest to save the largest tree in the province, and the story of the Bricklin SV-1, manufactured for a brief time in Minto and Saint John. In these pages you’ll also find some of the ghost stories and legends that Goss has recounted to visitors in the parks where he’s worked as a a guide. The ghost ship Squando, the Hampton werewolf scare, and the Norton noise have made the rounds of many campfires and are captured here in print.
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Saint John Facts and Folklore
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Saint John Facts and Folklore is filled with anecdotes about the city’s history, unbelievable incidents, and local sayings that showcase the unique identity of Saint John. With a focus on the city’s long history and spirited citizens, David Goss leads readers through the rowdy port city and centre of the nineteenth century lumber trade. The book is scattered with facts and stats that surprise and teach. The latest addition to the Facts and Folklore series, this entertaining and informative book is perfect for those wanting an alternative guide to Saint John and its sights. Includes 20 black and white photos of Saint John past and present.
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Christmas in Atlantic Canada Stories True and False, Past and Present
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Some of the most comforting and enjoyable parts of Christmas are the heartwarming traditions we celebrate year after year. But do you ever wonder where those traditions came from? Who started them, and how did they become so ingrained? From dragging trees indoors to decorate them to bundling up to take in a Santa Claus parade, prolific folklorist David Goss traces the history of the holiday in our region from its earliest celebration—possibly 1604—to modern times.
Using historical records, diaries, and old newspapers, as well as a few fictional short stories, he documents the fascinating narrative of how Christmas in Atlantic Canada has been marked, both religiously and secularly.
Includes 50 images. Features a foreword by Gerry Bowler, author of Santa Claus, A Biography and The World Encyclopedia of Christmas.
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On South Mountain
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95Stories of South Mountain and its notorious Goler Clan are often told in whispers–or not at all.
For over a century, a gruesome pattern of sexual and physical abuse, incest, and psychological torture defined the isolated mountain community, and residents of the nearby Annapolis Valley turned a blind eye. But when a fourteen-year-old South Mountain girl finally spoke up, the story and its ensuing investigation captivated the country.
In this twentieth-anniversary edition of the bestselling book The Vancouver Sun called “a terrible story, beautifully told,” acclaimed authors David Cruise and Alison Griffiths return to South Mountain with a new Preface and the original, startling text.
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How to Build A Wooden Boat
Publisher: WoodenBoat Books$39.95David C. “Bud” McIntosh was a designer, builder, and sailor of large and small wooden cruising boats for more than 50 years, and wrote about it for over 10 of those years. He made his home on New Hampshire’s Piscataqua River, where he was teacher and friend to both amateur and professional boatbuilders.
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Celtic Colours
Artist: Murdock SmithPublisher: Breton Books$18.95The first book about celtic colours, 10 Nights Without Sleep is an insider’s years of adventure with the Cape Breton’s festival that has won the world’s praise. Both a history and an intense personal memoir, the reader rides on Dave Mahalik’s shoulder as he discovers the joy of driving some of the finest Celtic musicians around Cape Breton through full-blown autumn colours. One huge musical party, year after year, both onstage and at the nightly Festival Club where the music that stretchses to dawn and beyond — into days that end thrilled, exhausted and with breakfas before bedt. And Dave really takes you along.
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I Met an Elk in Edson Once
Artist: Wes TyrellPublisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$17.95Join an elk in undies named Rusty, my mom and me in a search for Uncle Todd. From Jasper, Fort Macleod and the hoodoos to the Calgary Stampede, Cowboy Trail and Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump, come along on the best road trip around Alberta ever! Promise!
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You Might Be From Alberta If…
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$19.95You Might Be From Alberta If . . . is a delightful, illustrated romp through the Wild Rose Province. From one of the most celebrated cartoonists in the province, Dave Elston delivers his unique take on this extraordinary place, tickling the funny bone on every page. As Elston proves, this is a province that is proud of what it is, and likes nothing better than a good laugh.
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Cure for Wereduck Book 2 of the Wereduck Series
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Kate is an odd duck-literally. When the full moon arrives, the rest of her family turns into wolves, but she is a happy wereduck. Relatively happy, that is. Her family has been uprooted from the wilds of New Brunswick to a placid farming community in Ontario, thanks to a fellow werewolf, Marcus, selling them out to sleazy tabloid journalist Dirk Bragg. When Kate discovers her great-greatgrandmother’s recipe “A Cure for Werewolf,” she can’t help but wonder—is it really possible? Could she one day resist the call of the moon? Could she be free from the constant threat of exposure? When Marcus’s abandoned werewolf son, John, books a desperate train journey back to New Brunswick at the full moon, the ancient recipe and its arcane ingredients are put to the test. Will Dirk Bragg finally corner Kate and John in their wereforms and expose them to the world, or will Cure for Werewolf keep them safe?
A rare sequel that is as full of action and revelations as its predecessor, A Cure for Wereduck is imaginative, exciting, and peppered with Hackmatack Award nominated David Atkinson’s delightful humour.
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Wereduck Book 1 of the Wereduck Series
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Kate’s family has told her that on her thirteenth birthday she’ll hear the “Whooooo” call of the moon, and howl back, and become a werewolf just like them. But she doesn’t want to be a werewolf. She’s always felt more like a duck. On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Kate stands near her family’s cabin in the backwoods of New Brunswick and hears the moon calling—but it sounds like more of a “Whooooo?” as in “Who are you?” and Kate does what she’s always wanted to do—she quacks. Quack, quack, quacks.
Her family tries to understand Kate’s new full-moon form, but they are busy integrating themselves with some new, edgy werewolves in town.
Engaging, hilarious, and utterly believable, Wereduck is a thrilling addition to the were-canon.
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The Wereduck Code
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing Limited$12.95The thrilling conclusion to the entertaining, critically acclaimed Wereduck series. Catch up with fourteen-year-old Kate, wereduck in a family of werewolves, as she races to uncover a way to undo the curse that haunts her family. High stakes meet humour in the engaging third installment of the popular series from author Dave Atkinson.
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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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Legends and Monsters of Atlantic Canada
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$17.95Atlantic Canada is home to a unique blend of multicultural folktales, legends and mysteries. Perhaps nowhere else is the richness of belief in the supernatural, long a staple of our founding peoples, such an important part of our history and culture.Long-time ghost hunter and author Darryll Walsh documents the many stories and legends from around the Atlantic region. He provides startling new information about Oak Island, site of one of the longest running treasure hunts in history, where many believe a fortune in stolen booty buried by pirates still exists. Walsh delves into the magical world of fairies and recounts the tales of a terrifying assortment of creatures that forestry workers have encountered in our woods. He charts the course of phantom ships that travel along our coasts and inland seas, doomed to sail on forever.Discover how our own version of Bigfoot once terrorized Viking settlers in Newfoundland, and may still be shocking unwary hikers to this day. There are tales of the Devil himself, who has travelled this region luring men into mortal games of cards where the stakes are unreasonably high. Moreover, there are stories about demons, banshees, hairy bipeds, goblins, devil hounds, splinter cats, gumberoo, shagamaw, glawackus, loup-garu, werewolves, sea serpents, will-o-the-wisp, and jack-o-lanterns.Legends and Monsters of Atlantic Canada is an exciting assortment of historical and contemporary legends with creatures that will chill the bones of even the most jaded reader. Parapsychologist Darryll Walsh has brought together for the first time a wide range of Atlantic Canada’s mysterious beings, creatures of the night, historical mysteries, and urban legends, many not seen before in print.
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Ghost Waters
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$16.95Dubbed by the Ottawa Citizen as “Canada’s Ghost Hunter”, Darryll Walsh is a lecturer in parapsychology at the Nova Scotia Community College and head of the Centre for Parapsychological Studies in Canada.
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Stud Horse Boy
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95From the truck’s horn and the stallion’s whinny, The Stud Horse Boy is called from school for adventures breeding horses that made farm life and woods work possible in Eastern Nova Scotia. The boy is torn between boiling anger and admiration for his one-eyed, alcoholic father. Will he become his father? How do you act amidst the eroticism and smutty jokes? How do you find the courage to live? A wonderful storyteller, Darryll Taylor remembers with great good humour, shockingly realistic scenes, and passionate respect. The Stud Horse Boy is today’s story-a teenager coming of age in difficult and changing times.
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Keeping Things Whole
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95It’s 1998 and Antony Williams is about to meet his match. A native of Windsor, Ontario, Antony is the child of a demanding single mother and an absconding Vietnam War resister who got too used to leaving home, country, and family. With a keen eye on the hybrid Windsor-Detroit landscape, backhanded affection for his hometown, and a growing understanding of his own family’s place in its bootleg history, Antony makes his living as a house painter by day before catapulting loads of Canadian weed across the river to Detroit by night.
Then he meets Kate Chan, a beautiful, street-smart law student, who calls his bluff and picks apart his personal mythology. Ultimately she presents him with his own hard choice and forces him to realize he’s been smuggling much more than he knows. Keeping Things Whole recounts the arc of their relationship and is cut with Antony’s entertaining manifestoes on marijuana, legality, art, theatre, sex, money, and lineage.
With this, his second novel, Darryl Whetter gives us a maddeningly cocky but introspective hero, and his frank, nuanced portrait of a border city and its underground history.
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Black Ice
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95In 1895, The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes was formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was Twenty-five years before the Negro Baseball Leauges in the United States, and twenty-two years before the birth of the National Hockey League. The Colored League would emerge as a premier force in Canadian hockey and supply the resilience necessary to preserve a unique culture which exists to this day. Unfortunately their contributions were conveniently ignored, or simply stolen, as white teams and hockey officials, influenced by the black league, copied elements of the black style or sought to take self-credit for black hockey innovations. Black Ice is the first written record of the Colored Hockey League in the Maritimes.
This title is no longer available, to order the new 20th anniversary edition click here!
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Black Ice
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95Expanded and revised edition of the pioneering work of history about the Coloured Hockey League, founded in Halifax, NS. Now a documentary film.
Black Ice is the first written record of the Colored Hockey League in the Maritimes, founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1895, more than 20 years before the founding of the National Hockey League. The Colored Hockey League was a force in Canadian hockey that was conveniently ignored and whose contributions were stolen as other leagues emerged. Black Ice explores the unique culture that still exists today.
