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Little Boy Catches a Whale
Artist: Naomi MitchamPublisher: Bouton d'or Acadie$8.95Un couple pauvre et âgé recueille un petit garçon trouvé sous la terre. Cette action bienveillante est le prélude à une série de prodiges…
Ewle’jijik kisiku’k wejia’titl lpa’tu’ji’jl aqq westawia’titl. Wla teli wla’tekejik nikan-aknutk ta’n teli mili tpiejik.
A poor old couple find a little boy underground and rescue him. This kind action is the prelude to a series of amazing occurrences.
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Mighty Glooscap Transforms Animals and Landscape
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 help them. Will the beavers once more outmaneuver Master Glooscap?
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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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Islands of New Brunswick
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95Culled from her collections Offshore Islands and Paradise or Purgatory (1984), New Brunswick Islands is part ecocritical exploration and part historical survey, as Mitcham explores the province’s not-so-far-off islands in search of their unique stories. The result is an extraordinary collection of essays that illuminates the social and cultural histories behind New Brunswick’s islands.Exposed are the complexities of island history, from the Aboriginal peoples of Indian Island to the generations of lighthouse keeping on Miscou, to the tragic quarantine history of Passamaquoddy’s Hospital Island (Partridge Island). Industrious islands, from the once-lucrative quarries of Grindstone Island, to the still-flourishing fisheries of Grand Manan are also investigated, as well as the mysterious histories behind the now-uninhabited Heron and Shediac Islands, which have largely been reclaimed by nature.This revised edition features the original illustrations by Peter Mitcham.
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Islands of Nova Scotia Outpost Portraits
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95Equally home to tragedy and beauty, Nova Scotia’s islands are buoys in a nearly “sea-locked” landscape. In this revised edition, Mitcham showcases 10 Nova Scotia islands through narrative portraits. Included are little-known outport Scaterie Island, billed as “Sable Island’s Rival”; the Avon River’s mysterious Boot Island, whose tides have claimed many a swimmer; the infamous Halifax Harbour islands; and more. Portraits of each island contain vivid descriptions and remarkable true stories as well as facts and legends detailing unique features about these unusual offshore sites.Features 20 illustrations by Peter Mitcham and a brand-new introduction from the author.
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Prophet of the Wilderness Abraham Gesner
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Shipwreck and arrest were common setbacks in the early nineteenth century, but neither slowed the rise of scientist and inventor Abraham Gesner (1797–1864). He possessed a curious mind and a dynamic speaking style, enlivened by his many fact-finding travels throughout the Maritime provinces and beyond. Of his innovative experiments, the most famous led to a refining method for a new fuel named kerosene, an invention that would change the world.
This biography depicts a man far ahead of his time, as interested in social problems—such as lighting cities at night and establishing decent immigrant settlements—as he was in advancing science and industry. A fascinating and meticulously research account of a man too often not given the credit he deserved.
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Time Flies When You’re Chasing Spies A Halifax Mystery
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Andrew’s mother, Marion, works for Epsom Electronics, a security company that makes high-tech spy gear to keep world leaders safe. When she goes missing on the eve of a G8 summit in Halifax, Andrew and his father work desperately to find her. Luckily, Andrew and his best friend, both thirteen, are no strangers to danger, and they follow Andrew’s instincts-which run directly counter to the instructions his father gave him.When the two friends are nearly caught in a huge explosion at Citadel Hill, Andrew realizes his mother could be in even deeper trouble than he thought. Enlisting help from a credulous news reporter, the boys chase clues all over the HRM, narrowly avoiding serious harm on many occasions.Finally, they finally uncover a top-secret assassination plot-but are they just in time, or just a little too late?
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Broken Pieces An Orphan of the Halifax Explosion
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95One hundred years ago, on December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc collided with the Belgian relief vessel Imo in the Halifax Harbour. At first, a small fire broke out aboard the Mont Blanc, which grew bigger crowds of people and emergency responders linded the shores of Halifax and Dartmouth to get a better look. Suddenly, the Mont Blanc‘s explosive cargo blew up, flattening homes and businesses, and triggering a tsunami.
Amid the confusion and devastation that followed the blast was fourteen-year-old Barbara Orr, who had been walking from her neighbourhood in Richmond to a friend’s house. Follow Barbara as she navigates post-explosion Halifax, learning about rescue efforts, the kindness of strangers, and the bravery of heroes like Vincent Coleman along the way.
Part of the popular Compass series, this full-colour non-fiction book includes highlighted glossary terms, informative sidebars, over 50 illustrations and historical photographs, a detailed index, and recommended further reading. In commemoration of the tragic event’s 100th anniversary, Broken Pieces is a great resource for young readers and educators.
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Nova Scotia Book of Musts
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$13.95From the Cabot Trail in October to rafting the highest tides to drinking beer and singing ?Barrett?s Privateers? on the Halifax waterfront to looking in on Annapolis Royal, one of the most interesting townscapes in North America, this is the MUST list every Nova Scotian MUST have. From waterfalls you can literally enjoy to yourself to the hidden pleasures of a county fair, it is all here.We also get well known and not so well known Bluenosers from across the province to weigh in with their MUST lists. Singer-songwriter Jimmy Rankin, Clearwater CEO John Risley, the Trailer Park Boys? Jonathan Torrens and writer Frank Macdonald all have secret places you simply MUST visit.This is the ultimate insider MUST list. If you love Nova Scotia, you simply MUST have the Nova Scotia Book of MUSTS.
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Maclean (2nd edition)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95Twenty-five years after the Great War, John Maclean is still struggling to carve out a meaningful existence in his small New Brunswick hometown.
One late summer day he embarks on a seemingly prosaic search for a little money, a little booze, and a birthday gift for his mother. But he’s haunted by memories—of war, of his cruel father, of opportunities wasted and lost—and each moment is shadowed by his bleak history. Shell-shocked and alcoholic, Maclean is divided between a lonely present and a violent past.
With clean and evocative prose, author Allan Donaldson exquisitely depicts a shattered war veteran’s search for peace. New edition.
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Case Against Owen Williams
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Allan Donaldson’s first novel, Maclean, was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Donaldson’s new novel is a literary mystery set in the fictional town of Wakefield, New Brunswick, against the backdrop of the Second World War. Following a night at The Silver Dollar dance hall, a teenage girl turns up dead in a gravel pit. The last person reported to have seen her is Owen Williams, an introverted soldier stationed with the local garrison of “Zombies”—conscripted men unwilling to serve overseas. When Lieutenant Bernard Dorkin, a young lawyer from Saint John, volunteers to defend Williams, whom he believes is innocent, he finds himself up against a theatrical local favourite leading the prosecution and a public mostly hell-bent on a foregone conclusion. The Case Against Owen Williams explores the potential for wrongful conviction and the gaps in the justice system that allow it to flourish.
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Port of Call Tall Ships Visit the Maritimes
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Port of Call celebrates the extravagant and spectacular event that will bring the tall ships to more than 30 Maritime ports for Rendez-Vous 2017, part of Canada’s 150th celebrations. Allan Billard reveals details, insights, and everything else you need to know about the dazzling ships and schooners in this colourful, photo-filled book.
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To Every Thing There is a Season A Cape Breton Christmas Story
Artist: Peter RankinPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95It is Christmastime in Cape Breton, and a young boy describes the anticipation his family feels toward the holiday and most of all, to the homecoming of his older brother, Neil, working in Ontario on the “lake boats.”
To Every Thing There is a Season was first published in 1977, yet its impact remains powerful to this day. This new softcover edition features 20 of Peter Rankin’s splendid illustrations, a perfect complement to a classic Canadian Christmas story.
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Henrietta’s Nightlight
Publisher: Chocolate River Publishing$12.95Henrietta is staying overnight at her grandparents? cottage for the first time. She would love to see the great blue heron that visits in the morning, but there?s no electricity or running water at the cottage, and the night noises are scary. After a grownup day exploring nature with her grandparents, will she be able to make it through the night?
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A Change of Heart
Artist: Erin Bennett BanksPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The remarkable story of honourary Newfoundlander Lanier Phillips, who survived a shipwreck during the Second World War and went on to become a civil rights activist, is told for children in this heartwarming, vibrantly illustrated picture book.
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Last Lullaby
$21.95Set in the fictional town of Paddy’s Arm, Newfoundland, Alice Walsh’s debut mystery novel is at once harrowing and homey, equal parts police procedural and diner gossip. When Claire and Bram’s only child dies suddenly, it at first appears to be a case of crib death. But when the real cause of death indicates homicide and Claire is arrested as the number-one suspect, her friend, lawyer Lauren LaVallee, promises she’ll do everything she can to prove Claire’s innocence.
As Lauren combs Paddy’s Arm for suspects, amid department politics and small-town talk, leads abound. Why are professors Frances and Annabelle being so secretive about their adopted daughter? What’s behind a troubled student’s sudden disappearance? And who is the mysterious platinum blonde observed at the scene of the crime? Meanwhile, Lauren’s own secret—a case that almost cost her her career back in Montreal—and the sudden return of an ex-lover who wants back in her life, threaten to overwhelm the investigation altogether.
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Uncle Farley’s False Teeth
Artist: Michael MartchenkoPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$10.95Every afternoon, Uncle Farley takes a three-hour nap. And every afternoon, he pops his false teeth out of his mouth and into a glass of water. One day, Morgan decides she’ll steal them to show her friends. But while they’re on the wharf oohing and ahhing, Morgan accidentally drops Uncle Farley’s teeth into the ocean! She thinks they’re gone forever until she sees a fabulous fish…with a fabulous set of teeth in its mouth.
Morgan and her friends pool their resources to get the teeth back—Ian’s dad is a fisherman, Zakia’s mom is a dentist, Markee’s dad is a police officer—but the fabulous fish just won’t spit them out. Will Morgan be able wrangle Uncle Farley’s false teeth back before he wakes up? Originally published in 1998, this new edition features updated text and illustrations from the artist behind Canadian classics like The Paperbag Princess and Thomas’s Snowsuit.
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A Change of Heart
Artist: Erin Bennett BanksPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Finally, the remarkable story of honourary Newfoundlander Lanier Phillips is available for young children in this heartwarming picture book.
A young African American and the son of sharecroppers, Lanier Phillips escapes the violence, racism, and segregation of his Georgia home by joining the navy during the Second World War. But tragedy strikes the USS Truxtun one February night off the southeastern coast of Newfoundland, and Lanier is the lone Black survivor of the terrible shipwreck. Covered in oil when he arrives onshore, the community’s kindness and humanity brings him back to health and changes his outlook on life. He would go on to march for Black rights with Martin Luther King, and remained forever grateful to the small town of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland.
With vibrant illustrations by celebrated artist Erin Banks, A Change of Heart vividly depicts Lanier’s life-changing experiences in Newfoundland that fateful February.
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St Margaret’s Bay
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95St. Margaret’s Bay, ‘The Bay’ to most Haligonians, is home to Peggy’s Cove, the major tourist attraction in Nova Scotia. Included here are photos of the past and genealogical resources.
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Three Hills Home
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$32.95Eulalie’s life seems laid out ahead of her, as does Corporal Cully Robin’s, but an alternate plot is about to change their lives irrevocably. With the looming war between France and England, the Governor of Nova Scotia removes the Acadian people from the land they’ve lived on for generations and disperses them throughout the colonies to the south. Suddenly, even the simplest expectations are thrown into doubt as they struggle to survive, love and find their way home in the face of obstacles they could never have imagined.
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Acadia
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$22.95” a rollicking read about the escapades of those larger-than-life characters who dominated the early days of European thirst for dominance in the New World…” Atlantic Books Today Acadia is based on the true story of the blood feud that founded the French colony and the two very different married couples at the centre of it.
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Clean Sweep
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Who knows more about what’s been swept under the carpet than the cleaning lady?
Forty-something Bonnie Marsden didn’t intend to become a professional charwoman, or an amateur detective. But after she gets swindled out of her job as loans officer at The Friendly Village Credit Union in Membertou County, Nova Scotia, she has to find some way to help pay the bills. Once she starts tidying other people’s houses, she starts stumbling across things that tweak her overabundant curiosity and sense of right and wrong – things like a five-year-old child lost in the woods, and a retired couple killed in a botched home invasion.
Bonnie’s husband, Big Ben Marsden, is skeptical about poking into the corners of other people’s lives. He lost his steady job two years ago and keeps up his half of the mortgage payments by cobbling together odd jobs, some of them so odd he hasn’t mentioned them to his wife. They have three children living away, and a very late surprise package still living at home. Invariably, Ben and the children get drawn into Bonnie’s attempts to suss out what’s going on under the surface.
The surface of the community they live in, like any part of rural Canada, may look bucolic from the highway, but people with several acres between themselves and their nearest neighbours can get up to some strange behaviour without anybody noticing. It’s a place where well-off hobby farmers live just around the corner from people who don’t grow vegetable gardens for a hobby but because they have to, and who make it through their hardscrabble days with humour and grace. Corporal Kowalchuck, the new detachment commander of the local RCMP, is a prairie boy not privy to secrets lurking in the community Bonnie’s lived in all her life. But maybe Corporal Kowalchuck has some secrets of his own.
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Runaway Horses
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95In the middle of the nineteenth century, a dozen young NovaScotian wild riders were an essential link between the capitalsof the Old World and the New. A news syndicate called theAssociated Press made a deal with Cunard Steamship Linesthat the Royal Mail Ships would carry a news packet to betelegraphed to New York City. A steam launch would speed thepacket across the Bay of Fundy to the nearest telegraph station,at Saint John, New Brunwick. But, despite the modern miraclesof steam power and electromagnetism, the fastest way to carrythe news packet from the Halifax docks to the Fundy shorewould still be relays of galloping horses. The Halifax Expressneeded riders who were light in the saddle yet long-limbed andstrong enough to handle the monster thoroughbreds of the day.Seana McCann is a sixteen-year-old Irish immigrant whosefather’s been killed in a far-off war and whose mother sees anescape from potato-grubbing poverty by marrying a wealthyfarmer. It seems clear to Seana that the old farmer’s notjust interested in getting a ready-made family, but in havinga teenage stepdaughter who belongs to him until she turnstwenty-one. But her mother won’t listen to her and intends togo ahead with the marriage. Seana sees no way out, nowhere to run.In another part of the province, a teenage orphan feels that one of the orphanage school priests is taking anunhealthy interest. It seems like a trap with no escape. Then word goes out that a new enterprise called TheHalifax Express is looking for lithe and limber young riders who are good with horses and willing to galloppunishing distances. It seems like an operation that won’t ask too many questions, so long as you can do the job.Maybe a youthful runaway could disappear into the Halifax Express and squirrel away enough wages to have afuture. Maybe even a gawky girl too tall for her age could shear her hair off and pretend to be a boy.Like all of Alfred Silver’s historical novels, Runaway Horsessticks within the historical record and incorporates documentedevents. This story might well have happened exactly as it’s told.A
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Pier 21: An Illustrated History
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95This extraordinary collection of historical photographs and informative text tells the story of one of Canada’s most important historic sites: Pier 21 on the Halifax waterfront. It was through this “Gateway of Hope” that over one million new Canadians passed on their way to a new life in Canada. The facility, which operated continuously from 1928 to 1971, was also the processing site for endless numbers of soldiers, prisoners of war, displaced persons, and refugees as well as “war brides” and “guest children” caught up in the tragic drama of two world wars.
Pier 21: An Illustrated History includes an introductory chapter on Pier 21’s precursor, Pier 2, and its role in Halifax’s development as a strategic port of destination, not to mention its significant contribution to our country’s nationhood, at war and at peace. -
Destination Nova Scotia
Photographer: Albert LeePublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95As Nova Scotia enters the next millennium it is more culturally rich and diverse than could ever have been imagined. It is now the destination for thousands of visitors from around the world who look to its diverse geography and cultural groupings to enrich their travel experience. Destination Nova Scotia details the history and culture of the province and showcases its scenic landscapes.
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The Thundermaker
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Mi’kmaw artist Alan Syliboy’s The Thundermaker is based on Alan’s spectacular mixed-media exhibit of the same name. In the book, Big Thunder teaches his son, Little Thunder, about the important responsibility he has making thunder for his people. Little Thunder learns about his Mi’kmaw identity through his father’s teachings and his mother’s traditional stories. Syliboy’s spectacular, vibrant artwork brings the story of Little Thunder to vivid life.
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Mi’kmaw Animals
Artist: Alan SyliboyPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Alan Syliboy, author of The Thundermaker, showcases his vibrant artwork in this new baby board book. Colourful images depicting Canadian animals like moose, whales, and caribou, and more makes this vibrant book a perfect introduction to the Mi’kmaw language. With English and Mi’kmaw translations for the animal names on every page, babies will enjoy the vivid paintings while they learn new words and discover a bit of Mi’kmaw culture in a fun way.
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Mi’kmaw Daily Drum Mi’kmaw Culture for Every Day of the Week
Artist: Alan SyliboyPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$14.95Mi’kmaq artist Alan Syliboy’s daily drum artworks paired with a different day of the week in an accessible and beautiful baby board book.