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Scottish Lights
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95A wonderful collection of essays by the best-selling author of The Harvest Train and The Irish in Cape Breton. A popular public speaker, A. A. (Tony) MacKenzie brings that same brisk, informed voice to Scottish Lights, casting new light on the Celtic heritage of Cape Breton and Eastern Nova Scotia. He takes us to pioneer settlements and to the heart of Gaelic tradition, to the battles and passions of heroes and bards and scoundrels, both the well-known and those nearly forgotten.
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The Neighbours are Watching
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95Tony MacKenzie is a beloved historian, teacher and storyteller. He has written three bestselling books, The Irish in Cape Breton, The Harvest Train, and Scottish Lights. The Neighbours are Watching is Tony’s first foray into what might be called “fiction”- but readers will recognize the stories as undoubtedly “true.”
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Harvest Train
Publisher: Breton Books$18.95One of Canada’s great adventure stories, when young men went west to work on the booming grain farms of the Prairies. Here are some of the stories and tales
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Historic Bathurst
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95Historic Bathurst offers an intimate look at life as it once was in this northern New Brunswick town. Summoning up its early days with an abundance of archival images, this book presents Bathurst’s past as home of salmon runs, a bountiful lumbering business, and as an important trading post along the remote Bay of Chaleur and documents the changes brought by the early twentieth century. Authur A.J. McCarthy has depicted, in images and words, the history of Bathurst’s people, the great rivers of the region, its streetscapes, bridges, and buildings, as well as its industries such as mining, the pulp mills, and the railway.With over one hundred images, this book is a one-of-a-kind keepsake, bringing back the people, history, and spirit of Bathurst.
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Charting the Darkness
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95American-born fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran, Nick Sullivan, is a broken man. Abandoned for dead by his family while he rotted in a Viet Cong prison camp, Sullivan finds solace in alcohol and flashbacks to war and prison.
The death of a nearly forgotten uncle takes Sullivan to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where he had spent many adolescent summers with his family and all that such a privilege entailed – beaches, fishing and first loves. His uncle’s bequest takes Nick by surprise and, in the process of refurbishing a salvaged sailboat, he too is salvaged.
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Endgame 1758 The Promise, the Despair and the Glory of Louisbourg’s Last Decade
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$26.95The story of what happened at the colonial fortified town of Louisbourg between 1749 and 1758 is one of the great dramas of the history of Canada, indeed North America. The French stronghold on Cape Breton Island, strategically situated near the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, was from soon after its founding a major possession in the quest for empire. The dramatic military and social history of this short-lived and significant fortress, seaport, and community, and the citizens who made it their home, are woven together in A. J. B. Johnston’s gripping biography of the colony’s final decade, presented from both French and British perspectives. Endgame 1758 is a tale of two empires in collision on the shores of mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic Canada, where rival European visions of predominance clashed headlong with each other and with the region’s Aboriginal peoples. The magnitude of the struggle and of its uncertain outcome colored the lives of Louisbourg’s inhabitants and the nearly thirty thousand combatants arrayed against it. The entire history comes to life in a tale of what turned out to be the first major British victory in the Seven Years’ War. How and why the French colony ended the way it did, not just in June and July 1758, but over the decade that preceded the siege, is a little-known and compelling story.
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Thomas: A Secret Life
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Set in early-18th-century France, Thomas: A Secret Life is the imagined life of Thomas Pichon. We first meet Thomas as a twelve-year old in the small town of Vire, Normandy. Precociously sensuous by nature, Thomas is inclined to poetry and religious/erotic imaginings. A series of adolescent adventures provide striking background to his character. Rejecting parental insistence that he become a priest, Thomas steals away to Paris in the middle of the night. There, nearly broke, Thomas works as a lowly office clerk, joins the ranks of aspiring French writers and makes extra money serving as a part-time spy for the police of Paris. But his careers advance too slowly for his liking, and he finds himself taking regular comfort and release in prostitutes’ stalls. A rendezvous with a high-class courtesan brings a new possibility and Thomas plots a future in which he can have his cake and eat it too. Writer, lover, spy: Life is nowhere near as good or as easy as Thomas Pichon imagined it would be.
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The Maze A Thomas Pichon Novel
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Like the streets of his 18th-century Paris home, Thomas Pichon’s life is full of twists and turns. Despite winning his wife’s forgiveness for an extramarital affair, Thomas and his lover, Hélène, are caught a second time, and decide that it’s time for new beginnings – in London. As a writer, Thomas tries to make literary sense of the chaos of the life and language of a city teeming with excitement and danger. Hélène finds her own way out of the maze.
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Crossings: A Thomas Pichon Novel
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$19.95Thomas Pichon seems forever at a crossroads, often choosing the path of least resistance, or at least the one most tempting. In this, the third Thomas Pichon novel, his life remains more complicated than he wishes. He encounters highwaymen on a country road, succumbs to a tempting tryst in the spa town of Bath, squanders a new love back in London and begins to long for the higher social station he once enjoyed.
Returning to Paris, his working life initially stalls, but a new lover offers help. He is given the best position he has ever had, one that requires him to go overseas. The crossing is a voyage neither he nor anyone else aboard will forget.
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Louisbourg Phoenix Fortress
Photographer: Chris ReardonPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95A wonderful photographic look at the fortress accompanied by text that illuminates its history.
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Louisbourg: Reflet d’un Époque
Photographer: Chris ReardonPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95Un merveilleux photographique regarde la forteresse le texte accompagné de qui illumine l’histoire de la forteresse.
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Louisbourg: 18th Century Town
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95Louisbourg: An 18th-Century Town is an in-depth look at what was once a well-known settlement in the New World. As a seaport, Louisbourg possessed one of the busiest harbours in North America. As a fortress, it generated hope in French hearts and fear in British ones. As a community, it was home to thousands of men, women, and children: fishermen and soldiers, merchants and artisans, servants and seamstresses. Voltaire called the colony “the key” to French possessions in North America. Benjamin Franklin described it as a “tough nut to crack.” In the end, British prime minister William Pitt insisted that it be destroyed. Pitt got his wish, yet 200 years later, 18th-century Louisbourg rose again, this time as one of the world’s great outdoor museums.
This well-crafted book, written by historians of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site and teachers of the Cape Breton District School Board, is an entertaining and informative portrait of this 18th-century town. Its well-illustrated pages provide young readers with material on everything from astronomy and gardening to fashions and siege warfare. It offers a rare opportunity to savour what life was really like in a French military town on Cape Breton Island two centuries ago.
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Louisbourg
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95Now a national historic site, the fortified military settlement of Louisbourg was once a colonial jewel desired by both the French and English monarchies, traded with yet feared by the Anglo-Americans, and highly regarded by the Mi’kmaq. Home to Canada’s first lighthouse, Louisbourg became the capital of Île-Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1720, and was an economically viable fishery, military stronghold, and strategic naval base for centuries.
In the newest addition to the Stories of our Past series, Louisbourg: Past, Present, and Future, historian A. J. B. Johnston explores the complex past of the Nova Scotian landmark in an accessible and animated format. Featuring over 50 images, including maps, archaeological excavations, and artistic renderings, Louisbourg illustrates a significant period in Nova Scotia history.
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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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Kings of Friday Night The Lincolns
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Over a span of ten years, The Lincolns played rock ‘n’ roll, R & B, and soul, not just in their hometown of Truro but at dances and on campuses across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They changed the lives of small-town kids clamouring for a beat that would move their feet, their hips, and their hearts. Through interviews, stories, and photos, The Lincolns will stir fond memories for the band’s countless fans.
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Grand-Pré Landscape for the World
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95In 2012 the Landscape of Grand Pré, which includes the entire Grand Pré Marsh and portions of North Grand Pré, Hortonville, Grand Pré, and Lower Wolfville, was declared Nova Scotia’s third UNESCO World Heritage Site. This newest addition to the Stories of our Past series details the area’s physical and cultural evolution in an accessible, highly visual format.
Grand Pré explores the interrelationship of the peoples and landscape of Grand Pré, from the legacies of the dykelands to the record-breaking tides of the Minas Basin. With a focus on the resilient first peoples of Grand Pré—the Mi’kmaq and the Acadians—the book explores the implications of the Grand Dérangement, including the arrival of New England Planters, the twentieth-century Acadian Renaissance, and the creation of the “Land of Evangeline.” Includes informative sidebars and 50 colour photos.
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Grand-Pré: Coeur de L’Acadie
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$16.95Grand-Pré est un toponyme très évocateur, non seulement au Canada, mais partout dans le monde. Les événements qui se déroulent dans ce village acadien vers la fin de l’été et durant l’automne 1755 occupent une place importante dans l’histoire de l’Amérique du Nord.
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Grand-Pré: Heart of Acadia
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95A.J.B. (John) Johnson, a historian with Parks Canada, has published extensively, on French colonial Louisbourg in particular. W.P. (Wayne) Kerr, an interpretation specialist with Parks Canada, has over seen the development of numerous exhibits and projects in Atlantic Canada
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Wild Honey
Publisher: Breton Books$9.95Stark and sensual, funny and frightening by turns, these are poems you can read and read again, for enjoyment and for insight.
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Finding Forgiveness
Publisher: Acorn Press$21.95Adrian Smith was raised in what seemed to be a very traditional, Roman Catholic upbringing. His father, Adrian Smith Sr, was very religious. He had studied to be a priest and left the seminary only 6 months before his ordination. After he left the seminary, Adrian Sr then worked for 30 years as a child psychologist for PEI’s Department of Education. He died at the age of 58 from a brain tumor. A week later after his death, Adrian Jr discovered that his father had been living a lie and that he was homosexual; he had kept it hidden his whole life.
Adrian kept his father’s sexuality a secret until his mother died. At that time, he decided to make a conscious effort to face his and his father’s story. He ended up having travel away from PEI to get counselling to help him get over the lies of his past. He was finally making progress when allegations of sexual abuse against my father surfaced.
The book details a son’s experience with coming to terms with the secrecy and betrayal. But it is also a story of redemption as after years of hard work Smith could finally find forgiveness.
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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.
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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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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. -
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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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.
