8 Beyond the shelf Redefining what it means to “Buy Canadian” by Lynnette Alford
Features 11 Books by Heart
A humanities project explores if stories can heal hearts by Sarah Butland
14 Where poetry meets justice
The inaugural Claire Harris Poetry Prize by Fawn Parker
Publisher’s Corner
16 A monster milestone Monster House Publishing celebrates a decade of imagination in New Brunswick by Meg D. Edwards 20 The Geography of Home
ABOUT THE COVER
30 The Spirit of Scatarie 31 Seven Days in Halifax
32 David Blackwood: Myth and Legend and Black Ice: David Blackwood Prints of Newfoundland
33 A Sense of Things Beyond
Three new cookbooks evoke a sense of community and deliciousness by Gabby Peyton 25 Breathing life into history
The importance of carefully documented and organized photo collections by Heather Fegan 28 Flourishing Indigenous voices sprouting from the land
Books that reflect lived experience by Susan Bernard
Coastal Healing 34 A Door in the Middle of Nowhere 34 Six for Saint-Pierre 35 The Austens 35 The Undesirables 36 The Life of Wanda Robson 36 Nurse Fortescue and Dr. Paddon 37 Ship Moms 37 Let Rise
Editor’s picks
Editor’s picks
Our cover features fiddling sensation Natalie MacMaster, celebrating the release of her remarkable new memoir. I Have a Love Story (MacIntyre Purcell Publishing) marks the first time the Canadian music icon has shared the story of her family life in Cape Breton and Nova Scotia in her own words. She reflects on her relationship with fellow fiddler and husband, Donnell Leahy, and offers an intimate look at balancing a demanding musical career with motherhood, including the joys and challenges of raising their seven children. Cover image: Rebekah Littlejohn Photography
ab
Administrative Assistant
Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association
Heather Fegan
Heather Fegan
Gwen North
Laura Spencer Publisher Managing Director Editor Graphic Designer
Atlantic Books Today is published by the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association (www.atlanticpublishers.ca), which gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of New Brunswick, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia and the Government of PEI. Opinions expressed in articles in Atlantic Books Today do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Board of the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association.
Printed in Canada. This is issue number 102 Fall 25. Atlantic Books Today is published twice a year. All issues are numbered in sequence. Total Atlantic-wide circulation: 40,000. ISSN 1192-3652
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When was the last time you looked at your bookshelf and asked: where did these stories come from? Not just the plot or the characters, but the place. The publishers. The voices. The roots.
In this issue, we’re talking about what it means to reclaim space for Canadian books, and why that matters. Buying local isn’t just about craft beer or homegrown apples; it’s about stories, too. Every time we choose a book from a local author or indie press, we help shape the kind of literary culture we want to thrive. Learn more in our feature story on page eight, which explores how the buy-local momentum, sparked by trade tensions and tariffs, is growing in the book world.
This season, fiddling sensation Natalie MacMaster is turning her attention to the page. Her new memoir, I Have a Love Story, from MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, offers an intimate look at her life and music, and we were lucky enough to catch up with her about it.
We highlight the new Claire Harris Poetry Prize, which amplifies debut poetry collections by poets from Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities. The first winner, Qurat Dar, is being published by icehouse poetry (an imprint of Goose Lane Editions) this fall. Read more about the prize’s beginnings and explore a roundup of fresh poetry releases.
Also inside: a look at Books by Heart, a unique project bringing Atlantic Canadian stories to a hospital cardiac unit to explore what kind of effect communal reading has on patient outcomes.
We’re spotlighting a powerful wave of new Indigenous titles in Atlantic Canada, alongside three new cookbooks that celebrate comfort, community and flavour.
As the holidays approach, consider this: the perfect story makes the perfect gift. Our upcoming Gift Guide will help you discover homegrown books from Atlantic Canadian publishers for everyone on your list— coming soon to your mailbox, a bookstore near you and atlanticbooks.ca.
Until then, happy reading!
—Heather Fegan
Evelyn Strong is the undisputed queen of the bake-off at the Hants County Exhibition—Nova Scotia’s largest and North America’s longest-running agricultural fair. In BakingQueenofthe CountyFair, Evelyn shares her prize-winning recipes— from the flakiest pie crust to the richest chocolate cake. These classic, timetested baked goods will evoke warm memories and guarantee rave reviews!
$29.95 | Paperback | 9781459508170 |
On a bitter winter night during the Second World War, a British freighter smashed into a Halifax Harbour pilot boat, sending nine men to their deaths. Drawing on interviews and years of meticulous research, Rick Grant uncovers the true story of what happened and the official Canadian government cover-up that followed. A perfect book for readers of Second World War history, naval history, and those interested in the human cost of seafaring.
$27.95 | Paperback | 9781459508101
In 1970, a bold public inquiry exposed Halifax’s flawed power structure. Over seven days, twelve outsiders, including a passionate Black pastor, a feisty labour leader, and a fearless journalist, grilled local authorities on their decisions, revealing incompetence, racism, and lies. SevenDaysinHalifax by Robert Ashe revisits this critical event, shedding light on how decisions of the past continue to shape the city today.
$27.95 | Paperback | 9781459508071
This illustrated book draws on newly discovered artifacts –including a 5th-century Roman trade token, an 11th-century Chinese coin and timber from a 12th-century Viking dry dock –that prove a European presence on Oak Island hundreds of years earlier than previously thought. Author Doug Symons explores the likelihood of visits to the island from 500 to 1200 CE by Irish Monks, Vikings and Templars.
$29.95 | Paperback | 9781459507487
Beyond the shelf
AHow publishers, booksellers and readers are redefining what it means to “Buy Canadian”
by Lynnette Alford
cross Atlantic Canada, the buy local movement is visible at farmers’ markets, breweries and even grocery stores. Consumers are proudly choosing Canadian products as a way of investing in local jobs, communities and culture. Books deserve a place in this conversation too. Just as buying Canadian-grown apples or Nova Scotia craft beer supports more than a single transaction, choosing a Canadian-published book sustains a complex system of authors, publishers, booksellers and readers.
Independent bookstores aren’t just retail shops, they’re cultural hubs. In Nova Scotia alone, there are 45 indies, with countless more across the Atlantic provinces. Each of these storefronts represents a place where Canadian publishers and authors can promote their work.
But the stakes are higher than simple commerce. Buying a Canadian-published book supports an entire network: a publisher willing to take a risk on a debut novelist, a bookseller who knows exactly which local history title a newcomer should read and an author whose work depends on a community of local support.
While trade tensions and tariffs may have sparked a wave of consumer nationalism, the appetite for homegrown products has spread well beyond grocery aisles. Earlier this year, a group of Canadian publishers produced branded bookmarks, slipped into books across the country to remind readers their choice matters.
Terrilee Bulger, general manager at Nimbus Publishing in Nova Scotia, worked on the branded bookmark initiative. She said the bookmarks are a way for customers to quickly recognize if a title is from a Canadian author or not. Unlike other products (such as produce or alcohol), it’s hard to identify where a book is from just by the cover.
As she explained, surveys have shown when given the choice, readers are more likely to purchase a book from a local author. So why not make it easier for them to recognize such titles?
This fall, the Association of Canadian Publishers is launching a similar project: the Certified Canadian Publisher Program with a seal emblem readers will soon see on covers, bookstore displays and library shelves.
As the ACP explained, this branding is more than just cosmetic, it’s designed to allow “Canadian-owned and controlled publishers an elegant and easy way to identify themselves to readers, booksellers, librarians and other audiences as Canadian companies.”
Atlantic Canada is home to some of the country’s most influential independent publishers, all deeply invested in ensuring Canadian voices reach Canadian readers. These publishers operate on slim margins, but their cultural weight is outsized. They’re the ones introducing readers to debut authors, producing books that reflect the region’s history and keeping stories alive that larger houses overlook.
From there, independent bookstores are where the Buy Canadian movement takes shape. Shops like Bookmark in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, rely on curating local and Canadian-published titles to stand apart from online giants. They sell books by regional authors, host readings and launches and provide the first point of contact for many new Canadian works.
“I think everyone’s been alarmed at the sharp rise to our south, of voices being silenced and history erased. Canadian authors tell our stories best. If, as Canadians, we don’t read our stories and learn our history, those voices will disappear,” says Lori Cheverie, store manager at Bookmark.
“Bookmark has built a reputation for supporting our local authors and have quite a robust section featuring books by Prince Edward Islanders,” she says. “Our largest sales are in our Island non-fiction. Everyone loves a community history!”
At the King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia, ownership itself is a community effort. Unlike traditional shops run by a single owner, the store is overseen by a board of students and community members who vote on decisions and guide its direction. For Paul MacKay, the store’s manager, this structure is part of what makes the bookstore feel like it belongs to everyone.
“Being run as a co-operative is a huge asset to the bookstore because it ensures multiple voices are heard and considered when making decisions about the business,” MacKay explained via email.
The co-op model also reflects how MacKay sees the readers’ role in sustaining Canadian culture. “We’re all becoming much more conscious about where we choose to
spend our money based on what we believe a business will do with it,” he said.
“Everyone who chooses to support us is an active participant in what the bookstore is and does. We wouldn’t be able to do any of the things we do to try and improve our community without them.”
That sense of participation connects directly to the rising Buy Canadian movement. MacKay notes Canadians are increasingly aware of the importance of valuing their own creators. “As Canadians, we tend to undervalue ourselves and our contributions to the world but due to the recent
Branding by Canadian publishers
Paul MacKay, King’s Co-op Bookstore, Halifax
MUST-READ Fall Books!
Lawless
by Martha Paynter
Becoming an Ally 4th Edition
by Anne Bishop
e author explores the role of allies in the struggle against structural oppressions like racism, sexism and heterosexism.
King’s Co-op Bookstore, Halifax
threats from the U.S. we’re taking a long overdue interest in some of the incredible talent Canada has to offer,” he says.
Martha Paynter explains how abortion is governed in Canada without an abortion law and why experts advocate against one.
It’s a perspective that resonates beyond the bookstore. Across the country, more readers are treating books the same way they treat Canadian beer, wine or produce: as something worth seeking out and supporting because it carries local value. Choosing a Canadian-published title, in other words, is more than a purchase, it’s participation in a national cultural movement.
For some, reading Canadian books hits close to home. “I want to read stories that take place in or are inspired by the cities, towns, communities and places I know of or have visited,” said Atlantic Books Today follower Aren Morris, in a recent online poll.
Policing
Black Lives
Revised & Expanded Ed.
by Robyn Maynard
A comprehensive account of policing Black life in Canada and a vision for Black futures beyond surveillance and con nement.
For others, it’s the range and richness of what Canadian authors bring to the page. As Dawn Baker, a Canadian author herself, explained, “I read books by Canadian authors because of their incredible quality. The diversity of voices in our vast country is astounding.”
Morris echoed this sentiment in her comments as well. “We have such good storytelling happening right here…our people telling our stories.”
Canadian publishing is a complicated system. If Canadian readers don’t support Canadian publishers, authors and booksellers, the voices that define the country risk being drowned out by international markets. By buying a Canadian-published book, readers are voting with their wallets for a stronger, more diverse cultural landscape. They’re ensuring regional stories not only survive but thrive. ■
LYNNETTE ALFORD is a journalism student at the University of King’s College. Lynnette has a love for mystery novels and enjoys spending her free time outdoors.
Books by Heart
A humanities project explores if stories can heal hearts
Dr. Gabrielle Horne
What do a pilot, a doctor and an author have in common? Books by Heart, of course. This public humanities project began as a pilot for the 2022-2023 school year with the Nova Scotia Health’s QEII Health Sciences Centre using the University of King’s College as a testing ground. Now in the implementation stages, Doctor Gabrielle Horne is leading the program from the scientific side, charting the results to prove the impact reading has on mental health.
When Dr. Horne, an avid reader herself, proposed the program which studies the effect book culture has on a patient, the response was resoundingly positive. Including staff, patients, students and public was an easy ask during the ever-growing project. With Jon Tattrie of Write Now! hosting meetups called Heart to Hearts, an in-ward component of the study, and Kings College students being asked to review the available books, the impact has been evident and widespread.
Stories for healing hearts
Cardiac patients enrolled in the program, along with their families and caregivers, can access a collection of free Atlantic Canadian eBooks and audiobooks for one year while their quality of life is surveyed to determine if
by Sarah Butland
a communal bibliotherapy approach can bolster patient’s self-efficacy and reduce anxiety and depression.
The program provides all inpatients with access to a tablet linked to a local Wi-Fi network to access books authored by Atlantic Canadian authors.
Being invited into the project, Jon Tattrie was touched. “That project really spoke to me. My dad was a chaplain at the hospital for a lot of years and then he had a heart attack and was on that cardiac ward, so combining those two things was pretty amazing.”
Dr. Horne realized the amount of stress, anxiety and depression patients experienced after a first physical cardiac episode and the life-saving surgery that often follows. After the necessary medical measures, the emotional and mental stress on each patient was often overlooked due to the chaotic circumstances of a hospital setting.
Any heart issue will be traumatic for a patient, and surviving such an experience leaves a person wanting to remain centered, seen, grounded and calm during the chaos of tests, beeps and urgency. Dr. Horne understands that books bring her peace and has been eager to learn the effects of providing selected reading material to the people she treats while on the ward and for months following their discharge.
This study addresses both the literal heart and the metaphorical heart, going beyond physical well-being to ensure mental and emotional health, too. The in-ward meetings Tattrie hosts are unscripted and do not depend on the audience having read the book. Instead, they are about
stories and connection, with the objective of alleviating concerns of their sudden life changes. With the focus on storytelling, hope and resilience is a common theme the organizers of the project trust will resonate.
“Books are powerful, books are healing, and it’s important to look beneath that, to understand what stories are and why they matter,” says Tattrie. “Being able to see the person and understand them as more than a patient with a heart problem is a step in healing the whole person.” Books by Heart aims to leave positive memories of their time in the hospital where otherwise they may be focused on the stress and strain of the medical system. This is a lowcost program with extremely valuable objectives.
Getting patients to take advantage of the study has been a crucial aspect of this program. While having the books available is wonderful, ensuring they are read is another. In July, Tattrie and Tareq Hadhad (the subject of Tattrie’s own book, Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada, which is part of the Books by Heart Collection) met at the QEII cardiac ward to speak with the current patients and staff in a private book club experience. They hope to host more events soon.
“It was one of the best experiences I’ve had as a writer,” Tattrie admits. Bringing the experience to the ward made
Jon Tattrie (left) and Tareq Hadhad.
“Books are powerful, books are healing, and it’s important to see beneath that to understand what stories are and why they matter”
for easier access and a more personable approach. Dr Horne has been curious as to how each patient experiences books and stories in general while in the hospital and in their long-term recovery. “We see this as part of bringing book culture to the hospital, to see if it really can improve health outcomes for patients, chiefly by lowering depression,” says Tattrie.
The Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association helps ensure a diverse selection is made available and includes books that highlight local history, inspirational stories and more. Dr. Horne appreciates the unique ways books ensure readers become better humans and provide opportunities for discussions between staff and patients.
Dr. Horne’s hope is that her patients will continue reading once they go home to avoid the common crash
of depression and anxiety with such a change to their way of life.
Nicole Ponto is a research manager involved with the project. “I am shocked at the levels and severity of mental health scores in these populations,” she says. “It really does prove to me that projects like these are needed. It seems very plausible that introducing something cost-effective and easily accessible could provide a lot of good without larger costs associated with it.” ■
SARAH BUTLAND lives in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and previously spent many years exploring the streets of Moncton, NB, collecting stories and memories and meeting interesting people. She’s the author of Losing it at 40 and Gaining it at 41.
Where poetry meets justice
Goose Lane Editions and icehouse poetry to publish inaugural Claire Harris Poetry Prize winner
by Fawn Parker
In late 2023, Goose Lane Editions announced the foundation of the Claire Harris Poetry Prize—a biennial prize awarded for a collection of poetry written by a poet who is Black, Indigenous or from another racialized community. Claire Harris, the prize’s namesake, was a Black Trinidadian poet, mentor and editor whose own work is known for addressing themes of colonial and postcolonial injustice, and violence against and oppression of racialized women.
The inaugural winner, Qurat Dar, was awarded the Claire Harris Poetry Prize for their collection Non-Prophet, just released by icehouse poetry (an imprint of Goose Lane Editions) in September of this year.
“When I submitted to the Claire Harris Poetry Prize, I was sure I wasn't going to win—I just wanted the opportunity to have Kazim Ali read my poetry!” says Dar. “I hadn’t submitted the manuscript anywhere else and wasn’t planning to for at least a year or two because it didn’t feel ‘ready’. Winning the prize and seeing Non-Prophet published has meant the world to me, a reminder that my work and my voice are valued. I learned so much through the editing process that I will carry forward in my writing. I’m so deeply thankful that this prize exists, and for all the possibilities it has brought me.”
I spoke with Susanne Alexander, Publisher at Goose Lane Editions, about the Claire Harris Poetry Prize and Qurat Dar’s new collection.
ABT: I’m wondering if you might be able to talk about the motivations behind founding the Claire Harris Poetry Prize.
SA: The poetry board, at the time composed of Ross Leckie, Jim Johnstone, Kirby, Michael Prior and Annick MacAskill took notice of the fact that icehouse poetry was not receiving a significant number of submissions from racialized poets and were trying to figure out how to address this issue. They realized that it was in part resulting from the composition of the board (which they also addressed) and in part because, they believed, the submission process may have been perceived to be unwelcoming. The prize was developed to address two major gaps in submissions: submissions by first-book authors and submissions by racialized writers who have perceived that icehouse poetry was not interested in their work.
ABT: It’s great that the prize is targeted toward debuts. Could you speak about how that decision was made?
SA: There was lots of discussion about the focus of the prize, if the prize should be targeted and how the decision would be made. There were many meetings, numerous iterations of how the prize could be managed, lots of discussion about mentorship of young poets, about how the prize could be funded and how often it would be offered.
The board met frequently to sort out these issues and, in the end, decided that the prize should address gaps in the icehouse poetry list and historic gaps in poetry publishing in the country. Once the focus of the prize was settled, the decision to name the prize the Claire Harris Poetry Prize seemed like a logical choice. Claire Harris, an important voice in Canadian poetry, published almost all her collections through Goose Lane Editions (Goose Lane even reissued her two early Wolsak & Wynne collections). She was a mentor to many poets at formative stages in their careers and she was an adventurous poet, whose work still seems so very current, in both form and content. What’s more, her estate was happy to grant us permission to name the prize in her honour.
ABT: I would love to hear more about the inaugural winner, Qurat Dar, and her collection Non-Prophet.
SA: Qurat Dar’s debut collection, Non-Prophet, gives voice to the “Non-Prophet,” the sometimes-heretic, sometimes-believer. The collection grapples with revelations we lack the language for and personal gods in whom we have lost faith. At turns stifling and expansive, despairing and hopeful, these poems explore the intersections of devotion and doubt, the monstrous and the divine. The following stanzas excerpted from the poem, “ Tayammum” provide a good example of the collection as the speaker reckons with the Muslim traditions they were raised in:
When my mother was expecting me, she dreamt of the Holy Book and was so radiant, with the splendor of a new moon, every generous passerby was certain she’d be blessed with a son.
My great-aunt dreamt me, holding a lantern, as if to lead the way I’d lost. Maybe she knew the duas still find themselves in my throat midnightmare. The verses I cling to without knowing their metre or meaning, given more power from their nebulous murk like the terrors I wield them against. I move from one ignorance to another.
I shed my holiness like a second skin, cast off the vestments of lineage. Urdu tastes something like grief, the language melting from me like a dream in daylight. Every word has an unmarked grave. All I am is disturbed ground. I close my eyes and turn to dust.
Her poems grapple with complex intersections of identity, including being Muslim, South Asian, queer and Canadian, exploring how these layered identities interact with broader systems of power. Kazim Ali, the juror for this year’s award, describes her collection as follows: “These gorgeous and heartfelt lyrics speak of quintessentially human experiences and are very much in the spirit of Claire Harris’s bold and innovative work.” ■
FAWN PARKER is a novelist and poet based in Fredericton, NB.
Additional reading
Spring Theory
Wanda Campbell Pottersfield Press
The Reign
Shane Neilson icehouse poetry, an imprint of Goose Lane Editions
Spells Against the Darkness: Verses of Quiet Magic
Roderick MacDonald Pownal Street Press
Creating in Dangerous Times
Celeste Nazeli
Snowber
HARP Publishing
A monster milestone
Monster House Publishing celebrates a decade of imagination in New Brunswick
by Meg D. Edwards
Publisher Paul McAllister says he struggled to learn to read as a child but was inspired to become an author when author Sherry Fitch visited his school. Fitch told the children that they could all be writers. “That was the first catalyst,” says McAllister, that led him on his path from a creative kid with ADHD and dysgraphia to author and founder of Monster House Publishing, celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.
Another pivotal moment came when McAllister, working as an actor, found himself at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, the iconic bookstore that has traditionally invited visiting writers, called ‘tumbleweeds’, to sleep in one of the beds set up in corners of the bookstore. McAllister charmed his way into a free night by promising that he was going to be published soon so when he returned home, he felt he had to live up to his promise, and he got to work on pursuing his dream, publishing a book.
As a member of children’s theatre troupe the Calathumpians, McAllister knew that his passion was storytelling for children, so he felt it was a natural progression to write a children’s book. And he did, in fact, have an idea for a children’s story that “had been rolling around in his head for a while.”
McAllister’s first book, There and Back Again, A Herman Tale, is a story about a monster who tires of living under a bed and bravely heads out into the world to join the street monsters. “I made it up on the spot years ago”, says McAllister. “What I noticed when I wrote it down was that it was actually a bit of a parallel to my journey so far.”
McAllister found local illustrator Emily Brown and took his idea to Indigo Publishing. “We sold out the first thousand books in the first couple of months,” says McAllister. “I was like, hmmm, maybe there is something to this.” McAllister’s success was in part due to his public persona as the manager of the Capital Complex and owner of Feels Good, an arts event management company. Moreover, his experience as a promoter came into play when he created a “little video” to help advertise the book. “People jumped on and supported,” says McAllister.
McAllister’s success at publishing his first book led to people in his circle coming to him for advice about publishing books of their own, and that was the final stage of his career path solidifying as a publisher. “I never expected this to happen, really,” says McAllister, whose publishing company Monster House has now published twenty-five books.
McAllister enjoys running the company and still having time to write. The fourth Herman Monster book was published last fall and he has the next couple of books plotted out.
Literacy is very important to McAllister who feels that his teachers were instrumental in making him the man he is
today. McAllister believes that writing and publishing books for children is “a unique opportunity to ‘do good’, which I think, is very cool.” ■
MEG D. EDWARDS is a writer living in Baie Verte, NB. She writes plays and poetry, and her personal essays can be read on her blog, Notes from a Sinking Isthmus.
Herman the Monster Adventures
Left: Paul McAllister with staff at the grand opening of the Monster House Publishing showroom. Right: Paul McAllister in front of the Canada Stand at the Bologna Children's Book Fair.
Love notes
Q & A with Natalie MacMaster
by Marjorie Simmins
When you have been asked in every single media interview you’ve done for decades, “How do you do it all?” (cringe, guilty as charged), you might think there’s an easier way to answer the question. To address a lot of questions, in fact.
I Have a Love Story, a personal history written by fiddling superstar Natalie MacMaster, provides answers to many of the questions journalists and fans have about the musician and her family, husband and fiddling luminary Donnell Leahy and the couple’s seven children. The book (from MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc., with 160 pages), is beautifully designed with a generous number of colour palettes. These tell a vivid story of their own, as do the family recipes that are included. Overall, MacMaster offers an in-depth look at her family and spiritual life, and musical career.
In the end, you’ll know a lot more about how MacMaster juggles so much, so well. You’ll also understand her need to write about enduring, uplifting love in its many forms.
MS: When did you decide to write a personal life story?
NM: The idea came to me seven years ago, after a conversation with my mum about some bad news in Cape Breton. I was shocked, then I was feeling so down about the future of my kids. I knew I had to elevate love [over despair]. I wrote the story in the last three years.
MS: Would you call your book a memoir?
NM: It’s not really a memoir. It was something I had to get out of me. I wrote my heart out. I feel the beauty of the world so much and I wanted to pass it on.
MS: You are a musician. How did you find the writing process?
NM: Well, I wrote it on my iPhone, with my thumbs! I don’t have a computer and I don’t type. I’d write whenever I could in the daytime or even in the middle of the night. Donnell was so supportive and the ongoing support of my publisher was crucial. The editor helped me find the bigger, better picture of my whole life. That was so important.
MS: Your book is a love story—a love of family and music, but also a love of Cape Breton, your parents, the early years in music and your fellow musicians, from Cape Breton and around the world. How did you feel as you were writing the book?
NM: I felt all sorts of things. I felt the drive to write the story. It went beyond anything I’ve experienced before. I felt a burning love to get the story written, and also to express a love of the moment. The story is a testament to
I Have a Love Story
Natalie MacMaster
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.
what I’ve been shown in my life. It’s also a positive view of marriage and motherhood, which have been such good experiences for me. I wanted to share that.
MS: You homeschool your children. How do you find that experience?
NM: The homeschool world in Lakefield, Ontario, is awesome, so supportive. I also have a BA in Education. And we live on a farm. As the kids get older there’s farm work, caring for the animals and music lessons. I split the teaching responsibilities with a retired teacher. I’d pick the homeschooling option again in a heartbeat.
MS: Do all the children play music?
NM: Yes. Fiddle, piano and other instruments, and they step-dance. Our two oldest, Mary Frances and Michael, are performing with us in up to 75 shows a year [with the other kids on stage less often]. Clare and Julia love to sing. Alec gravitates towards the drums, fiddling and step-dancing. Sadie dances, sings, plays piano and fiddles—in her own adorable way. Maria, the youngest, has started on the fiddle, piano, dancing and singing.
MS: How would you describe Donnell’s fiddling style?
NM: Donnell is very acrobatic on the fiddle! He has perfect control and virtuosity and gives a very physical performance. When he’s on the stage, he’s on fire. Music has given me a passion; it stirs my soul and challenges me. I believe Donnell and I wouldn’t be together without music. Or [that I’d have] my kids. Music fuels my creativity, my love, my everything. It’s been my lifelong companion. ■
MARJORIE SIMMINS is a journalist, author and teacher who specializes in personal narratives and biographies.
Poems for a lost time
An excerpt from The Geography of Home by Dr. Ed MacDonald
Much has been written about the place of the general store in the Island’s past. They are practically extinct now, but in the pre-auto, pre-pavement era, there were scores of them scattered across the countryside. They served a commercial purpose, of course, but they were a clearing house for news as well as consumer goods. At one time there were three stores within walking distance of our farm in Newport, but by the 1960s, there was only one, Fay’s, later Fitzpatrick’s, General Store, which was located at the foot of the old ferry wharf. Having no regular allowance to spend, we kids could generally only look and long. Indeed, our father often left us in the truck on fine days while he went inside to pick up some small item. We did our best to amuse ourselves, but there was only so long you could admire the weathervane on the Sigsworths’ barn.
There is another, perhaps darker dimension of pride at work in this poem. To have a case of the “I wants” was as much frowned upon in the world of my childhood as unnecessarily accepting anyone’s perceived charity. The first might merit a verbal rebuke; the second went loudly un-spoken. As was frequently the case in that vanished culture, what was not said mattered more and could hurt more than a blow. L. M. Montgomery praised that quality of taciturn reticence as a kind of dignified reserve.
Other observers have diagnosed it as a manifestation of repression. As the poem relates, I cannot recall exactly what I bought with my twentyfive cents, but I can tell you what you could have afforded in the 1960s: a chocolate bar (5¢), a bag of potato chips (5¢), and a bottle of pop (12¢)—with 3¢ in change. You could have bought some bubble-gum with what was left, but bubble-gum was banned in our household. My mother was convinced it caused cold sores. ■
Historian Edward MacDonald’s new book The Geography of Hope: Poems for a Lost Time speaks to growing up on PEI in the 1950s to 1970s and pairs prose introductions with poems. There are also 14 archival black-and-white photos from the period.
no quarter
A life is made up of small things. I remember long ago sitting in my father’s truck at Fitzpatrick’s Store, wishing out loud for my quarter.
The hired man from my father’s boat smiled and reached into his pocket and pushed a silver coin into my hand. My father sat silent.
Too late I saw the dark fury in his face.
He had no patience even then, and I thought he was cross to have to wait. For I was a child, and did not know the price of pride.
He idled the truck while I darted inside, then we drove back home in awful silence.
My father never spoke a word.
After, I slunk to some quiet corner. What did I buy, you ask? I forget. Chips? A bar? Candy cigarettes? They tasted like sawdust in my mouth. And I taste them yet.
Island Studies Press
The former general store in Newport as it appeared in 2013. It has since been demolished. The old ferry wharf and the Cardigan River are just visible in the background. Photo courtesy of Island artist/photographer Wilna Clark Gerami.
Photo: Wilna Clark
The PWHL and the women who changed the game
An excerpt from Breakaway by Karissa Donkin
(edited for length)
Afew months after the 2018 Winter Olympics, Jill Saulnier had walked into a Halifax hardware store with a broken silver medal in her purse, hoping to find something to glue it back together. That year, she had become one of the first two Nova Scotians to make the Canadian women’s Olympic hockey team. It was an accomplishment, but it wasn’t a happy ending. Saulnier had come home to Halifax feeling like she’d let her country down after the Canadians lost the gold medal to the Americans in a shootout.
Saulnier left home years ago, playing elite hockey in Massachusetts and Toronto and at Cornell University, but she’ll always be a Maritimer. With that comes pride. In an often-overlooked part of the country, one person’s achievement belongs to everyone. It wasn’t until she came back home and started seeing how people reacted to the silver medal that Saulnier began to feel proud of the second-place finish. “You never dream as a hockey player to go to the Olympics and win a silver medal,” she said in an interview in 2022. “That’s not the face that I ever expected to see in the mirror. To see the happiness and the excitement of others when they got to wear it was pretty cool, and I think that’s when my sights and my view on it kind of turned.” She realized that her biggest disappointment could bring a lot of joy to a place that had done a lot for her, and she made a promise to herself to get that medal into as many hands as possible. She wanted people to try on the medal, to bite it if they wanted. She felt it belonged to them just as much as it did to her. One night, at an event at the casino in Halifax, one woman was too shy to put the medal on. Saulnier urged her to wear it, telling her it would look better on her. A photographer captured what happened next, frame by frame, when the medal fell, rolled around on the floor of the casino, and broke. The woman felt awful, but Saulnier didn’t. She was just happy the medal had brought so much joy to people in a place she loves. That’s at the heart of
what she’s done in this province since then, whether it’s organizing a charity hockey game for a family who lost seven children in a house fire in 2019 or, after finally getting that Olympic gold medal she dreamed about in 2022, starting a foundation to benefit various causes around the province.
Winning gold gave Saulnier a confidence her mother hadn’t seen in her before. It stood out to Christine Brennan when she watched her daughter give a Chamber of Commerce speech in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, a few months after winning gold. Saulnier talked about her role on the team: to lift up her teammates. “It’s like anything else can happen now,” Brennan said. “She’s good. She’s golden. She doesn’t have to stress about anything. She has it.” But a few months later, when the PWHPA tour visited her home province in November 2022, Saulnier was chasing one goal: to create the league the players had been working toward since 2019.
Even though Saulnier was an Olympic gold medallist, reaching the highest pinnacle in her sport, it didn’t mean she was set for life. Saulnier won gold on the national team’s fourth line. She wasn’t Poulin, the player people looked to in overtime. Her role was more about supporting her teammates in whatever way they needed her or giving her team some extra energy on the ice. It’s a role that doesn’t always come with job security. A few months after winning gold, she didn’t make Team Canada’s world championship team. She found herself juggling hockey with a new career in real estate and taking a program at Harvard on the side, trying to find different ways to make a living. “We get up in the morning. We train,” Saulnier said during the PWHPA’s Nova Scotia showcase. “We try to be the best in the world at hockey, but we also have to be the best in the world to make money and to be able to live as well. It’s a lot of balls in the air. But the best people in the world can juggle.”
Such is life as a female pro hockey player. ■
Goose Lane Editions
Comfort mood
Three new cookbooks evoke a sense of community and deliciousness
by Gabby Peyton
There’s a reason there are candles with bacon and warm bread scents. Those warm comfort food smells bring to mind fond memories and delicious meals shared with friends and family. Cookbooks evoke many of the same emotions, hence their widespread appeal. They present delicious recipes and create an emotional connection, but they are also accessible, universally appreciated and tap into that trendy nostalgia.
Three home kitchens, three delicious cookbooks and three authors who were all discovered in different ways, but with a very similar focus—to nourish, to comfort and to share their beloved recipes with readers. These three new cookbooks are filled with comfort, recipes and emotional connection.
Photo courtesy of MacIntyre Pucell Publishing Inc.
That Cinnamon Roll Lady strikes again
For her third and final book in the Tunes & Wooden Spoons trilogy, cookbook author Mary Janet MacDonald put out an open call for grandchildren to submit their grandmothers’ recipes. More than 150 nominations came in, and the resulting cookbook, accompanied by photographs by Mary Janet’s daughter Margie MacDonald, is Tunes & Wooden Spoons: Come In, the Kettle’s On.
Informally known as “That Cinnamon Roll Lady”, Mary Janet garnered internet fame when she started livestreaming from her Cape Breton kitchen during COVID in 2021. Mary Janet’s Tunes and Wooden Spoons Facebook page now has over 65,000 food lovers who follow her life in Cape Breton and all the delicious things she’s whipping up in the kitchen.
The new comfort food-filled work celebrates the joy of visiting and sharing homemade food with loved ones. The book contains 41 recipes from 39 grandmothers and two grandfathers, each detailing a recipe, the recipe author’s story and recounting the visit they had with Mary Janet and Margie over the course of five months across the Maritimes.
There are six sections of recipes to be devoured, along with images of all the grandparents and Mary Janet. From muffins to quick meals and dips to preserves, there’s a whole lot of comfort food. There’s a recipe for Lemon Blueberry Custard Pie by Elizabeth Beaton, known as “The Pie Lady” at the Mabou Farmer’s Market, and a namesake recipe for Rita’s Rolls, a homey bread roll recipe by 102-year-old Rita Landry from the Acadian village of Pomquet, Nova Scotia.
It all starts with Jiggs Dinner
In another kitchen across the Cabot Strait, a Newfoundland home cook also found fame on social media—in a video about Jiggs Dinner. Heather Brown lives in Mount Pearl, NL, and is known on social media as Mrs. Brown. Across her social media channels, “Mrs. Brown’s Kitchen” has over a million
Beef Ramen for Two
This 20-minute, one-pan meal is easily customizable. While I have used chicken and steak strips, ground beef is my favourite.
INGREDIENTS
1 lb (908 g) ground beef
2 – 85 g packs of ramen (I use Mr. Noodles)
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
2 tbsp (30 mL) beef bouillon
1 cup (250 mL) water
Green onion and sesame seeds to garnish
METHOD
1. Brown ground beef and drain grease.
2. Add peppers and beef bouillon.
3. Pour in 1 cup (250 mL) of water, stir and bring to a simmer.
4. Nestle ramen noodles in the centre of the pan. Cover and leave for 2-3 minutes.
5. Turn noodles to soak the other side in the liquid. Cover and leave for an additional 2-3 minutes.
6. Mix noodles, beef and peppers together.
7. Garnish with green onion and sesame seeds.
followers. She posted a video in 2021 about how to make Jiggs Dinner, and almost five years later, Mrs. Brown’s Kitchen: Measure with Your Heart was published.
Brown is a big fan of “measuring with your heart” and encourages home cooks to salt, season and sauce how they like. You’ll find QR codes dotted throughout the book, a clever way to welcome the author into your kitchen and add a little extra video instruction to the recipes.
The recipes featured range from classic Newfoundland cooking, like pease pudding, to easy weeknight dinners like Beef Ramen for Two. There are unique takes on traditional fare like Jiggs Dinner Pie, a pastry shell filled with the
leftover Jiggs Dinner components called “couldns”— which is “the food you couldn’t finish”—and a copycat section where she showcases recipes for the elusive Big Mac Sauce and Rice-a-Roni at Home.
The Baking Queen extends her reign to cookbooks
Evelyn Strong’s nickname “Baking Queen” is more than a moniker—it’s a true title, at least in the baking competition world. She’s the most decorated baker ever from the Hants County Exhibition in Windsor, Nova Scotia. The agricultural
Jiggs Dinner
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
fair, held every September over two weekends, also happens to be the oldest one of its kind in Canada (it’s been running since 1765, before Canada was even a country).
It was when a publisher saw a feature in The Globe and Mail in 2023 about the annual baking competition at the fair that they reached out to Strong about writing a cookbook. Strong has been baking her whole life; in fact, she admits in the introduction that she doesn’t even remember when she popped her first pie in the oven.
Strong has been winning ribbons at the fair since the 1960s, and now her prize-worthy recipes are compiled in Strong’s inaugural cookbook, Baking Queen of the County Fair: Recipes from Nova Scotia’s most decorated baker. Her submissions are never frozen, and she enters up to 40 items every year.
Inside, you’ll find recipes for her mother’s molasses cookies, date squares and her prize-winning shortbread. There’s also pie or tart dough, a loaves and breads section (which includes East Coast favourite, raisin bread) and recipes like Cottage Pudding. A note on ingredients at the beginning of the book characterizes her methodology well: “Butter is always salted,” “Molasses is always Crosby’s” and one thing can be certain; Strong’s recipes are always winning. ■
GABBY PEYTON is a food and travel writer based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, obsessed with cheese, historical fiction and planning her next trip—to eat.
Tunes & Wooden Spoons: Come In, the Kettle’s On Mary Janet MacDonald & Margie MacDonald
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.
Mrs. Brown’s Kitchen: Measure with your Heart
Heather Brown
Flanker Press Ltd.
Baking Queen of the County Fair: Recipes from Nova Scotia’s most decorated baker
Evelyn Strong
Formac Publishing
Photo courtesy of Formac Publishing
For many, history lives not just in textbooks, but in the soil beneath their feet, on the land that raised them and in the stories passed down across generations. Photojournalist Darren Calabrese grew up surrounded by stories, living and working on a 400-acre property that generations of his family before him had also called home.
“I kind of grew up with property and land and place being as much a part of my family as another family member,” Calabrese said.
This intimate bond with place is something many Atlantic Canadians share, and it’s through organized photo collections that these personal histories, once spoken around kitchen tables or felt under worn work boots, can be preserved, shared and brought vividly to life. Photographs, when thoughtfully gathered and cared for, don’t just freeze time, they give it breath again.
Calabrese wrote his own book, Leaving Good Things Behind, a collection of curated photographs and archival images, with personal essays on family, coming home, loss and his experiences exploring the region woven throughout.
“I grew up hearing stories about all the things that happened on that property, of people who I knew that were real, and people who were descendants of my family, and I grew up very fortunate that our family had a pretty extensive archive of photographs.” For Calabrese, it’s those photographs that made those stories that much more real. “I never met my great-uncle Ernest. I know all the stories that he had, but we have these incredible photographs of him that made me understand him so much more. I digested a lot of our history through those pictures.”
Just as storytelling through images is powerful, so too is the act of preserving those stories through organized photo collections.
“I envy really well-curated and documented projects
Breathing life into history
The importance of carefully documented and organized photo collections
by Heather Fegan
of photography because my relationship with historical pictures and our family photographs has been totally scattered,” says Calabrese. “They lived in literally a 150-year-old suitcase that belonged to my great-aunt Greta. And it always kind of became my role to sort through them and catalog them, and I’ve discovered I’m really bad at that. When you see somebody with a great understanding of how photographs speak together and live together, it makes the individual pictures so much more important, but it makes the greater messaging of what all those photographs are together as a group.”
Calabrese believes documented and organized photo collections make old photos relevant again. “It provides the opportunity for the reader now to be discovering those photographs to help them understand those histories, just like how I spoke about my family histories, that I was really able to digest them visually. And so by creating and having these new collections, it’s that cliché of breathing life into those histories again, in a new format, in a new book, and the people who are curating them are able to bring their voice and their understanding of them, which makes us maybe see those photographs a bit differently.”
Such carefully documented and organized photo collections help preserve the cultural and historical relationships between people, stories and landscape. Here are two new Atlantic Canadian photo books breathing new life into history.
Leaving Good Things Behind
Darren Calabrese McClelland & Stewart
Photo: courtesy of Leaving Good Things Behind
IT WAS EARLY DAYS OF HOME MOVIES WHEN
Newfoundland businessman Gerald S. Doyle purchased a Ciné-Kodak camera at Macy’s in New York City in 1938. Though film for the camera was expensive and had to be sent to Kodak for processing, and there was no sound, early home movies had one significant advantage: Kodachrome. Twenty years before colour snapshots became common, amateurs could capture movies in Kodachrome’s rich tones.
Doyle’s new movie camera became his constant companion during his travels around Newfoundland. With a keen, observant eye, he recorded life in Newfoundland outports over more than twenty years through the immediacy of a focused lens. The 300-plus photographs in this book are frames extracted from those colour films, laser-scanned for high resolution. These images invite readers to accompany Doyle as he sailed into tiny, isolated communities and documented a bygone era centred on the sea. The pictures chronicle a people during the last days of Newfoundland as an independent nation and the early days of being a Canadian province, from 1938 to 1955.
Step into the sunny long ago with a patriot who loved his country. Gerald S. Doyle’s photographs will intrigue those curious about Newfoundland life as they explore one man’s remembrance of things past.
In the Sunny Long Ago
A photo album of old Newfoundland
Edited by John W. Doyle
Photos by Gerald S. Doyle
Foreword by Marjorie Doyle Flanker Press
THIS BOOK ON THE ACADIANS OF PRINCE
Edward Island shows the cultural and historical importance of carefully documented and organized collections of photos. From some points of view this book is like an old-fashioned family album, except that it illustrates the ordinary life of not just one but many Acadian families.
Nowadays, hundreds of unidentified photos tend to pile up in our computers and telephones. This book on the Acadians of Prince Edward Island shows the cultural and historical importance of carefully documented and organized collections of photos. From some points of view this book is like an old-fashioned family album, except that it illustrates the ordinary life of not just one but many Acadian families. In most cases, the photos are informal snapshots taken by Acadians themselves over a time period stretching from the late 1800s to the 1960s. All these snapshots take us back to the olden days of large families and subsistence farming when the church was the centre of village life. Georges Arsenault has created a fascinating portrait of Island Acadians of yesteryear ■
HEATHER
FEGAN is the editor of Atlantic
Books
Today, the executive director of the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association, a published author and freelance writer.
L’Acadie de L’Iledu-Prince Édouard: Images du passé / The Acadians of Prince Edward Island: Images From the Past Georges Arsenault Acorn Press
Flourishing Indigenous sprouting from the land
by Susan Bernard
Picture books, fiction, documentary history and essay and poetry collections that reflect lived experience
2025 has been a huge year for Indigenous literature. Mi'kmaw and Wəlastəkwew authors across the Atlantic provinces are publishing invigorating titles from fiction to non-fiction to children’s books that accentuate our connection with wskitqumu (the Earth). These books weave together landscape and identity: traditional places embedded with stories, how the land is a reflection of our internal world, finding community in an urban landscape and the detrimental effects of being displaced from traditional territory.
Every Indigenous territory has stories that mirror ecological phenomena from that area. These stories are embedded into the land. Award-winning Mi'kmaw poet Rebecca Thomas (Halifax Poet Laureate from 2016 to 2018) writes of traditional stories from Mi'kma'ki and emphasizes the importance of using traditional place
names of Turtle Island (North America) in her new book, Sem’s Map. Sem is a young boy going to school for the first time and is met with confusion when he sees a map of Turtle Island but with place names different than what he’s used to.
Stories connect us to the land, but the land can also be a story of ourselves, a reflection into our internal world.
Danica Roache’s debut novel, Five Seasons of Charlie Francis, is an inspiring and gritty story of a Mi'kmaw woman balancing the stress of life in her small town of Cobequid Bay. The thick mudflats of the receding bay mirror Charlie's internal struggle as she deals with grief, motherhood and the intense pressure of academia. It’s a brave novel that navigates cultural identity with humour.
Preserving cultural identity as an Indigenous person can be difficult in an urban landscape but Mi'kmaw author
Theresa Meuse demonstrates their resources in her new children’s book The Friendship Centre. These centres are vital and can be found in every big city from Vancouver to Halifax. The cultural activities offered, such as drumming, traditional cooking and language classes, are ways to build community. Meuse shows friendship centres are welcoming and a home away from home for Indigenous Peoples in the city. Having a connection to where you live is vital to well-being and being displaced from traditional territory causes detrimental effects. Wəlastəkwey author Andrea Bear Nicholas writes in Bilijk a thorough history of the Wəlastəkwey community Bilijk. Bear Nicholas adapts a story from oral traditions and further enriches it with archival documents, maps and photographs. This non-fiction begins with early mid-18th century history, then focuses on the forced centralization and highlights the harmful impact of colonization. Bear Nicholas demonstrates reverence in retelling a part of history from the Wəlastəkwey Nation. We are seeing flourishing Indigenous voices at the forefront this fall with titles that bring awareness to Indigenous culture, identity and connect us back to nature. They are a great way to educate and grow understandings from our territory straight from the voices of Mi'kmaw and Wəlastəkwew Peoples. We read their stories sprouted from the land onto paper. ■
SUSAN BERNARD is a Mi'kmaw writer and storyteller from Membertou, Unama'ki.
Additional Reading
Bad Indians Book Club
Patty Krawek
Goose Lane Editions
Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec explores Indigenous identity and resistance through literature, weaving flash fiction, discussions and marginalized voices to challenge colonial narratives and imagine new, liberated worlds shaped by diverse storytelling
Tethered Spirits - Wiaqtaqne'wasultijik na Kjijaqmijinaq
Corinne Hoebers
OC Publishing
Against the violent backdrop of the French and Indian (Seven Years) War, two German siblings come to learn about and understand the Mi'kmaq in this historical novel that explores the complexities of colonialism, cultural identity and the struggle for land in the mid1700s, highlighting the intersecting lives of the Mi'kmaq and German settlers.
Poussiéreuse
Jessica Gagnon
Éditions Perce-Neige
Wolastoquiyik poet Jessica Gagnon’s powerful debut poetry collection draws on her anger and hope to deconstruct the stereotypes and denounce the injustices that persist despite flawed reconciliation efforts, exposing every colour and tone in its language, helping to restore light into the landscape.
Goose Lane Editions
Nimbus Publishing
Nimbus Publishing
Vagrant Press
Reviews
Brand new fiction from Lesley Crewe
The Spirit of Scatarie is the kind of novel Lesley Crewe’s loyal readers love. It’s rooted in Nova Scotia and filled with independent characters—living and dead—who power through troubles with compassion, verve and the help of friends.
These days, Scatarie is an uninhabited island a mile off the coast from Main-A-Dieu, Cape Breton. Crewe’s book begins in the early 1920s though, when twenty families still lived there, without the benefit of electricity, running water, phones, cars or much money. Most of the inhabitants were fishing families, but with lighthouse keepers at either end of the island, and a school-teacher—usually an off-islander who didn’t last beyond a year or two.
Onto this background Crewe paints the tangled life stories of three babies born on Christmas Day 1922, much to the midwife’s inconvenience.
“Old Mrs. Spencer delivered them, running back and forth between the houses in foul weather, only sustained by cups of tea and bread and molasses. She told her husband ‘We’ve got one under-baked, one just right, and the other so overdone he’s more than ten pounds. His poor mother.’”
The mercurial Mary Alice Locke (under-done) and quick, handsome Sam Harris (just right), come from fishing families. The third—big, slow Hardy Campbell—is one of the eastern lighthouse keeper’s boys. The trio start out inseparable. Then school’s social complexities rub grit into their three-way bond, and adolescence grinds harder still, starting cracks that alternately widen and narrow as long as they’re all in life.
Some characters in The Spirit of Scatarie are not, in fact, in life. The narrator Cara, a fifteen-year-old from Ireland, drowned when her ship wrecked off Scatarie in the early 1700s. Because she’s supernatural, Cara can know what multiple characters are doing when they’re far apart, a distinct advantage in a narrator. Even better, as a former human she has character all her own. She might be beatified by death, but she’s not beyond feeling. “There was something weighing on me and it was an unusual sensation,” she muses. Eventually she understands her problem. She’d died before
she’d ever been (im)properly kissed. When Mary Alice, Sam and Hardy develop attractions amongst each other, Cara realizes “my earthly life was not long enough. They would now experience things I’d never partaken in.” In short, she’s jealous.
Crewe adopts an episodic prose style in The Spirit of Scatarie. Each chapter is made up of short sections with their own story arcs. For example, chapter three begins with a scene about Mary Alice and Hardy adjusting to Sam’s popularity. In the next section, we get a glimpse into his difficult home life. Then there’s a section about the Grand Banks earthquake (November 18, 1929) which ruined boats, fish huts and equipment on Scatarie and beyond. It’s followed by a vignette about skating and sledding. The chapter continues with tale upon yarn upon chronicle, seemingly separate but which, taken together, create a whole picture of life on Scatarie, the way individual boards and shingles, furniture and textiles make up a home.
It’s no surprise that Crewe folds facts and lived experiences into her novel. The Spirit of Scatarie’s very first line of prose, in the Author’s Note, states “Please know that while this story is fictional, I did include a few actual events, to bring this world to life.” The Acknowledgements thanks over thirty people who answered Crewe’s call for research help, which led to passages like the one set in the late 1940s when Sam’s brother Bob tells him, “Everyone wants fresh fish instead of salted, because it’s better money and no work to it. By the time we get in from fishing and then take our catch over to the mainland, it’s late and there’s no time to rest. People are starting to talk about getting off the island.”
Crewe’s stories about the Christmas babies are a means to tell readers about a part of history at imminent risk of being forgotten: the life and end times of Scatarie as a village. The true spirit of Scatarie is not Cara the ghost, but the sense of community that imbued the island when people called it home. ■
KATHY MAC is an award-winning poet, adjudicator and workshop leader.
Michelle Robinson, photo by Saffron Morriz
Vagrant Press
A dramatic and forgotten episode in Halifax’s recent history brought to life
Robert Ashe’s latest history book, Seven Days in Halifax: When citizens confronted the racists, liars and incompetents who ran their city, runs the risk of feeling claustrophobic, covering seven long days of smoke-filled meetings in Halifax-Dartmouth in the winter of 1970. But each meeting highlights the significant issues, and personalities, of the day.
It was called Encounter on Urban Environment. For seven extraordinarily long days, twelve experts—seven Americans and five Canadians, none of them local— in economics, commerce, labour, journalism, the arts, tourism, urban planning, environment and civil rights sat before elected officials, senior bureaucrats, educators, captains of industry and community activists including luminaries like Rocky Jones, Muriel Duckworth, Alan Ruffman, Buddy Daye and Don Oliver. They listened, questioned and lectured on how Halifax could shed its doldrums and drag itself into the twentieth century. The event quickly gained momentum because it was televised and highly confrontational. Soon hundreds were filling conference rooms and halls to see the fireworks live.
With every moment filmed, the historic record is rich in details of not only the moment, but also the context of the city’s history to 1970. Sometimes the facts are so plentiful a reader may feel “in the weeds,” but important lesser-known histories of our bureaucracy are well worth knowing. For example, the Voluntary Planning Board, established in 1963, played a vital role in ensuring citizen input into government procedures and decisions until it was repealed in 2011.
Many of the hottest issues still resonate today. The wounds of Africville were fresh and former resident Daisy Carvery gave powerful testimony before her teenaged son Irvine. “It was our settlement, our community. It meant everything to us. That community out there had been held together for one hundred and fifty years.” Racial tensions were high with African Nova Scotians being mistreated by police. Employers like Volvo profiled and refused to hire Black people, even when they lived in the adjacent community to the factory. Halifax was dubbed by the Reverend Lucius Walker as the Mississippi of the North, a label that stuck.
There was a housing crisis with vacancy rates below one percent, and the only proposed solution was “more land acquired in the suburbs.” Elected officials confused charity with community empowerment. Amalgamation was resisted by all but Halifax and is now lamented for reducing local political representation for everybody. The province was grabbing power. Said Eastern Passage
Formac Publishing
councillor Tom Tonks after the province overruled Halifax County’s master plan, “We now have to go along with their plan and submit all over again and ask them if this meets with their approval. The province has complete control over us.” Today, Halifax Regional Municipality is facing the exact same dilemma; the province overruled the regional plan at the behest of rich developers.
Local graduates found themselves lacking the skills needed in the province, while the “best and brightest” went elsewhere. Workers’ taxes were handed out as corporate welfare and patronage while the recipients dictated the terms to the province. The media were owned by corporations and regurgitated government talking points with no critical analysis. Public transit was a literal joke—spectators ran late to the session on transit “thanks to the tardy cross-town bus service.”
It’s hard to imagine Encounter happening today. Elected political leaders have mastered the art of public avoidance, taking meetings only with the moneyed and powerful. Imagine them and senior government officials sitting and receiving criticism for seven days from a bunch of come-from-aways.
Encounter did make a few changes. Volvo introduced a hiring initiative for African Nova Scotians. The Crown Corporation Industrial Estates Limited improved its governance rules (but soon had its role absorbed by government). Labour organizations acknowledged bigotry in local hiring processes, giving civil rights activists leverage in their fight for equity. New advocacy organizations like the Ecology Action Centre were started.
Some progress has been made in diversifying our economic base away from natural resources, although Ashe notes that the Houston government’s 2025 economic plan “embraced selective exploitation of the province’s natural resources, including the use of fracking … [and] it is hard to imagine an approach more antithetical to the essence of the New England proposition advocated by all the Encounter panellists and championed by Benjamin Higgins, then one of the world’s renowned authorities on economic renewal.”
The more things change… ■
CHRIS BENJAMIN is a freelance journalist, book editor and author of fiction and non-fiction. He is the past managing editor of Atlantic Books Today
Pair of art books are a fine tribute to
Newfoundland’s David Blackwood
Creators strive to coalesce their knowledge, talents and aspirations to produce a comprehensive body of work. Many struggle to find that subject, that inspiration, which points them in the direction they are to go to create works that can be understood on both a universal and a personal level. David Blackwood (1941–2022), printmaker, draftsman, painter and teacher, knew as a young boy what his artistic path would be: a keeper of Newfoundland’s past. It was his love, inspiration and raison d’être. He knew the province’s history, folklore, work ethic and geology intimately. He grew up in eastern Newfoundland, in a small outport on Bonavista Bay. Three generations of his father’s family were fishermen. Blackwood’s love of art and literature took him away from his community, but he never forgot his home. As an art student, he devoted his life to capturing the images he stored and cherished in his memory. And, through hard work and determination, the virtues he observed as a child, he succeeded.
Blackwood and his achievements are currently being celebrated by two publications. The latest, David Blackwood: Myth and Legend, accompanies a retrospective exhibition of the same name that recently opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Black Ice: David Blackwood Prints of Newfoundland, first published in 2011, also for an exhibition, was recently reprinted. Both are co-published by the AGO and Goose Lane Editions. Each exhibition catalogue complements the other to provide an essential introduction to, and in-depth study of, Blackwood’s life and work.
My favourite images, Wedding on Bragg’s Island and Fire Down the Labrador, encapsulate the themes that run through all his work, depicting the tenacity of outport people to marry, raise families and live their lives in the face of a harsh, indifferent environment, and the enormity of the odds stacked against them. Blackwood uses primarily black and white in his intaglio prints. Dark seas and skies dominate the landscape and the huddled, cold tiny figures who move about within it, hauling houses over the ice, gathering for church or putting out in their boats for the Labrador fishing banks. His images depict, principally, nighttime and winter. His creations are other-world dreamscapes that edge toward the nightmarish.
Blackwood was eight years old when Newfoundland joined Confederation. He was just a bit older when Premier Joey Smallwood instigated the controversial Relocation Programme, whose goal was to bring the province and its people into the twentieth century by forcing the removal of families from the outport communities. They gained, in varying degrees, better education and health care and
other so-called modern conveniences, but what they lost was even greater: their sense of independence, community and determination. Many villages disappeared completely. Blackwood was determined to use his art to ensure that what outport life represented did not also vanish.
David Blackwood and Black Ice, the exhibitions and catalogues, are the result of the donation to the AGO by David and Anita Blackwood of three hundred works of art and a large archive. In David Blackwood, his print-making process comes to life. In “Never Disappointment,” Alexa Greist, the AGO’s curator of prints and drawings, walks us through an examination of the two drawings and ten proofs produced in the making of Wedding on Deer Island, along with preparatory sketches and etchings of other works. The donated archive of Blackwood’s papers is discussed by Amy Marshall Furness, the AGO’s head of library and archives, in “The Archive and the Storyteller.” Particularly fascinating are his diaries, started at the age of fourteen, the magazines he read, his studio notebooks and so on, all of which contribute to a deeper understanding of both the man and the artist.
Black Ice is an assortment of essays written by Katharine Lochnan, former AGO curator, and a number of historians, scholars, geologists and writers that touch on aspects of Blackwood’s life, history and natural surroundings that made him the artist and keeper of Newfoundland history. Their admiration for him shines through their words. One essay examines the mummers’ tradition in Ireland and its transition to Newfoundland. And another quintessential Newfoundland creator, Michael Crummey, thoughtfully compares Blackwood’s family experiences to his own.
Both publications are a fine tribute to Blackwood and the task he undertook to honour the Newfoundland that he and his ancestors knew and that his audience can understand, personally and in a universal context. ■
LAURIE GLENN NORRIS writes historical fiction and non-fiction and holds an MA in art history from the University of Victoria. She lives in River Hebert, NS, with her husband, Barry, and kitty cat, Dinah.
Goose Lane Editions with Art Gallery of Ontario
A beautiful, timely and relevant historical novel
As Renée Belliveau was working in archives, she came across information about a New Brunswick woman who had served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in France during the First World War. She also learned that this woman’s future husband had been working towards his doctorate in Germany when the war broke out, subsequently becoming a detainee in a civilian internment camp for the duration of the war. Belliveau wondered what their lives had been like, what their experiences were and how they moved beyond their experiences to build a life together. The result is a beautiful story about reconciling the ugly realities of war with the gift of life. Through dual narratives that move between the past and present, we meet Rose and Frederick as they adjust to life after the war. Readers are expertly taken from the idyllic landscape of the Annapolis Valley and plunged into the chaos of a casualty clearing station near the Front where the bloodied, mangled bodies of unknown men streamed in at all hours of the day and night. We’re shown the isolating monotony of hungry,
cold men stagnating in a civilian internment camp in Germany, and at the same time the wonder of what the men were able to create for themselves out of their desolate circumstances. Now it’s 1922, the war is over and the world has changed. Family ties are being strained and damaged because of secrets and silence and the fear that those who served will not be fully understood by those who did not. Belliveau skillfully connects the events and concerns of the WWI-era with those we find ourselves in today, making this historical novel timely and relevant. How do we make sure history does not repeat itself? ■
NAOMI MacKINNON lives in Nova Scotia where she blogs about books at Consumed by Ink.
Seeking solace in the rhythm of the waves
BruceGraham’s Coastal Healing begins with a preface educating the reader on the history of the Apple River Bar, a sandbar on the Bay of Fundy. Graham has a lifelong relationship with the Bar. He speaks of it, of Parrsboro and the other surrounding communities with the kind of attention and affection that authors save for their most favourite characters.
And a favourite character it certainly is—both for Graham and for the people who populate it. The story centres on Heather Hatfield, who has returned to the coastal town of her childhood with the weight of a painfully ended military career on her shoulders. Her dishonorable discharge is a source of regular stress and shame, and the novel frequently contrasts the chill and calm of the oceanside small town with the heat, dryness and suffocating atmosphere of her time in deployment.
Heather is hoping for a quiet place to heal and reclaim her vision for the future, tucked amongst all the people she knows best—a cast of occasionally oddball characters with their own burdens to bear. Her father figure, Lester, his disabled grown son, Gus, and Heather’s childhood friend Marg all have their moments to share stories—either
through blunt conversations with Heather or through taking over as our narrator, inviting the reader to know them better. Heather’s wish for solace is cut abruptly short when she leads a rescue during a fishing trip and finds herself under a (for now) warm and welcoming spotlight. The tension of not knowing how long she will stay in the good graces of the tiny town— and what will happen if she falls from that grace—is the driving force of the story.
The ocean is an unignorable presence throughout Coastal Healing. It is equal parts soothing, contemplative and restless, propelling the characters to leave their various states of being slightly stuck and move into something more fulfilling. ■
KATE SPECER (she/her) is a writer, arts administrator and choral singer living in K’jipuktuk/Halifax.
Vagrant Press
Purple Porcupine Publishing
An epic tale of survival blending realism with folklore, metamorphosis and fantasy
At the outset of St. John’s-based Karen Lundy’s new novel, A Door in the Middle of Nowhere, Torontodwellers Maddy and Mark, wearied by the demands of their big-city engineering careers, buy a rural fixer-upper in Maddie’s home province of Newfoundland where they hope to spend relaxing summers and reignite the fading spark in their marriage. They are enchanted by their new home, despite unsettling rumours about the abrupt departure of the previous owners and the enormous peregrine falcon who watches them from a nearby tree at night. Clearing out the basement, they uncover a hidden door leading up a stairway to an identical replica-house, apparently inhabited until recently by the former owners, a family of four and their mysterious lodger.
Fighting her scientist’s skepticism, Maddie is drawn deeply into the mysterious twin house where she finds the abandoned diary of Gerome Falconer, kidnapped as a boy in London at the outset of the war of 1812 and forced into hard labour (among other torments) by a sadistic ship captain. For Maddie, the tale awakens painful
suppressed memories of abuse in her own childhood, while Mark’s initial indulgence quickly sours and tensions simmer between the two.
Lundy’s crisp, accessible prose offers evocative descriptions of a landscape she knows well. She weaves her story of domestic crisis and family secrets with an epic tale of survival that confronts the depths of human cruelty while showing the redemptive power of compassion. The novel tests genre boundaries, combining realism with folklore, metamorphosis and fantasy as Maddie pursues the mystery of Falconer and his enigmatic connection to the raptor in the dead birch tree outside her window. With a deep personal connection to her story, Lundy sensitively portrays the devastation wrought by childhood trauma and buried secrets that reverberate through generations. ■
CLARISSA HURLEY is the founding co-editor of the new literary journal Camel, based in Fredericton, NB.
An entertaining, easy-to-read, fast-paced tale with unexpected and clever twists
Mysterylovers rejoice! Sebastian Synard is back in Six for Saint-Pierre, the sixth book in Kevin Major’s mystery series. The story features Synard, a private detective, who begins investigating a murder in new territory: Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Synard is away on a short trip from his St. John’s Newfoundland home, and this time, there’s a personal connection.
Readers are first transported from Newfoundland to Saint-Pierre, a French territory a short ferry ride away, where Synard and his girlfriend, Mae, go on a holiday and visit Sebastian’s grown son, Nick, who is on the island studying French. While exploring together, they unexpectedly discover the body of Nick’s murdered friend. Synard quickly jumps into action to solve the mystery, but not without the help of the never-to-be underestimated Mae, a distraught Nick and a cast of characters, both locally and beyond.
During his obstacle-filled investigation that crosses borders and unfolds in three separate locations, Synard encounters colourful characters on both sides of the law, while trying to stay safe and unravel the mystery. At the
same time, Synard deals with family dynamics and professional and personal interactions with his grieving son, his girlfriend, his ex-wife and her police officer partner and others in law enforcement. Synard and his support team grapple with feelings of fear, pain, hurt and compassion throughout.
The story, filled with Synard’s sardonic humour, includes vivid descriptions of the people, cultures, landscapes and cuisines of each locale. At times, the reader may feel they are alongside Synard, enjoying the smell of the ocean, mouth-watering seafood or a peaty Scotch.
Six for Saint-Pierre is an entertaining, easy-to-read, fast-paced tale with unexpected and clever twists and very human interactions and emotions throughout. ■
LYLA HAGE is a small business owner, writer, educator and ikebana student from Halifax.
Flanker Press
Breakwater Books Ltd.
A reimagining of Jane Austen explores tensions and rivalries between a great writer and the people closest to them
“…and they all lived happily ever after.” Fairy tales, with the likes of Snow White or Cinderella as main characters, ended with these words. Today, in most commercially popular novels aimed at straight female readers, they are implied if not stated. And what determines such happiness? Reader, she marries him.
Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of the world’s greatest writers, used this convention. All her novels close with blissful newlyweds. Halifax writer and Austen scholar, Sarah Emsley, in The Austens, skillfully takes issue with Jane’s use of the marriage trope as the ideal. She compares the experiences of sisters-in-law, Jane Austen and Fanny Palmer Austen (1789-1814), and asks, “Why did you [Jane] not write what you know to be true?” and “What happens next [after the wedding day]?” as she brings their friendship to life in her new novel.
I was particularly taken with Emsley’s reimagining of Jane, a single woman jealously protecting her writing time, and Fanny, married at seventeen and devoting her short life to her family. Both states were constrained by the time’s social conventions: single women were seen as undesirable
and destined for a narrow, povertystricken existence, while married women’s destinies were tied to that of their husbands, their wishes subservient to his. Emsley, through Fanny, concentrates on the married women’s burden of multiple pregnancies and the danger they represented. Jane knew women who did not survive childbirth. Fanny was one of them.
Austen has been criticized for placing her novels in a vacuum, for not dealing directly with contemporary events, such as the Napoleonic wars and British imperialism. With the questions: what did and what could Jane Austen have known of the intimate lives of wives and mothers, and why did she not write of them, Sarah Emsley identifies another avenue of literary inquiry that, if followed, could enrich our understanding of Austen’s life and work. ■
LAURIE GLENN NORRIS writes historical fiction and non-fiction. She is currently working on a book of letters, as well as her second novel. She lives in River Hebert, NS.
A revealing history of Rockhead prison
TheBedford-Sackville Weekly News used to dutifully report every conviction in Bedford Provincial Court.
People loved reading dirt on their neighbours and if you’re this kind of person, you’ll love Katie Ingram’s The Undesirables: A History of Rockhead Prison
Ingram dove into old newspapers to dig up stories about the prison and the people sent there.
Opened in 1860, it was built on an old farm in the Halifax’s North End. It seems an odd place now, but then it followed the principle: “out of sight, out of mind.”
Many who went to Rockhead were unfortunate people that Victorian-era Halifax wanted off the streets. Ingram describes “wretched characters” fined for lewd behaviour, drunkenness or profanity. When they couldn’t pay their fine, they ended up in prison.
There were actual criminals, too, and all were meant to “contribute to society once they left.” It didn’t always work that way. There was plenty of hard labour, with some even breaking rocks in the quarry, but little rehabilitation.
One newspaper account tells the story of “the wickedest woman in Halifax” and there were many escapes over the years, including that of a Swedish sailor accidentally shot by
a guard during his recapture.
Beyond the newspaper searches, Ingram pored over city council minutes to track debate over running the prison. Despite oversight, poor ventilation, a lack of proper bathing facilities and toilets were a chronic problem for inmates.
A 1933 provincial government report criticized “vault-like cells” and a newspaper story quoted an inmate who called it a “dark, dreary hole” and a “descendant of Dickensian times.”
There’s also a chapter about the prison’s governors, including one sordid tale of a prisoner with an illness dying of neglect. The governor was fired, and reform was promised, but things remained unchanged until the prison closed in 1969. ■
RYAN VAN HORNE is a long-time journalist who used to work for the Bedford-Sackville Weekly News. He often heard from people pleading to not be included in the court briefs.
Pottersfield Press
Pottersfield Press
Capturing the essence of Wanda Robson’s life in the pursuit of justice for her sister Viola Desmond
It was February 2022 when ninety-five-year-old Wanda Robson passed away at the Regional Hospital in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She was surrounded by her family and left behind a legacy as an activist and storyteller. Wanda will be most remembered by the public as the younger sister of the late Viola Desmond, who was jailed and fined in 1946 for refusing to give up her seat in the “whites only” section of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow.
In the book, The Life of Wanda Robson: Canada’s Advocate for Viola Desmond and Social Justice, author Graham Reynolds takes readers on a journey through Wanda’s life, as he paints the picture of the woman: an advocate in precarious times. Reynolds met Wanda in 2000, when she audited one of his courses. The two became close and went on to collaborate on two books. So, it was fitting that Reynolds would pen the life of this Order of Canada recipient.
Wanda’s husband, Joe, told Reynolds that Wanda lived a life in four parts. As such, Reynolds structures this book
with four chapters to represent those parts. He begins part one with Wanda’s early family life in Halifax. In part two, Reynolds shares her work life, first marriage and nine years of struggle living in Massachusetts. Part three has Wanda returning to Nova Scotia without a husband and with three small children in tow, and her subsequent marriage to Joe. The book concludes in part four with the fulfillment of Wanda’s lifelong dreams and her eventual triumph of justice for her late sister, Viola Desmond. Perhaps now, because of the tireless and persistent work of Wanda and others, Viola’s story will not be forgotten. And perhaps now, with the tireless and persistent work of Reynolds—who takes readers deep into the life of the iconic Wanda Robson—she too will not be forgotten. ■
WANDA TAYLOR is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, journalist and college professor.
Preserving a personal family legacy
Thebook Nurse Fortescue and Doctor Paddon shares the stories and adventures of two health-care workers during the times of war and “frontier-medicine” in Newfoundland and Labrador, and they are filled with deprivation and commitment to help others.
Through a rich collection of letters, journals, interviews and published and unpublished autobiographies, Dave Paddon retells the lives of his father, Dr. Anthony Paddon (1914-1995), and his mother, Nurse Sheila Fortescue (1921–2018). Divided into two parts and twentythree rather short chapters, the author focuses on their professional experiences as a doctor and a nurse during the Second World War and the post-war years. The rather well-known navy surgeon Anthony Paddon, Member of the Order of Canada (1988) and Lieutenant-Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador (1981–1986) is placed in stark contrast with the experiences of Sheila Fortescue, who grew up in England and was a nurse in London during the Second World War. Unlike Anthony Paddon, Sheila Fortescue had not published an autobiography or shared her experiences publicly. The value of this book lies in the recording transcriptions that Dave Paddon made with his
Brack and Brine
mother, Sheila, between 2007 and 2012. In the first part of the book (pages 3–83), instead of the common “ask somebody else” phrase, the reader will get a personal recollection on Sheila’s work and emotions as a nurse during the bombing raids along with her work at Grenfell Mission in Labrador and marriage to Anthony Paddon. In the second part (pages 85–254), a rich collection of letters, reports and personal accounts from Dr. Paddon presents his war and post-war work experiences. Preserving a personal family legacy, this book is an invaluable addition to any reader who wants to learn more about the reflection of two individuals who had dedicated their lives to medical care and community service in remote places and during dangerous times. ■
MATHIAS RODORFF is the research manager of the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and the editor of the Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society.
Breton Books
Tales of growth, compromise, struggle and understanding from a unique community of moms
The phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” has never been truer than it is with Ship Moms by Jen Winsor. At first glance, the heart-shaped buoy and cartoon-like ship make it seem like this is a fictional tale, with a storyline akin to a Hallmark movie.
Ship Moms is far from that.
It is partly the story of Jen Winsor, who after joining a cruise ship in her mid-30s in search of something different, found herself pregnant by a 20-something co-worker.
And, as the title suggests, Winsor is not alone. Ship Moms is part-memoir and part collection. It has stories from at least a dozen women, written with care by Winsor, that are both vastly different, but somewhat similar. While Winsor stayed with her partner, despite some ups and downs, many of these women didn’t have this support. They did, however, decide to have their children.
These are tales of growth, compromise, struggle and understanding. For Winsor, her story is a little bit different than most, but still follows similar themes, and is one that she weaves pretty well among the others in the book. While a lot of attention is given to Winsor’s story, at times it feels
like the others are half done, and I wanted more. This is not the author’s fault, though, as these are personal stories, and giving someone else permission to share it with the world is just as hard as telling it yourself.
Often details are left out because you want them to be.
At times, I felt Ship Moms was only scratching the surface of a much bigger story regarding cruise ship politics and policies, but I know this isn’t the story Winsor wanted to tell. This story isn’t about the nature of cruise ship life (although the background at the beginning was extremely helpful in understanding it all). It’s about how, despite what happened, these women have persevered and are part of a community of loving, caring mothers who happen to be not only moms, but Ship Moms. ■
KATIE INGRAM is a freelance writer, journalism instructor and author of Breaking Disaster: Newspaper Stories of the Halifax Explosion. She lives in Halifax, NS.
A retrospective of a chef’s life so far
Itendto be somewhat skeptical of memoirs written by people in their thirties—how much experience can they truly draw upon, and what kind of hindsight can they really offer? But after reading Chef Adam Loo’s new book Let Rise: Stories from a small town cook, foot is in mouth.
Loo demonstrates a level of authenticity and vulnerability well beyond his years. He is a homegrown legend in Prince Edward Island kitchens—having worked in restaurants on the Island for over two decades, most recently opening his own establishment, Ada Culinary Studio, in 2024. His first book, a memoir, retells his story of growing up on the farm, cooking with his Nana, attending culinary school at the Culinary Institute of Canada, competing at the World Culinary Olympics, playing and coaching wheelchair basketball and working his way up at Murphy Hospitality Group, all the while dealing with marriage, kids and familial loss. I found it interesting that Loo refers to himself as a cook in the title—he’s a CIC-trained chef with experience competing in culinary championships at the highest level and decades of experience, but perhaps this is where his genuine nature shines through. Cleverly,
the book has lamppost recipes throughout, representing different points in Loo’s life. Nana’s bread roll recipe found on page 36 is the inspiration for the memoir’s title: “The original recipe Nana gave me just had one instruction: ‘Let rise.’” Simple, playful sketches are found throughout, along with images of family and friends. While at times I did find the chapters a bit disjointed and wanting for a bit more restaurant content, it’s a good read for anyone in the industry, or someone wanting to garner a perspective of the “chef life.” This book is a retrospective of a chef’s life so far—it’s clear from the epilogue and Loo’s career trajectory that there’s a lot more (delicious) to come. ■
GABBY PEYTON is a food and travel writer based in St. John’s, NL, obsessed with cheese, historical fiction and planning her next trip—to eat.
Breakwater
Pownal Street Press
Fiction
E DITOR’S PICKS
Atlantic Canadian books that are generating buzz
Fields of Wonder
Wayne Curtis
Pottersfield Press
Showcasing fifteen years of Wayne Curtis’s finest fiction, these powerful stories of rural Atlantic Canada capture love, loss, resilience and the quiet beauty of a fading way of life.
Even More Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia
Vernon Oickle
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.
Veteran ghost storyteller and author Vernon Oickle brings to life even more of Nova Scotia’s chilling tales of the paranormal in the third installment of this fan favourite bestselling series.
Winter Sky: Stories for the Season
Shelley Thompson
Nimbus Publishing
A beautifully written collection of short stories set in wintertime, a blend of historical and contemporary prose, exploring the complexities of the holiday season, from the celebrated author of ROAR.
Home for Christmas: A Collection of Newfoundland and Labrador Romances
Denise Flint After Books
Four tales of holiday romance set over a 100year period in Newfoundland and Labrador. From post-World War I Labrador to modern day St. John’s and a couple of stops in between.
Open to the Skies
Jane Spavold Tims
Merlin Star Press
Mystery and myth surround an old church in rural New Brunswick. Sadie has a vision for the derelict building—a writer’s retreat. She encounters obstacles: community opposition, antagonism, spitefulness and deeply guarded secrets as she tries to realize her dream.
The Arrows of Fealty
Jill MacLean
OC Publishing
This standalone sequel to The Arrows of Mercy tells the story of Edmund of Flintbourne’s son, a serf who owes fealty to the lord of the manor and whose life is tied to the
soil, yet he craves adventure beyond the boundary stones of his village in this riveting work of historical fiction.
Visible Ripples
M.E. Strautmanis
Purple Porcupine Publishing
A New York City forensic pathologist hides an extraordinary secret—she can reverse death. To move forward, she must confront her past and choose between her miraculous gift and a normal life.
Operation Betrayed
Helen C. Escott Flanker Press
This fast-paced crime thriller, the sixth in the Operation series, finds Inspector Myra reinvestigating the historical files of missing and murdered women. It cuts to the bone when Myra and the victims’ families realize the saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies—it comes from those you trust the most.
Slice the Water
PP Wong
Goose Lane
Editions
A dystopian thriller, a work of speculative fiction and a coming-of-age story, Wong’s
novel is a fascinating exploration of contrasting political systems, unpacking the myriad amplifying impacts of technology, addiction and complacency.
Non-fiction I Wish You Well
We Were Not Kings
Robert de la Chevotière Little A
From island life in the Caribbean to a new beginning in France, a young man comes of age in a sweeping and lyrical novel about family, loss, secrets and finding freedom from the past.
An Accidental Villain Linden MacIntyre Penguin Random House
A great book for history buffs, especially those interested in Winston Churchill, the Irish War and the impact of Newfoundland on one such soldier embroiled in it all.
The Witch of Willow Sound
Vanessa F. Penney ECW Press
Inspired by real East Coast traditions and witch lore this modern gothic tale explores family lost and found and throws firelight on dark truths about what societies do with the people, and the past, they don’t want.
Adrian McNally Smith Acorn Press
The author shares his 12 essential steps to creating health and wellness, drawn from his personal experience with illness and the wisdom of philosophers, writers and medical professionals, along with the ways in which for him, Prince Edward Island is itself a channel for healing.
Fly
on the Wall
Kevin Tobin Breakwater Books Ltd.
The
best of 40 years of Kevin Tobin’s editorial cartoons, tracking 40 years of Newfoundland and Labrador’s history, seen through the lens of a keen, satirical and no-holds-barred fly on the wall.
Broadside:
Halifax’s Wartime Pilot
Boat Disaster
Rick Grant Formac Publishing
A dramatic, evocative and deeply researched account of a moment in history that still resonates today for readers of Second World War history, naval history and those interested in the human cost of seafaring.
Cayouche et l’Acadie du party
Gabriel Arsenault
Éditions PerceNeige
Gabriel Arsenault
explores the overlooked life and work of iconic singer-songwriter Cayouche, revealing an intelligent, unconventional figure whose music, often dismissed by critics, deserved serious attention and could have sparked cultural debate.
The Smiling Land
Alan Doyle Doubleday Canada
From one of Canada’s most beloved and celebrated Newfoundlanders comes a rollicking insider’s guide to the province as Alan reprises his tour-guiding role to welcome the rest of Canada to his home and take readers on an adventure.
The Lobster Trap
Greg Mercer McClelland & Stewart
An in-depth investigation into a multibillion-dollar industry that delivers massive profits—and mounting human costs—as climate change, market instability and corporate greed reshape the lives of fishermen in unprecedented ways.
Young readers’ reviews
Owl
Written by Kara Griffin, illustrated by K. Shawn Larson Acorn Press
Captivated by his grandfather’s stories about the magnificent barred owl that lives in the forest near his home, a boy dreams of meeting the elusive creature. His grandfather teachers him the barred owl’s call and after lots of practice, the boy feels ready. Day after day he walks through the woods calling to Owl but to no avail, while night after night Owl softly calls to the boy through his window while he sleeps. It seems that the two are destined to keep missing each other, until one night when Owl notices that the boy has lost his blanket. Gently she covers him with her wing to keep him warm through the night. When the boy awakens to find his beloved owl friend preparing to return to the forest, he bids her goodnight, and he savours this very special dream come true.
Kara Griffith’s latest picture book highlights the special bond that forms between a boy and the owl that he longs to befriend. Inspired by his grandfather’s stories, the boy becomes discouraged when his many efforts to meet the owl are unsuccessful. But his patience and persistence pay off as slowly, after many weeks, Owl becomes similarly intrigued with the boy. There is a somewhat dreamlike quality to the story as they each try to reach out to the other but keep missing each other because Owl is nocturnal while the boy is not. This is a gentle, reflective story that introduces young readers to this beautiful woodland creature and celebrates the relationships that can be developed between humans and animals. K. Shawn Larson’s illustrations of the forest and its inhabitants are warm and inviting, and the depictions of Owl are exquisitely detailed and expressive.
Sem’s Map
by Lisa Doucet
Written by Rebecca Thomas, illustrated by Azby Whitecalf Nimbus Publishing
When Sem’s teacher puts up a map of North America in their classroom, Sem can’t understand why the places and names on the map aren’t the ones that he has
learned from the stories that his Kiju has taught him. He musters up the courage to ask Mr. Trainor why this map is so different and even when his classmates laugh at him, he tries to explain why it is wrong. That night, Sem asks Kiju why they are not being taught the true names of these places. He wishes that the other children in his class could hear the stories that he has been told since he was small. So, the next day he asks Mr. Trainor if Kiju can come speak to the class, to share Sem’s map with the other students. Mr. Trainor finally sees what Sem has been trying to tell him. He invites Kiju to their class and he admits, “Yesterday, I learned there is a lot I don’t know about maps and about this place.”
This gentle story invites young readers to see this land as Sem does, to discover and appreciate the names and places that make up Turtle Island, the name that the Indigenous Peoples have called North America for centuries. Sem doesn’t understand Mr. Trainor’s map with its lines and boxes. The map he knows describe the places and the animals that live (or once lived) there: “the place with all the rain and fog” or “the place where the fish run in the spring”. Rebecca Thomas’s story features an earnest protagonist who displays great courage when he speaks up about the problem he has with the map Mr. Trainor is using. Mr. Trainor’s humility and willingness to admit his own mistakes and to be open to learning from Kiju is another important element of this timely tale.
Seamus and the Shiny Things
Written & illustrated by Cara Kansala Breakwater Books
This is the tale of a crowd of crows who share a penchant for “shinys”, pretty trinkets that they would hunt for, collect and proudly adorn themselves with. But of all the crows, wee Seamus was particularly obsessed with these colourful treasures. He would greedily snatch them away from the others and fill his nest to the very brim with the brilliant baubles. Bedecked and bejewelled, he could never get enough. Soon, however, he was so laden down with shinys that he couldn’t even move to gather food or frolic with his friends. His gems had become a terrible burden. The others grew worried, and came to his aid by bringing him berries to nourish his weakened body. Seamus was so moved by their thoughtfulness and love for him that he joyfully began giving them gifts: his shinys! One by one he gives every single shiny away for, at last, he sees with his bright, beautiful heart that friendship is more pleasing than any shiny.
In lively, energetic verse, Kansala relays Seamus’s nearly tragic tale. The cadence is buoyant and sprightly: a perfect match for the cheerful, whimsy-rich illustrations. Against a backdrop of beautiful blue skies filled with wispy white clouds, the googly-eyed, quirky crows swoop and dive. The landscape is a riot of bold, rich reds and blues and greens, a cacophony of colour in which Seamus preens and greedily hoards the treasure he amasses. But his profound epiphany when he realizes that, despite his selfishness, his friends still care about him and go out of their way to save him from himself, is satisfying to even the youngest listener. The lesson he learns may not be particularly subtle, but it is no less true or relevant or important.
Tilley’s Tail
Written by Shannon Melanson, illustrated by Danelle Vautour Monster House Publishing
On a cold winter’s night, in a cozy barn filled with farm animals, a litter of lively black puppies is born.
One of these, Tilley, is born with a broken tail, which makes it hard for her to keep up with the others as they race and romp about the farmyard. But despite the effort that it took, she always persevered. When the farmer posts a “Puppies for sale” sign at the grocery store, many people make their way to the farm and soon all the puppies but Tilley have been adopted. But when two sisters and their parents coming home from a family hockey game spy Tilley, they are drawn to her because the pup’s tail looks just like young Maddie’s hockey stick! This family immediately recognizes that they have found the perfect dog for them, a dog whose broken tail ends up making her a fantastic (and very enthusiastic!) hockey player and a beloved new member of their family.
Shannon Melanson’s tender and earnest tale about a puppy who is not like the others will touch the hearts of dog (and hockey!) lovers everywhere. Her descriptions of the farm and Tilley’s early life are poetic and create a sense of nostalgia, and Tilley’s disappointment when it appears that no one wants her is deeply affecting. Melanson skillfully avoids focusing on Tilley’s unusual tail as a disability and instead highlights the fact that it is precisely this unique trait that ultimately leads to her not only finding exactly the right home but also becoming renowned for her hockey-playing skills. The book celebrates inclusivity right to the last page where Tilley and her family always ensure that everyone gets the chance to play, and no one ever gets left behind. The illustrations are soft and inviting, with white outlines that lend them a subtly luminous quality.
It Snowed
Written & illustrated by Meaghan
Smith
To Be With You
Written by Dave Gunning, illustrated by Meaghan Smith Nimbus Publishing
A pair of joyous, exquisitely illustrated picture books provide visual accompaniment to songs from beloved local creators this season. In It Snowed, songstress Meaghan Smith brings her seasonal favourite to life as an entire family and an assortment of birds and other critters joyously celebrate and revel in the wonders of a snowy day. From the moment they awake to their snow-coated world, there are sleds to be ridden and snow angels and snow beasts to be built, and a warm fire to snuggle up alongside at the day’s end. Smith even shares a sampling of “Snow Day Traditions” at the back of the book and invites readers to reach out and share their own traditions. Similarly, Dave Gunning’s heartwarming ode to the uncomplicated and unwavering love that dogs have for their people finds its way into the pages of a book that also features Smith’s lustrous artwork. With its sincere and earnest refrain of “All I want is to be with you/All day long and all night too,” this heartfelt song/book pays tribute to the very special relationship between canines and their humans. It reminds readers of every age that the love of a dog is a pure and wonderful thing!
Both songs-turned-into-stories feel as though they were meant to be picture books. Whether or not readers are familiar with the original songs, the sentiments that are evoked—the exquisite joy and wonder; the unmitigated and wholehearted love—will resonate off each page. Smith’s diaphanous and jewel-hued illustrations are filled with light and life. Facial expressions—of people and pets—depict the simple pleasures that are being celebrated, the tiny joys of daily life. Each page is filled with motion and energy and emotion. Soft, hazy and inviting, there is a luminous quality that perfectly suits both stories. Smith not only captures the magic of a snowy winter day, but she heightens the emotional impact of Dave Gunning’s words as he gives readers/audiences a glimpse into the devoted hearts of our canine family members.
Written by Brian Floca, illustrated by Sydney Smith Candlewick Press
As a storm brews, two siblings venture down to the shore to witness the awe-inspiring majesty of the waves and the wind as they pound into the stones upon which the children stand. They wonder, “is this enough, or do we try for more?” So, they carry on, passing all the places that are usually so familiar— homes and marshes and meadows, the lighthouse and stores and parks, streets that normally teem with life but that are now deserted and empty, a town that is boarded up and ready for the storm. And then...BOOM! It is time to run. Despite a wee bit of worry, they soon find themselves wrapped in loving arms. Home! Where warmth (but also trouble!) await them. The storm rages through the night until a new day dawns. And two siblings once again make their way to the shore.
In this timeless picture book masterpiece, Floca’s text is economical and evocative, poetic and restrained, yet filled with urgency and sensorial delight. And Smith’s energy and emotion-filled images tell this story in ways that words alone simply could not achieve. From the wildly impressionistic full-page spreads of tempestuous, roiling, crashing waves to double-page sweeping panoramas that capture snapshots of tempest-tossed landscapes, dark and lowering streetscapes, and two small figures in their midst, Smith’s watercolour and gouache illustrations capture every nuance of the approaching storm. They are dark and gray and brooding, but with pops of brilliant red and bright blue as well as vibrant and earthy greens that bring light into even this stormy darkness. They depict the raging wind, the hazy reflections in puddles and rain-soaked streets. And then: the soft and buttery light of the post-storm sky, and the gentle, boat-studded seas, and a world that has been washed clean by the storm. Yet through it all, the build-up, the storm and the posttempest calm and elegance, the bond between the two siblings is the quiet heart of this story.
Island Storm
Prism: A Chameleon Finds His Light
Written by Brady Wells, illustrated by Sarah Shortliffe Pownal Street Press
Prism the chameleon is not like the other chameleons in Chromaville who seem to always be able to blend in with their surroundings. Prism, on the other hand, always stands out because he simply cannot control his colours. From one day to the next, he never knows what colour—or combination of colours— he is going to be. This makes him anxious about being in public places, fearing that others are laughing at him. Then Prism meets an elderly chameleon named Hugh who helps him to see that his constantly changing colours might be a gift rather than something to be ashamed of. With these words of encouragement, Prism bravely decides to attend the Festival of Colours where his colours are a wonderful addition to the festivities.
PEI-based writer Brady Wells invites young readers to recognize the value of being different and accepting yourself for who you are as Prism wrestles with his feelings of selfdoubt and wishing he could be like everyone else. Prism is so caught up in worrying about standing out that he fails to recognize when everyone around him are delighted by his beautiful colours. When he finally starts to see that his changing colours are an important part of his identity, he finds himself willing to take a chance and believe that, just maybe, Hugh is right about them being something to celebrate and be proud of. And when he stops being so focused on himself and his fear and shame, he discovers that others too have this same problem/ability and he is grateful to be an inspiration to them. Sarah Shortliffe’s loose-lined watercolour illustrations are filled with colour and light. With whimsy and playfulness, she captures the full range of Prism’s emotions and creates a lovely, idyllic small-town setting.
Ringette Girl
Written by Sara Visser, illustrated by Alyse Mercey Pownal Street Press
In this joyful celebration of the sport of ringette, one young girl takes readers through the experience of a typical game day.
Beginning with a good breakfast and getting her gear ready, then meeting her teammates in the dressing room before they make their way onto the ice, she is ready. Once on the ice, she skates and passes, waits and watches, always keeping an eye on the clock. While others block shots, she checks an opposing player to steal the ring, but the goalie keeps the ring out of the net and the game continues. Our feisty protagonist keeps hustling and eventually with a flick of her wrist she takes a shot and scores a goal. Her team wins, they and their fans cheer but they still take time to line up and shake the hands of their opponents because these girls know the importance of “teamwork and respect, on the ice and in the stands.” Then it is time to go home to rest...and look forward to the next game!
In lively verse, author Sara Visser captures the excitement and energy of the game and being part of a team. She outlines the main rules and goals of the sport while also highlighting the value of good sportsmanship both on and off the ice, teamwork and the need for patience and perseverance. While the rhyming verse occasionally falters, it keeps the pace of the story feeling brisk. The illustrations are cheerful and uncluttered with ample white space on each page to keep attention focused on the game. It will be especially appealing to young ringette players or to any aspiring athlete with a particular interest in team sports.
Be an Icky Things Detective: Solving Nature’s Strange and Slimy Mysteries
Written and illustrated by Peggy Kochanoff Nimbus Publishing
In this book with its subtitle of “Solving Nature’s Strange and Slimy Mysteries”, young readers get to be simultaneously grossed-out and amazed by some of nature’s more disgusting phenomena. From the therapeutic uses for maggots to the birds that carry their babies’ poop in their mouths and the spittlebugs that hide in their own “foamy farts”, this book provides fascinating facts about some of the animal kingdom’s least-loved creatures and/or their most “icky” behaviours. It showcases various insects and animals that spread disease (rats and cockroaches), insects that inject anticoagulants into their victims to stop their blood from clotting (ticks and mosquitoes) and animals that deliberately vomit on a regular basis (owls and bees). Author Peggy Kochanoff explains how these behaviours enable the various critters to protect themselves and to obtain the food that they need to survive. She highlights their resourcefulness and unique abilities.
This latest addition to Kochanoff’s nature series for young readers follows the same format and design as the others. Each creature is identified in a box with large text at the top of the page, a question is posed with the invitation “Let’s look closely and find out” and in two or three simple paragraphs, the answers to each question are provided and “Mystery solved!” Each page features soft and tidy watercolour illustrations that are clear and uncluttered, gently hued with a myriad of shades of green and blue. The information is presented in clear and concise language and a conversational tone that makes it accessible and entertaining (even when it is making your skin crawl!). Overall, the design is visually appealing, the topic is compelling and the content is illuminating.
How To Rescue a Unicorn
Written by Andy Tolson Nimbus Publishing
Although the Immortal Octopus is healing, which means that the Mythics will soon recover their magical powers, there are still many who fear or distrust magic and are unhappy about its eventual return. Tiny Wilde, the giant who is still waiting for his growth spurt, wants to help his classmates see that there is nothing to fear. But when he discovers that unicorns are being held captive, mistreated and used for nefarious purposes, he also resolves to rescue them and to potentially reunite his father and grandfather in the process. All of this sounds like a quest and Tiny along with Sadie, his new friend from school, and his Water Mythic friend Nalia soon find themselves reunited with gnome friends and attending a Dumpster fest, kidnapped by troll pirates and collaborating with pixies, and eventually trying to thwart the evil giant Blunderbob’s self-serving schemes. As the three friends try to determine who they can trust, they find themselves in grave danger, all the while wondering: “is this really a quest?”
Andy Tolson’s second installment of Tiny’s adventures is action-packed and filled with delightful characters, wit and whimsy. The divide that exists between the Mythics who are anxiously awaiting the return of their magic and those who are resentful or afraid of magic is realistically depicted, as is Tiny’s earnest desire to help everyone see the truth. His longing to find his grandfather and bring him and his father back together is poignant and believable, as are his feelings of uncertainty and betrayal when his grandfather turns out to be in league with Blunderbob. Moreover, his refusal to stop believing in him is heartwarming. The dialogue throughout the story is entertaining and the relationships between the characters are well-developed. Tolson has created a truly fun and fantastical world with quirky and imaginative inhabitants.
LISA DOUCET is the manager of Woozles Children’s Bookstore in Halifax. She shares her passion for children’s and young adult books as our young readers editor and book reviewer.
EDITOR’S PICKS
Poppa and the Medicine Wheel
Judith M. Doucette, illustrated by Jessica Cutler Flanker Press
In this third book of the series, Poppa celebrates his first National Indigenous Peoples Day with his Mi'kmaw Community in St. George’s, NL. Teaching the Seven Lessons of the Mi'kmaw Medicine Wheel, Poppa joyfully embraces renewed pride in his culture.
Une couleur pour la maison
Denise Paquette Bouton d’or Acadie
A great big family loads into their van to tour their village to find housepainting inspiration, visiting colourful homes full of surprises, until they return with the perfect idea for their own house colour.
Nounours à la belle étoile
Caroline Bélisle, illustrated by Johanna Lezziero Bouton d’or Acadie
A brave teddy bear chases a shooting star into the forest, at the risk of getting lost, but remembers a friend’s comforting words that the Grande Ourse (The Big Dipper) watches over adventurous teddy bears from the sky above.
Lumberjack’s Alphabet
Mike Bravener, illustrated by Virginia Alecia Monster House
Publishing
The Lumberjack’s Alphabet has been sung since at least the early 1800s. Now this chant comes to life for young readers to discover this piece of history in a fun and rhythmic way.
Things That Stink
Judith Graves Acorn Press
This book is about nature’s love of all
things smelly on our planet and beyond. Why? Because they’re fun, a little gross, yet strangely beautiful, and they smell that way for important reasons.
Nocturnal Animals
Ashley Anne Clark Pownal Street Press
A soothing bedtime story that reveals the hidden world of creatures who wake when the day is done. From the silent swoop of an owl to the glowing trails of the luna moth, nocturnal animals live mysterious, mesmerizing lives.
featuring a transport truck on a determined journey through busy traffic, perfect for fans of Little Blue Truck.
Pownal Street Press
The Adventures of Easton the Rescue Pet
Elizabeth Retter, illustrated by Izzy Bean
Easton the rescue dog is back for a festive adventure in this heartwarming scratch and sniff story full of laughter and holiday cheer. The town is hosting its annual Christmas Market, and Easton can’t wait to join the festivities.
Publishing
I’m a Big Rig
Nancy Cohen, illustrated by Claire Manning Nimbus
Publishing
A fun rhyming book about friendship and kindness,
Oakley’s Great Canadian Adventure
Nancy Rose Nimbus
From the creator of the bestselling Secret Life of Squirrels series comes a joyful picture book in verse, following Oakley the squirrel as he visits every province and territory in Canada.
Levi’s Gift
Kathy Stinson, illustrated by Ellie Arscott
Nimbus Publishing
A heartwarming story about a man, his beloved violin and the healing power of music, celebrating intergenerational friendship and the courage to let go and give back.
