Teasers

One thing is certain: at night, by the campfire under the stars, our families would tell each other stories. Stories about who we were, where we came from, and all the lessons we needed to learn about life. Those stories passed on our traditions, songs, language, and the culture of our people.

Here we present to you just a couple of those stories that were passed down from generation to generation. Storytelling is how we pass down our traditional knowledge, our history, our language, our customs, and who we are as a people. The only written part of our culture would be the pictographs left many years ago in Kejimkujik National Park. Those are pictures on rock that represent a whole story, and many of those picture stories have been lost over time. What we do have, and what we share with pride, is our stories. Each story is based on a teaching: believe in yourself, be good to others, look after the world and nature, and so many more. There are a lot of reasons we share our stories. One reason would be if we need to teach a child a lesson, and as a culture that believes in non-interference, we would not tell a child what they can or cannot do— instead we tell them a story to explain to them why they should do what we suggest.

Hear our stories, learn from them, and experience them, but most of all we hope you enjoy them! Wela’lioq—Thank you —Excerpted from Mi’kmaq Campfire Stories of Prince Edward Island by Julie Pellissier-Lush. © by Julie Pellissier-Lush. Published by Acorn Press. acornpresscanada.com

It was in 2013 that Phillip Boudreau was dropped—allegedly—to the bottom of the sea, but his neighbours would not be entirely surprised if he walked out of the ocean tomorrow, coated in seaweed and dripping with brine, smiling.

After all, Phillip had often vanished for long periods during his forty-three years, and he always came back to where he’d grown up—Alderney Point, at the edge of the Acadian village of Petit de Grat on Isle Madame, Nova Scotia. Afterwards it would turn out that he had been in prison, or out West, or hiding in the woods. Perhaps the police had been looking for him and he’d have tucked himself away in other people’s boats or trailers, or curled up and gone to sleep in the bushes of the moorland near his family’s home, his face coated with droplets of fog. He and his dog often slept in a rickety shed outside his parents’ home, where the narrow dirt road ends at the rocky shore of Chedabucto Bay. He’d even been known to hollow out a snowbank and shelter himself from the bitter night in the cold white cavern he’d created. …

Some people loved Phillip. He could be funny, helpful, kind. He was generous to old people, good with animals, gentle with children. Other people hated and feared him, though they tended to conceal their feelings. If you crossed him he might threaten to sink your boat, shoot you, burn down your house. He could make you fearful for the safety of your daughter. Would he actually do anything violent? Hard to say. —Excerpted from Blood in the Water by Silver Donald Cameron. © by Paper Tiger Enterprises Ltd. Published by Penguin Random House Canada. penguinrandomhouse.ca

Pro: Allan is stealthy like a le Carré character. That’s hot.

Mom affects him too though. He’s quieter about it, sure, but he grinds his teeth and shortens his syllables, blunting the consonants for maximum impact. But for her presence he wouldn’t be shushing Kenny, who wants to listen to the baseball broadcast. Allan barks at our seven-year-old boy and Kenny barks back, and Muffler actually barks and the three of them glare at one another like drunks in a bar while Mom looks on approvingly because Allan is being strict and she thinks that is good parenting. Whatever they’re barking it’s monosyllabic and of the three, Muffler’s voice is the clearest, least slurred.

“Enough!” I stare them down, daring them to defy me. From the top of my sightline I catch a glimpse of the red-faced woman in the car behind. Is she still yelling at me? I think she must have seen me yelling at the boys and assumed it was for her and yelled back. She’s opening her car door. “Fuck me.”

“Grace!”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Apologize to your children.”

“Jacob’s not here,” Kenny reminds her.

“We should call George,” Allan says.

“His phone is off, Allan. By the way that woman is coming here to punch my face.”

“He must have turned it on when he realized we were stuck behind the train. What woman?”

“He doesn’t even know how to turn his phone on. Also, the woman behind us – beside us – is going to punch me.” —Excerpted from Boy With A Problem, “Stay Loose,” by Chris Benjamin. © by Chris Benjamin. Published by Pottersfield Press. pottersfieldpress.com

Warner was the backbone of a team that made it all the way to three national championship games. After his third year at SMU, the Montreal Canadiens didn’t come calling. But another

Original Six team did: he got an offer to attend Toronto Maple Leafs camp. Johnny Bower, whom Warner had met a few times over the years, invited him to try out for the Leafs. Warner politely declined. Following his fourth and final season, the future SMU Hall of Famer got another call from the Leafs. It was Bower again.

Warner had fully planned on pursuing a career in teaching. He was 24 years old. The possibility of playing in the NHL wasn’t on his radar, despite the call from Bower the year before. “My wife answered. She said, ‘Johnny Bower’s on the phone.’ I said, ‘Yeah, so is Mickey Mouse.’ She insisted. So, I get on the phone. I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Bower.’ He said, ‘Hi, Bob. It’s John.’”

Warner’s wife wasn’t kidding. The Hall of Famer, a Leafs scout, was calling again. “I can honestly tell you I think my toes, everything, started to shake. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

The next thing Johnny said was congratulations on this, this, and this. And then he said, ‘We’d like to sign you to an amateur tryout, if that’s okay?’ I said, ‘Of course it’s okay!’”-—Excerpted from One to Remember: Stories from 39 Members of the NHL’s One Goal Club by Ken Reid. © by Ken Reid. Published by ECW Press Ltd. ecwpress.com

It didn’t take long before the door on the other side of the confessional opened and someone came in. Father Cooke slid back the cover to the small screened window as the unknown parishioner knelt and blessed himself.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been months, maybe years, since my last confession.”

“Very well, my son. Carry on.” Father Cooke leaned in closer to the mesh window that hid their faces from each other.

“Father, I did it again. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

“What did you do?” Father Cooke urged him on.

“Father, I touched another boy. You can’t tell the cops, right?”

“I can’t reveal to anyone what I’ve learned during confession.”

“That’s good, Father, ’cause I can’t help it.” The man sniffed and put a tissue to his nose. The red dots of his own blood stained the white material.

Father Cooke slammed his hand against the dividing wall separating the two men. “You must stop this. It is a sin against God.”

“They say God’s gettin’ His revenge, Father. The nosebleeds won’t stop. I can’t even describe the pain.”

“Then stop it. Stop doing it.” Father Cooke’s hand dragged down the wall, leaving a trail of sweat. “Ask your victims for forgiveness.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants, Father.” He chuckled. “What’s my penance?”

“You must go to the police and turn yourself in this very day.” The sound of laughter from the other side infuriated Father Cooke. —Excerpted from Operation Wormwood: The Reckoning by Helen C Escott. © by Helen C Escott. Published by Flanker Press. flankerpress.com

The house Katie was standing in front of was the Haunted Mansion. That’s what she called it. Everyone else knew it as the Pigeon Lady’s house. It was a dilapidated Second Empire place, once royal blue, now faded grey, and set back from the sidewalk by a circular driveway. The property was dark and noisome. Dozens of pigeons gathered here, roosted here, flapped and waddled here. Neighbourhood groups often moved to expel the flock, citing civic ordinances and health concerns, and these initiatives would work for a while, but a few birds were always present. This old house, with its slumping roofs, peeling shingles, with its rotting, sodden steps and rose bushes tangled wild through a ruined gazebo—and all of it splodgy with pigeon droppings—seemed to represent everything that was deranged and broken in the adult world and when passing by, even in the company of my older sisters, I crossed the street to avoid its creepy, decrepit energy.

But Katie, I saw, was standing on its very front steps, gazing curious at a pigeon on a sagging eaves-trough. This was an intricate creature who with scarlet eyes was blinking Katie into abstraction. Katie, even on a good day, was prone to little absence seizures. “Churrs” my sister Carolyn called them—she and I had variations on these chills-and-shivers too—and I can explain them by saying they were a complex of response that mixed a sense of sound-and-colour with an internal emotional moment which anticipated a time in the future when you’d be remembering this selfsame multi-part experience. I didn’t like them because they seemed a very imperfect form of premonition. I don’t know what Katie thought of them—she gave herself over to seventeen other ways of thinking anyway—which might have been why she saw fit to carelessly push open the front door and advance into the darkness of the Pigeon Lady’s house. —Excerpted from Aubrey Mckee by Alex Pugsley. © by Alex Pugsley. Published by Biblioasis. biblioasis.com

This body of work is a human story, one that follows the Ayaawx (the Ts’msyen word for ancestral law), which has, at its centre, respect. Respect not as an obligation or a duty, but as a spiritual energy that clears the way, purifies, and restores balance after conflict.

This book, though some may categorize it as a memoir, is more accurately an inquiry, one that brings human conflict into the transformational presence and energy of the supernatural and nature.

I present three distinct threads. One: my story, which includes silence, the experiential interweaving of past and present, and the layering of natural and supernatural and inner and outer dimensions. Two: paintings and poems that express the essence of experience that cannot be defined. And three: my philosophical reflections on Krishnamurti’s writings on inquiry, which influenced my insights.

This web of threads is my adaptation of a delivery style used by many wisdom speakers in the Feast Hall and in ceremony, one that can open the listener to profound learning, transformative learning. In Feast Hall style, the speakers do not provide bridges between thoughts; instead, they leave space for the listener to make the connections from one concept to the next.

It is my intention in using this writing style to invite you into the gift of the Ayaawx; into the power of our Feast Halls; and into relationship with yourself, with others, and with the supernatural. —Excerpted from Singing to the Darkness by Patricia June Vickers. © by Patricia June Vickers. Published by HARP Publishing The People’s Press. harppublishing.ca