NO. 95
atlantic books TODAY
30 YEARS OF OUR STORIES Confronting a difficult past
Publications Mail Agreement 40038836
Atlantic Books Today: Origins
Elaine McCluskey & Alexander MacLeod
P27-MS1O1-172 | image colourized by Jules Keenan
SEE THE BIGGER IFC PICTURE
gooselane.com
Available online and from your local bookseller.
Contents Number 95 | Spring 2022
Messages 4
Messages from the editor and CMO
Foreword 6
Notable quotables
Cover Feature 8
Celebrating 30 years of Atlantic Books Today From a secret Saint Mary’s office and sporadic issues to the award-winning conversation starter, ABT has given many Atlantic authors their first “big-time” moment by Stephen Kimber
Short Feature
36 Confronting a difficult past Three new books use the power of research, story and the law to consider residential schools and the paths to healing, reconciliation and cultural renewal by Michelle Porter
39 LM Montgomery’s tales of time by Melanie Mosher
Authors in Conversation 25 Lisa Moore’s hard ticket to love by Shannon Webb-Campbell
28 Being Anna Quon by Annick MacAskill
12 Jon Claytor’s Take the Long Way Home part of the ongoing ascent of Atlantic Canadian graphic storytelling by Mallory Burnside-Holmes
News Feature 13 The growing significance of art books in Atlantic Canada Art catalogues have grown from souvenir afterthoughts to their own genre of art discovery and appreciation by Ray Cronin
Book Features 22 The art of book design How creative, smart designers make “form follows function” a beautiful thing by Steven W Beattie
31 Elaine McCluskey & Alexander MacLeod The two master crafters discuss writing processes, the sonic quality of prose and subversive and dark themes in their short fiction
34 The prolific tales of Lesley Crewe The bestselling author gets personal in her new novel, but she’s as relatable as ever by Lyla Hage
Essays & Poems 44 Writings from the HerStory Project Two powerful stories from Atlantic Books Today & YWCA Halifax’s first-ever Writer-in-Residence program by Jill Clairo and Becky Nicholas
Excerpts 40 The Volunteers 42 Brit Happens 43 Sister Seen, Sister Heard
Young Readers 47 Reviews
Reviews 52 Len & Cub 53 Caught in a Changing Society 53 Hunger Moon 54 Songlines 54 Almost Beauty 55 You May Not Take The Sad and Angry Consolations 55 Black & White
Afterword 56 Teasers 58 Staff Picks
ON THE COVER We’re thrilled our 30th-anniversary cover features Ferolle Point Light by one of Canada’s best-loved painters, Christopher Pratt. An essay published by The Rooms notes, “If you brought this painting with you to Ferolle Point, you would notice immediately that there are details missing from Christopher’s painting of the lighthouse and surrounding land. This omission of detail is intentional. Christopher is interested in capturing or sustaining the fleeting moment of the memory instead of copying what already exists.” It appears in the Goose Lane publication Generations: The Sobey Family & Canadian Art, which celebrates another anniversary, the 20th of the Sobey Art Award.
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
3
Atlantic Books Today MESSAGES
Editor’s message In late 2016, in response to a Facebook post about the first issue of this publication I edited, Elizabeth Eve posted this comment: “Nice to see the new editor, proudly holding a copy. ABT will be 25 years old next year—I may be the only one that’s counting!!” She probably was. She was the inaugural Editor c. ABT1 editor of the magazine, and she went on to give us a history lesson about ourselves: “The Board of the Atlantic Provinces Book Review Society and I scrapped the APBR in 1991, got an ACOA grant to do a plan, begged the Canada Council to think of us in a state of renewal, published 2 issues of ABT in 1992 ... and went from there, till 2002 when the publishers wisely took it over.”
There’s much more to that story, and with this now being the magazine’s 30th year, the esteemed Stephen Kimber has the whole origins in our cover story. It’s been fun looking back through 30 years of issues, not to mention photographs of staff partying with—er, celebrating the work of—authors. Ah yes, the days before pandemic, when people raised glasses together in public. This issue celebrates us celebrating books, and in the spirit of meta, celebrates books at the same time. We look at a ridiculously unsung part of bringing books into the world—the design process. We look at how art books have grown from pamphleteering afterthoughts to a respected genre and how graphic novels have become better understood as a sophisticated storytelling form. We also profile a few writers who have become rather big deals since that way-back first issue, like Lisa Moore, Lesley Crewe, Alexander MacLeod and Elaine McCluskey. And as always, we shine some light on the ones still rising. Retrospectives are fun, nostalgia’s hot. But let us also remember the revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah’s catchy and wise political slogan, “Forward ever, backward never.”
CMO’s message I’m proud to write this message for Canada’s premier book consumer magazine’s 30th anniversary issue. For 30 years, ABT has been initiating conversations about local books, and helping book lovers find their next great read. In 2022, the challenges remain the same, even as the means of conversation change. CMO c. ABT1 Change. How about the past few years? Four years ago, about half of books were purchased online. That number jumped to nearly two-thirds during the pandemic and has since settled around 60 percent. Digital discovery is increasingly important and helping booksellers reach a broader audience. And yet, selling books online is in its infancy—we are exploring new models for connecting local retailers to online local-book purchasers. New and improved models should help local retailers reach more people, more effectively. 4
Like remote buyers without access to a bookstore. We survey Atlantic Canadians regularly. Consistently, over 80 percent of respondents highly value local books, authors and publishers. Nearly two-thirds express the desire to purchase local books. Only 40 percent actually do. Our challenge remains making consumers aware of the astounding variety of local books available—skim this issue for the latest proof—and helping them find those books when it comes time to buy or borrow. We’ve seen good progress. I’m pleased 51 percent of Atlantic book buyers recognize our Teal Lighthouse icon and #ReadAtlantic hashtag, up from 37 percent in 2020. We’ve also reached a younger demographic through social media. #BookTok on TikTok has almost 95 million views, with 40 percent of users between 18 and 24. Our TikTok video on Tunes and Wooden Spoons by Mary Janet MacDonald had over 50 thousand views. I’m confident you’ll enjoy the beautiful 30th-anniversary issue of Atlantic Books Today—but in the spirit of the times, don’t forget to grab your phone and check out our bonus digital content at atlanticbooks.ca. And follow us on your favourite social media feed.
ab Publisher
Executive Director Chief Marketing Officer Editor
Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Karen Cole Alex Liot Chris Benjamin
Graphic Designer
Gwen North
Program Manager
Chantelle Rideout
Administrative Assistant
G REAT NEW R EA D S F R O M F L A NK E R P R ES S
Mallory Burnside-Holmes
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 and the Government of Nova Scotia.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 95 Spring 22. Atlantic Books Today is published twice a year. All issues are numbered in sequence. Total Atlantic-wide circulation: 30,000. ISSN 1192-3652 One-year subscriptions to Atlantic Books Today are available for $15 ($17.25 including HST). For a special offer on a 2-year subscription with a bonus canvas tote bag for $25 ($28.75 including HST), visit atlanticbooks.ca/join and use code ABT. Please make cheques payable to the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association and mail to address below or contact admin@atlanticpublishers.ca for subscription inquiries. If you would no longer like to receive copies of the magazine sent to your address, please let us know. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40038836 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Atlantic Books Today Suite 710, 1888 Brunswick Street, Halifax, NS B3J 3J8
Phone: 902-420-0711 Fax: 902-423-4302 atlanticbooks.ca @abtmagazine facebook.com/AtlanticBooksToday @atlanticbooks.ca @atlanticbooks.ca
phone 709-739-4477 toll-free 1-866-739-4420 w w w. f l a n k e r p r e s s . c o m
check us out on
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
5
Atlantic Books Today FOREWORD
Quotables “Art and knowledge are almost never made alone. That is especially true in a project like this one, which is built out of many voices, has many authors, and carries knowledge that emerges from people living in respectful relation to a particular place and time.” —From Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge, Chapter III, by Pam Hall and Jerry Evans (Breakwater Books/MemorialUniversity Press) “Rather than thinking of Maud Lewis as an artist who was untrained, unskilled, and worked in total isolation, we ought to reframe her as an artist who, through her observation of landscape and culture, created composite images of what inspired her.” —From Painted Worlds, by Laurie Dalton (Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press) “Although both men said nothing more about how they came to be where they were on that day in May, both knew Nate couldn’t possibly have seen a small silver cross in the blackness of night any more than Jack could have seen a fire on the shore from underwater. It wasn’t possible and yet it happened.” —From The Light Amongst the Grey, by Shauna MacKeigan (Boularderie Island Press)
6
“The elephant, you might say, in the room. That hulking, hillocky older kid—clad in the kitschy, just just past-style hand-me-down trappings of a brother who’s long since left home, this town. How he stands there, here, in the eye of the storm, with recess hub-bubbing each & every which way around him; & him, slope stoic, seeming oblivious.” —From the poem “Citadel Hill” in Tangled & Cleft by Matt Robinson (Gaspereau Press) “When the dam fails a chill message surges into sealed houses, an oily mess mounts stairs, Beds sweep past; family rooms transform to underwater caves when the dam fails. Though there isn’t any water. Force, stronger than flood, slams walls. This is the land of unspoken anger.” —This poem is called “Dam,” from Your Turn, by Carole Glasser Langille (Mansfield Press)
“Lilac had skinned her heart, she’d skinned her brain, her nervous system, her name. She’d skinned her name. The one she’d inherited from her father. She had seen, she had inhaled, cruelty, and now she was one with it. She did not know where to go if she herself had to come along. She despised Lilac Welsh, hated every glimpse of her own corrupted flesh.” —From The Gunsmith’s Daughter, by Margaret Sweatman (Goose Lane Editions)
“He woke within the dream to the sound of an uapineau drumming. The rhythm the grouse pounded out with its feet was simple. While he watched he heard another drumming. It was atikuat—caribou. …(h)e went with the dream to another place: his grandfather standing by a skin tent in nutshimit—the land. His grandfather held out a drum and the boy knew he was supposed to take it, but there was something in the way.” —From The Crooked Knife, by Jan Morrison (Boulder Books)
“When advocates for Palestine face repression and suppression, the problem is not theirs alone, but represents a broader challenge to all of us to ensure that political space remains open for the pursuit of justice.” —From Advocating for Palestine in Canada, edited by Emily Regan Wills, Nadia Abu-Zahra, Michael Bueckert and Jeremy Wildeman (Fernwood Publishing)
“Until 1950 or so, Inuit tended to find themselves in front of cameras being operated by non-Inuit. There were few opportunities for Inuit to screen their performances, let alone work behind the camera. Now there are more opportunities to access and respond to this colonial archive of moving imagery.” —From On Inuit Cinema/Inuit Takugatsaliukatiget, by Mark Turner (Memorial University Press)
Quote vector created by starline - www.freepik.com
NOTABLE
“I had to muse—no Amusement possible—that my rejoinder To my ruddy-schnozzled, pitted-visaged compatriot, Overheard by the cynical greenness of pine and spruce, Was as silly an act as spitting at a viper, For his question, so deliberately impertinent— And accidentally pertinent— Had been—has been—as recurrent for me as a cold.” —From the poem “Living History” in White, by George Elliott Clarke (Gaspereau Press)
HAPPY BELLY:
THE
LAND OF THE ROCK: TALAMH
NEWFOUNDLAND POETRY
By HEATHER NOLAN
VERNACULAR STRAIN IN
THE CAKE BOOK Written by AARON MCINNIS Photographed by AIMEE NICOLE PHOTOGRAPHY
AN CARRAIG
A POETIC EXPLORATION OF PLACE AND BELONGING
By MARY DALTON
2020 PRATT LECTURE
Examining the move from uncertainty to welcoming the beauty and variety of language.
FROM THE CREATOR OF MAN VERSUS CAKE
Tips, tricks, and secrets to successful cake and cupcake making and decorating.
THE YANKEE PRIVATEER
A quest that travels across the ocean in search of identity and origin.
THE TALES OF DWIPA
HUNGER
By DEREK YETMAN
By MEGHAN GREELEY
A story of adventure, betrayal, and resilience in Newfoundland.
Survival, and the power dynamic between protectors and the protected.
SET AGAINST THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Written by PRAJWALA DIXIT Illustrated by DUNCAN MAJOR
A PLAY ABOUT CURRENCY DURING WARTIME
TRADITIONAL TALES, FANTASTIC CREATURES
Adapted from the Panchatantra, these engaging ancient stories still find meaning in today’s world.
WWW . BREAKWATERBOOKS . COM
Make new discoveries this summer Delicious recipes for 40 common foraged plants you can find!
9781459506978 | Paperback $29.95
ABT-Half-Page.indd 1
Explore the history, festivals, and hidden gems on New Brunswick’s most beautiful drives.
9781459506961 | Paperback $24.95
2022-03-29 3:30 PM
Atlantic Books Today COVER FEATURE
Celebrating 30 Years of Atlantic Books Today
Philip Moscovitch on books geared From a secret Saint Mary’s office and sporadic issues to toward the conversation starter, ABT has given the award-winning hard workauthors of their first “big-time” moment many Atlantic individual and collective healing
by Stephen Kimber
T
oday, Lesley Crewe is a best-selling author of a dozen novels, one of which, Relative Happiness, was turned into a motion picture, and another, The Spoon Stealer, longlisted for CBC’s 2022 Canada Reads competition. But Crewe still remembers that day back in 2006, when “my name and the cover of my first novel, Relative Happiness, showed up in the pages of Atlantic Books Today (ABT) … I knew I had hit the big time.” Lesley Choyce, Nova Scotia’s own Renaissance Man publisher—not to forget the author of more than 100 of his own fiction and non-fiction books—can also recall his big-time moment a decade before Crewe’s. “I was very much a younger, struggling-to-be-noticed writer.” Atlantic Books Today had reviewed a few of his young-adult novels, then a more ambitious book, The Republic of Nothing. “At some point, they even slapped a stylized picture of me on the cover of the then-tabloid publication. It meant the world to me.” This year, Atlantic Books Today celebrates its 30th anniversary as the go-to gathering place for writers and readers in Atlantic Canada—and beyond. Plus a “big-time,” “meant-the-world-to-me” moment-maker for scores of regional authors. This issue—the first of two print editions for 2022—is being distributed to a targeted audience of 30,000 book-loving readers. A slightly expanded premium version—64 pages instead of 48—will be available via Issuu, a digital publishing platform. All that content, including book news, reviews, profiles, trends, features, Proust Questionnaires and more—not to forget web-only stories about holiday books, awards seasons and a twice-a-year VOICES campaign “amplifying the work of writers from underrepresented communities”—will eventually find its way to atlanticbooks.ca/stories. You might assume, given its front-of-the-stage place in today’s Atlantic Canada literary firmament, that Atlantic Books Today has always been there, or that there is some inspiring origin story to mark its birth. TOP: Lesley Crewe BOTTOM: Lesley Choyce (Photo by Larry Battle)
8
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Eve
COVER FEATURE Atlantic Books Today
Elizabeth Eve circa 1992 (left) and Peggy Walt circa 2008.
You would assume wrong on both counts. According to the official records at the Saint Mary’s University Archives, what is now Atlantic Books Today was conceived in the early 1980s as The Atlantic Provinces Book Review (APBR), a passion project of a SMU English professor named Terry Whalen, whose research focus happened to be Maritime literature. The Review was initially a joint venture of the university— ABPR officially “reported to” the university’s vice president academic and research—the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and the Atlantic Publishers Association. It published sporadically for nearly a decade, featuring mostly academic books reviewed by other academics, with the newsprint edition made available to local newspapers as a supplement and reviews offered for reprint “as a community service.” It would not be stretching the point to say that, by the early 1990s, The Review’s academic focus grated on some in the region’s evolving commercial publishing sector, as well as independent booksellers, most of whom were eager for a vehicle that would increase public awareness of regional trade books targeted at general readers. To complicate matters, The Review—partly because it existed— had landed a substantial Canada Council grant, part of the then-federal government’s targeted push to generate interest in Canadian books, including books being written and published in Canada’s regions. That grant, of course, not only created jealousies among those who believed they knew better how it should be spent but it also complicated life for The Review itself once Saint Mary’s officials realized “there was a huge Canada Council grant coming to a non-profit organization operating out of an office they knew nothing about.”
The Review needed a new home, a new look and a new identity. Enter Elizabeth Eve, a former bookseller and publishing-industry veteran who’d helped launch Nimbus Publishing in 1978. By the early 1990s, she was “freelancing on everything to do with Atlantic authors and books.” Whalen, who was about to go on sabbatical at Saint Mary’s, approached her with yet another freelance gig opportunity—some “very part-time admin work” for The Review “for a tiny flat fee.” “Well, this is embarrassing,” she found herself confessing to Whalen. Eve told him she was already a member of another group within the industry “actively working to undermine APBR, so we can get the Council money you have and create a publication here more like BC Bookworld, something that will promote authors and books.” Whalen barely batted an eye. “Good on you,” Eve recalls him replying. “Come over here and sort out my problems. I’m going on sabbatical.” He did, and she did. Eve became the editor “and everything” except advertising sales rep at APBR. Along with a few members of the board, she also did “the heavy lifting” to reorganize the organization as the Atlantic Provinces Book Review Society, independent from Saint Mary’s. The society applied for—and received—an ACOA grant to help craft a business plan, then re-imagined, re-designed, re-positioned and ultimately re-named the publication Atlantic Books Today. In 1992, there were two issues, in 1993, three and, in 1994, four. “I remember that so clearly,” Eve jokes today, “because it was so easy to remember ... Two, three, four.” She also recalls one of the first—“and best”—things the society did: negotiate a deal to include Atlantic Books Today in the Atlantic regional edition of The Globe and Mail, instantly giving it circulation and credibility. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
9
ATL AN TIC BOOKS TODAY TH ROU GH T HE YEARS
10
That was the beginning. But far from the end of ABT’s beginning story. In 2000, Eve and her husband decided to move to China for a year, so she began casting about for another person or organization to take over running ABT. There were no enthusiastic volunteers. Enter Peggy Walt. Nova Scotia’s recently elected Progressive Conservative government had just restructured Walt out of her job as the province’s director of cultural affairs. So, when Formac publisher Jim Lorimer offered her a one-off freelance gig producing a summer books flyer for the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association (APMA)—the renamed Atlantic Publishers Association to emphasize its role in collective book marketing—she’d said yes. But then “things started coming in the mail, like bank statements, letters from the Canada Council,” she recalls. “Where is your final report?” She tried to pass on the requests to Lorimer, but he brushed her off. “No, no, no. That's your job.” “I said, ‘Well, no, I'm here to do the summer flyer thing.’ And he said, ‘You can deal with that.’ And I said, ‘Well, that would be the executive director's job.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, well, that's you.’” Which is how Peggy Walt ended up spending the next decade, initially as business manager then executive director of the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association. Luckily for Atlantic Books Today, her arrival coincided with another plea from the Book Review Society for the APMA to take over its publication. The way Walt remembers the proposition was, “Are you guys interested in taking over as publisher because, otherwise, there won't be a publication?” The association was already over-stretched and under-resourced, producing twice-yearly book promotion flyers as well as organizing meetings and professional development sessions for its publisher members. But it was also a big opportunity, a chance to support its own self-interest in promoting regional books, authors and reading, while at the same time satisfying the growing hunger among readers in Atlantic Canada for news and views about our own writing and publishing. “It was a big decision,” Walt recalls. When the APMA agreed to become the publisher, it also decided on a major makeover. Atlantic Books Today was eventually reborn as a full-colour glossy magazine and published three times a year. Et voilà! Another decade later, here we are: Atlantic Books Today, #95, Spring ’22. Today, Chris Benjamin, an award-winning freelance journalist and author of two novels and two non-fiction books, is the magazine’s half-time managing editor/content manager, responsible for
its online and offline incarnations. (Alex Liot, a veteran digital and business development executive with various media companies, has led a number of recent marketing initiatives, and Karen Cole, an integrated marketing and communications expert with 25 years of national and international experience, is the new executive director). While the magazine is now better established than it was in those earlier years, its role remains the same: bringing Atlantic Canadian writers and readers together. “The magazine is a constant balancing act among the diverse needs of publishers and authors, all of whom want and deserve representation and amplification,” Benjamin admits. “It’s half-science half-art, and my primary loyalty is to our loyal readers who love that our magazine highlights books but is also itself a treasured read.” When I ask Benjamin, who has been editing the magazine since 2016, for his own favourite moment as editor, he cheats slightly, citing his first issue—“I just remember the excitement everyone had when it came out because it was a rebranding, a whole new look and style, longer more in-depth articles, and a very cute illustrated cover of a bathing reader in bliss by the great Emma FitzGerald”—and then also noting the Fall 2020 “New Voices, Better World” issue that “explicitly highlighted young writers and writers of colour, and the cover featured spoken word artist Britta B. and won a gold Atlantic Journalism Award.” And then he adds: “I’m proud of every issue.” As for the magazine’s future, he says, “We go where the books go, and it’s always figuring out what the books are saying about the world, about Atlantic Canada, and how we can start that conversation.” But let’s circle back and leave our last word on this 30th anniversary to bestselling Atlantic Canadian novelist Lesley Crewe. “I’m forever grateful that I get to be included in this marvellous magazine that brings writers and readers together and celebrates the written word,” she says, then adds: “The end.” ■ STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax and co-founder of the university’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster, and the author of two novels and 11 non-fiction books.
AP MA S TAF F TO DAY
(Top to bottom, left to right): Chris Benjamin, Mallory Burnside-Holmes, Chantelle Rideout, Alex Liot, Gwen North and Karen Cole.
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
11
Atlantic Books Today SHORT FEATURE
Jon Claytor’s Take the Long Way Home part of the ongoing ascent of Atlantic Canadian graphic storytelling by Mallory Burnside-Holmes
I
n his debut graphic novel, published by Conundrum Press, established Maritime artist Jon Claytor asks us a question: “Are we defined by the stories we tell or the stories we don’t tell?” It’s a question he also poses to himself, during a solo cross-country road trip, from Halifax, NS, to Prince Rupert, BC, and back again. His is a cautiously hopeful search for that roadtrip-movie brand of resolution for his own life and relationships, including his on-again-off-again relationship with sobriety. But it’s also a much broader question—one this 30th anniversary issue of Atlantic Books Today ponders in terms of the stories published in Atlantic Canada. It’s a question about how we build our cultural landscape. The emergence and growing success of Conundrum Press itself, which exclusively publishes works of the comic variety, may indicate that Atlantic Canadians are warming up to what media theorist Marshall McCluhan called “cool media” (which stimulates multiple senses but in limited detail, requiring imaginative participation). Take the Long Way Home is beautifully cool in its casual references to places you know if you know, unembellished punctuation style, and even its scribbly graphics portrayed in muted grey tones with the occasional bluish hue. Not to worry, Claytor supports his readers where we need it. While building locality for local readership, we can easily swap in “Mels” for our own reliable local diner, or the giant Sasquatch in rural Ontario for the Oxford blueberry. As we sit passenger side with Jon down long stretches of the Highway of Tears in search of his next drink or meeting (always the tension of which will come first) we become reminiscent of the long-standing migration that thousands of Atlantic
TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME
Jon Claytor Conundrum Press
Canadians have made over generations: the move west, for money or answers or both, and the eventual return home. What makes Claytor’s story unique is that he isn’t a newly graduated 20-something off to work in the oil sands, he is a middle-aged father of five off to an artist-residency with a myriad of artistic and cerebral friends strewn across the provinces, who we get to meet. What’s fun about this story is participating in an existential crisis without actually being in one. We’re Jon’s road-trip buddy while he turns over forbidden questions, dark memories and a very unknown future, all while listening in on emotionally vulnerable conversations between porcupines, uncovering family secrets and secret family members, hearing an oil painter’s thoughts on quantum physics, phone calls home with the twins, and Glenn Gould. Claytor knows his personal story is not unusual, but it’s the one he has. He’s referring to a wonderful and chaotic childhood, navigating family and love in a small town, fighting for sobriety and trying to be a good person. It’s also a story told in a way only he could tell, and is another beautiful iteration of Claytor’s work. Take the Long Way Home is a meaningful contribution to a growing bookshelf of Atlantic Canadian graphic novels that further establish our stories as deeply human, delightfully raw and surprisingly uplifting. ■ MALLORY BURNSIDE-HOLMES is a freelance writer and editor in Halifax.
12
NEWS FEATURE Atlantic Books Today
The growing significance of art books in Atlantic Canada Art catalogues have grown from souvenir afterthoughts to their own genre of art discovery and appreciation by Ray Cronin
A
rt books represent a significant area of publishing in Atlantic Canada. From the by-now familiar coffee table book, to zines, exhibition catalogues, histories and artist’s books, the number of books featuring Atlantic Canadian art grows every year. The most common type of art book is the exhibition catalogue, which probably dates back as far as the first exhibition in Halifax (and in British North America), an 1839 show featuring highlights from local collections and artworks by students of WH Jones, Dalhousie College’s drawing master. Such catalogues were simply lists of artists’ names, titles of works and prices if for sale. For more than 100 years such lists represented most publications on art in Atlantic Canada. What was almost certainly the largest of these was published in 1949 accompanying the exhibition 200 Years of Art in Halifax: An Exhibition Prepared in the Honour of the Bicentenary of the City of Halifax, N.S. 1749-1949. At 56 pages, the catalogue was as lengthy as the exhibition’s title. It was ambitious for those days, but as the show featured nearly 300 artworks, listing them took a fair amount of space. The catalogue has a brief, uncredited foreword and a list of works. It also features
TOP: Ukrainian Easter Basket, 1973 by William Kurelek. From Generations: The Sobey Family & Canadian Art. ABOVE: Art catalogue from 1949.
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
13
Atlantic Books Today NEWS FEATURE
Night Sky (for Sandi), 2012 by Brenda Draney. From Generations: The Sobey Family & Canadian Art.
short biographies of all the artists represented, compiled by organizer and Dalhousie professor Alex Mowat. The show was a survey, featuring works from as early as 1749 and some so new they may have still been wet. (A supplement inserted in my copy of the catalogue lists 20 works added to the show after the catalogue went to press). 200 Years of Art in Halifax is modest by today’s standards. Most of its few illustrations are in black and white, and there is little text. Indeed, it was very much a souvenir, something to have had in hand while perusing the exhibition. The one colour illustration, of AY Jackson’s Entrance to Halifax Harbour (1919), is tipped in (glued in after the catalogue was printed) as a frontispiece. The painting wasn’t even included in the exhibition. Perhaps the Tate balked at sending it to an exhibition held in a high school. Most exhibition catalogues today bear little resemblance to this piece of history. Future Possible: An Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador (The Rooms and Goose Lane Editions), published in 2021, is fully illustrated in colour and boasts 312 pages with 18 texts and 14
essays. Other recent publications, such as monographs on ceramicist Walter Ostrom and photographer Ned Pratt, are a more typical length, each between 120 and 180 pages. In addition to accompanying exhibitions organized by art galleries, these three books share their co-publisher, Fredericton’s Goose Lane Editions. Goose Lane has been working with art galleries for more than 20 years. This spring, it is publishing four art books, collaborations with the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, York University and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Generations: The Sobey Family & Canadian Art (the only one of the publications for which a pdf was available for advance viewing), documents a touring exhibition of historical and contemporary Canadian art drawn from the collections of the Sobey Art Foundation, the Empire Company and individual Sobey family members. It has six essays on the historical context of the Sobey collection and an interview with Kent Monkman, an artist who has received significant patronage from the Sobey family. As a catalogue, the 1949 Halifax bicentenary publication bears
NEWS FEATURE Atlantic Books Today
as much relationship to Generations as a paper airplane does to a jet. While the book accompanies an exhibition, with its numerous illustrations and thoughtful essays, it can stand alone. “The perspective that we brought to art-book publishing,” Susanne Alexander, Goose Lane’s publisher, recalls, “was that a book shouldn’t be so tied to an exhibition that it couldn’t be understood or appreciated outside of the gallery context.” There is little fear of that happening with Generations. The various essayists use elements of the Sobey collections to examine Canadian art history, as well as current trends in contemporary art. Art historian Jocelyn Anderson, for instance, in her essay “Patriotic and Artistic: Canadian Painters and the National Challenge,” looks at the challenge artists had in the first decades of confederation to create a Canadian style in the face of a long European tradition. John Geoghegan, in “Making the French Connection: The Group of Seven and Quebec Painting” looks at the influence that painters from
C OV
ERI
www .me
From Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge, Chapter III.
Quebec such as James Wilson Morrice had on the Group of Seven and their evolving Canadian style. Thoughtful and informative, these texts, and the essays by Michèle Grandbois, Ian Dejardin and
NG
mor
ialu
ALL
n i ve
rsit
ANG
y p re
ss.c
Sarah Milroy, reward reading whether one sees the exhibition or not. Goose Lane Editions have been publishing art books since 1991, but it was their third book, The Art of Mary Pratt
LES
a
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
15
Atlantic Books Today NEWS FEATURE
by Tom Smart (co-published with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery), that launched them into art publishing. “It was the turning point for us,” Alexander says. “We went from what I would describe as small art books addressing a local or regional audience to a large book suddenly addressing a national audience.” The exhibition toured the country, making Mary Pratt a household name in Canada. It also opened doors across the country for Goose Lane. “It brought our work to the attention of other galleries and museums,” says Alexander. Goose Lane is not alone in such partnerships, but the model, successful as it is, is hardly the only approach to art-book publishing. Photographer Thaddeus Holownia, for instance, uses his Sackville, New Brunswick-based Anchorage Press to publish books of his large format photography, such as Headlighting 19741978, published in 2021. Many artists also use the book as their art form, creating unique or extremely limited edition works that are displayed in art galleries rather than sold in bookstores. This spring, Breakwater Books and MemorialUniversity Press will be publishing a trade version of a book in this tradition—TTowards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge, Chapter III by Newfoundland artists Pam Hall and Jerry Evans. Technology has made an outsized impact on producing art books, particularly in the area of illustration. The days of tipping images into books are long gone (except in some artist’s books), and full-colour books are now the norm. Since 2019 another advance, print-on-demand, has been used by Torbay Bight Press to produce a series of books featuring the work of contemporary Newfoundland artists. There are three books in the series, with the latest featuring St. John’s painter Emily Pittman. Someday Homes Fill My Dreams pairs images of Pittman’s paintings with poems by the artist, providing an intimate glimpse into her thought process, evoking the world she so ably creates in her images. This fall the fourth book, featuring the work of painter Mike Gough, will be published. Rex Passion, publisher of Torbay Bight Press, explains that this series is meant to serve the artists. “It was never meant to be a commercial success,” he says, “I just want to get the stuff out there.” There are no curatorial essays; in the series, Passion explains, he strives to connect the artist’s voice to their artworks. Art books play an important role in the art world. “Exhibitions are ephemeral,” Susanne Alexander notes, “but books are lasting.” More and more, art books are playing an important role in publishers’ lists, as well. “We’ve found that the market for art books is growing,” Alexander says, something that bodes well for artists and art lovers in Atlantic Canada. ■
15% off on
fernwoodpublishing.ca with the code ABT15
off
19922022
RAY CRONIN is a Nova Scotia-based writer, curator and editor. He is the founding curator of the Sobey Art Award, and former Director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. He is the author of 11 books on Canadian art, including the ongoing Gaspereau Field Guides to Canadian Artists series. He is Editorin-chief of Billie: Visual Culture Atlantic, regularly contributes to Canadian and American magazines and frequently writes for gallery exhibition catalogues. His most recent book, Alan Syliboy: Culture is Our Medicine, will be published by Gaspereau Press in Fall 2022.
16 ABT ad April 2022.indd 1
2022-04-05 1:15 PM
Sing in the Spring! As an internationally renowned quilt artist, Deb Plestid never expected to illustrate a children’s book. But the unexpected happened when her good friend Sheree Fitch approached her to collaborate on Sing in the Spring!, a poetic picture book that celebrates the coming of the season. Plestid used a variety of unexpected materials in her artwork, including cotton fabric, dye, oil paint, fibres, Fimo clay, resin and glue. The resulting colourful, layered and multi-textured illustrations brim with the joy of spring. For more insight into Plestid’s creative process, check out this behind-the-scenes sneak peek.
CONTRIBUTED CONTENT
This is an example of how I tackle my work. First there is the very rough sketch and notes on what might be included. I enlarge the sketch, add detail and create templates using freezer paper which I use to cut out the fabric to size.
I enlarge the tree branches to size. I flesh out the tree branches.
I make freezer paper templates.
I begin with a piece of white fabric for the background and paint it with Setacolour paints.
The freezer paper is applied to the fabric I choose for the branches.
The edges of the fabric for the branches are turned.
From leftover threads, I make a little thread nest and form some Fimo hummingbird eggs.
Using a photo as a reference, I threadpaint three hummingbirds onto the fabric.
For iridescence, I stitch some Angelina fibers to the bird's neck. The apple blossoms are stitched together with beads at their centres. I play around with placement of the bits and pieces.
Click to watch the Sing in the Spring! trailer.
The quilt is prepared for stitching. There is a layer of bamboo batting and a cotton backing fabric. The quilt is then put on the longarm quilting machine and I free-motion quilt it. Final decisions on placement are made and the tree branches and leaves are stitched onto the quilted background. Lastly, the nest is positioned and stitched in place by hand. All work is done under feline supervision.
Atlantic Books Today FEATURE
THE ART OF BOOK DESIGN How creative, smart designers make “form follows function” a beautiful thing by Steven W Beattie
G
ood design is in the eye of the beholder. Graphic design exists in the service of content. Form follows function. The clichés are many. Like most clichés, each contains a kernel of truth. The specific elements that cohere to make a book pop out among its fellows on a bookstore table are unique to a particular title, and impossible to quantify. No sooner has one made that observation than Andrew Steeves disagrees. He’s the co-founder of Kentville, Nova Scotia, artisanal publisher Gaspereau Press. “I don’t think good design is mysterious,” Steeves says. The statement may come more easily to Steeves than others. The writer, editor and designer has won more than 50 citations for his work from the Alcuin Society, a collective dedicated to the promotion of excellence in graphic book design. Steeves has won so many Alcuin awards that in 2015 he stopped submitting his work for consideration, wanting to give other designers an opportunity. Having developed the cohesive look for Gaspereau’s books—involving type-based cover design on paper jackets (sometimes handmade) and Smyth-sewn interiors—he is better placed than most to demystify the process of book design for a general audience. For Steeves, asking what constitutes good design is like asking how deep is a hole: the answer changes depending on the purpose. While Gaspereau strives for aesthetic cohesion between and among its titles, there is a recognition that each book has unique demands that will be determining factors in their individual designs. A book like Alexander MacLeod’s Lagomorph, an unusual (for Gaspereau) hardcover release with a letterpress-printed jacket and an original wood engraving by Ontario artist Wesley Bates, exemplifies a minimalist design (which won the Nova Scotia Masterworks Art Award) that would be entirely inappropriate for a work like Stephen Marche’s novel Love and the Mess We’re In, a heavily designed 2012 Gaspereau title that included a fold-out map of New York City. Regardless of any specific idiosyncrasies in a given title, the overall significance of good design involves providing a reader with an entrée into a particular work and making the reading experience frictionless, says Heather Bryan, production manager at Nimbus. “The function of good book design is to present the content in such a way that the reader can absorb it with ease,” Bryan says. “Legibility is more important than decoration.” It’s a sentiment Julie Scriver, creative director at Fredericton’s Goose Lane Editions, ascribes to.
22
FEATURE Atlantic Books Today
“I am not what I would call a ‘loud’ designer,” she says. “It’s not my job to be present. I am providing context and invitation.” Scriver describes her approach as more evocative than illustrative and points to a book like Almost Beauty, the recently released volume of Sue Sinclair’s selected poetry, as an example. That book features a reproduction of Vancouver artist Amy Stewart’s acrylic on canvas Wise Woman printed on textured stock that provides a tactile experience for readers. “I really love doing that for a reader,” Scriver says. “There’s the experience of seeing it, and then there’s another layer of experience when you pick it up.” Certain principles come into play that can help inform good design choices regardless of the specific project or brief. First among these is the centrality of design itself, which Steeves sees not as an adjunct, but as essential to the function of a book. “We make a mistake in our culture when we align design with something extra, like bedazzling something or adding sparkles,” Steeves says. “If these are things that come to mind when you think of design, you cannot begin to understand what design is.” Understanding what constitutes good design, according to Steeves, involves engagement with the world outside a studio. It also includes a deep knowledge of design principles steeped in an understanding of what has worked in the past. “If it seems like you’ve never read a book then you probably can’t design one,” he says. Or, as Bryan puts it, “Design is not just how the book looks, but how effectively you have put all the elements together to make an engaging product.” In our attention-deficit culture, this is more difficult than it might once have been. Scriver talks about the “nanosecond seduction”—that instant in which a design must capture a viewer’s attention among a sea of other visual work. How this is achieved represents the culmination of a process that involves numerous people from different parts of the publishing and bookselling ecosystem voicing competing, often contradictory, ideas about what will catch on in the marketplace. “The work that I do has to please a lot of people,” Scriver says. The various individuals who might have input into a given design include the writer, the in-house team at Goose Lane, as well as sales and marketing teams and buyers from key accounts such as Indigo. Each of these may have differing opinions about what works, what doesn’t and what changes to a particular design might help improve it. Each also has different priorities, some of which may be in conflict. It is up to Scriver to determine how best to incorporate these differing approaches into a final design. “I run the gauntlet every season,” she says. That means making several successive attempts at putting together a design that will pass muster with as many interested parties as possible. “For every cover that gets published, there are two, three, six, eight versions that didn’t make it,” Scriver says. The advent of digital technology makes the exploration of different ideas and approaches easier, according to Scriver, who says when she started out, she was
ABOVE LEFT: Pop-up Halifax. ABOVE: Gaspereau Press Lagomorph.
NUMBER 94 | FALL 2021
23
Atlantic Books Today FEATURE
…asking what constitutes good design is like asking how deep is a hole: the answer changes depending on the purpose. using Letraset (a proprietary form of analogue text and art design) for setting text. At Nimbus, Bryan says digitization has made it easier to customize designs and has allowed designers to experiment in a more hands-on way than was true in the past. “Decades ago, book designers relied heavily on pre-press to execute what they envisioned for the design,” she says. “Individual pages of a book on paste-up boards would be given to the printer along with photographs and slides marked up with notes on position and enlargement for the graphics. Now the designer supplies the final finished layout to the printer as a complete book.” Things are a bit different for Gaspereau, where Steeves is designer, typesetter and printer. His artisanal approach is a throwback. It’s unsurprising to hear his take on technology as it applies to book design. “We are up to our eyeballs in technology in here, including X-acto knives and pencils,” says Steeves. “When did we suddenly decide that technology was something that we invented in the mid-80s?” The hand-crafted attitude underpinning Gaspereau’s output mitigates against fashion, and Steeves admits that, while he is no Luddite, he is uninterested in chasing trends when it comes to book design. He acknowledges the broader ecosystem that will result in certain kinds of design catching on at a given time—last year it was blobs of colour appearing on book covers; in previous years it has been books with red covers or yellow covers. “There is a zeitgeist that happens—I don’t know how it happens,” Scriver says. One problem with trying to chase trends is publishers work six months to a year out from when the book will actually appear on store shelves; trying too assiduously to remain current could 24
backfire and the result will look old-fashioned or outmoded before the physical book ever hits bookstores. “We are mindful of trends when designing our books,” says Bryan, “but the constant challenge is to make your book stand out on the bookshelf and fit in at the same time amid all the other titles in that genre.” Asked to name a particularly successful Nimbus title from a design perspective, Bryan points to 2017’s East-Coast Crafted: The Essential Guide to Beers, Breweries, and Brewpubs of Atlantic Canada, a book co-written by Christopher Reynolds and Nimbus managing editor Whitney Moran. “It was the first comprehensive guide to breweries in Atlantic Canada, with so many design elements to work into the layout,” Bryan says. “It came together in a useful and really beautiful book.” The combination of utility and beauty—form following function—is as good a shorthand as any for what constitutes good design. Though technology has offered opportunities to expand the range of what can be done relatively cheaply, the core principles remain the same. If there is one challenge in the realm of design in the second decade of the 21st century, according to Steeves, it has less to do with technological advances or short attention spans, and more to do with a lack of curiosity. “It’s a failure of the imagination, it’s not a failure of the pocketbook or even a failure of intelligence,” Steeves says. “It’s just a failure to look around at other things and try to understand why they work or why they don’t work.” ■ STEVEN W BEATTIE is the former review editor of Quill & Quire. As a freelance literary journalist, his work has been published in newspapers, magazines and journals across Canada, as well as at his own online publication, That Shakespearean Rag.
AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION Atlantic Books Today
LISA MOORE’S HARD TICKET TO LOVE
Photo by Ritchie Perez
The master of fiction has mentored many Newfoundland and Labrador writers who have become their own success stories
by Shannon Webb-Campbell NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
25
Atlantic Books Today AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION
winner of the 2021 governor general’s literary award for drama The archetypal studentteacher romance is cleverly turned on its head for the post-#MeToo era in this striking new play by the acclaimed author of What a Young Wife Ought to Know and Bunny.
N
ewfoundland-based writer Lisa Moore is a hard ticket, but she does it all for love. Her most recent novel, This Is How We Love (Anansi 2022), illustrates her infatuation with the power of story, chosen family and character. Her obsession with storytelling is infused in every aspect of her life, as she writes daily, teaches creative writing and has recently edited the anthology Hard Ticket: New Writing Made in Newfoundland, which will be published by Breakwater Books this summer. The collection features some of Moore’s former creative writing students’ short fiction. When I ask Moore, what exactly is a hard ticket, she answers: “A hard ticket is a Character, character with a capital C, a person who might cause trouble, get into fights, but is also full of wit, and some kind of hard-formed integrity, someone shaped by challenging circumstances, [and] bad weather! “[A hard ticket] is a rascal, the street urchin, the kid who steals copper and sells it for a slice of pizza, or some perfume for her mother. The person who outwits those in power and has a good story to tell about it afterwards. Definitely a risk taker and a storyteller.” The characters in Hard Ticket are scallywags, scoundrels, wild cards. Each of the writers included in the anthology has studied creative writing, the majority in workshops at Memorial University. Many of these authors have got a taste for writing fiction, and most never looked back. Several are working on or have published books. “Each story is a variant, with a spike that gets in our very cells, a narrative hook, that makes us stronger people, more able to understand each other,” says Moore. “So, the act of bringing very different stories together under the same roof is something I love. Feel passionate about. “Reading these stories, talking to the very, very talented writers in Hard Ticket, about
“I love watching these stories come into being, these writers teach me things. It’s a big cauldron—the classroom—and we’re boiling up stories, seeing what floats to the surface, what’s nourishing, what’s magic.”
“Everything about Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes was perfect. I loved it.” —Sam Mooney, Mooney on Theatre Find a copy at your favourite bookstore or playwrightscanada.com!
26
what is important to them when shaping a story—that was such fun.” The anthology features Bridget Canning’s “The Years the Locusts Have Eaten,” Olivia Robinson’s “Effie,” Sobia Shaheen Shaikh’s “You-Cee,” Xavier Campbell’s “Eight Months to a Year,” Tzu-Hao Hsu’s “Twilight Airs, Iron, Water” and Matthew Hollett’s “The City Wears Thin.” Métis writer, poet and academic Michelle Porter’s short story, “Snowblower,” embodies the phrase hard ticket. A hard-edged daughter who likes to cause trouble confronts her father. Porter’s story was inspired by anger and the kind of sense of humour needed to take the piss out of one’s self. She describes the ruggedness of Newfoundland, the place, the people and their love of a good yarn—and in particular, Lisa Moore, who helped shape her as a writer. “Why write if you’re not causing a bit of trouble?” Porter says. “Why write if there’s not an undercurrent of anger about the way the world is? That anger can be used to spark change—and I think that’s the kind of Hard Ticket Lisa Moore is.” As a graduate of Memorial’s Masters of Arts, I was drawn to the English department because of Moore’s reputation as a writer and mentor. I first encountered her short story collection, Degrees of Nakedness, years ago. I remember highlighting half of the book with a bright yellow marker—it was like her stories were seeping into my pores. Years later, Moore became my thesis advisor. She still infects students with the hunger for story. “I love the opportunity to encourage new stories,” Moore says. “I love watching these
AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION Atlantic Books Today
stories come into being, these writers teach me things. It’s a big cauldron—the classroom—and we’re boiling up stories, seeing what floats to the surface, what’s nourishing, what’s magic. It’s heady. Every new brilliant story carves a new path for the next writer.” Moore, who keeps a daily writing and sketching practice, has been hunkered down living and teaching remotely from around the bay since the pandemic started. She loves working with writers, as it provides an opportunity to talk about stories all day long. Moore is constantly astonished by how different the stories are shaped in creative writing workshops. “I believe a writer’s voice is like a fingerprint or an iris scan— unique. Nothing can squash that difference, once a writer gets going. Writing workshops just point out the tools: how a character is shaped on the page; what an adjective or a semi-colon can do,” says Moore. “Every student who ends up in a creative writing class already has a ton of stories they want to unleash. But sometimes we all need to hear: Yes, that thing you want to say, that thing burning inside you that you’re desperate to show people, that thing is a story.” Moore has a teakettle of stories boiling inside of her, and spilling over. She firmly believes in the power of literature, especially during these troubled times. After two years living through a pandemic, the recent violence of the trucker convoy, troops pulling out of Afghanistan and the bombing of Ukraine, stories are an offering of something—a cup of something warm, a recollection, a teaching, a means to go on. “In the midst of all this, we may need a moment to reflect, to try to understand who we are,” Moore says. “Stories are gifts, they are medicine, they are what help us understand our experiences, understand each other, whether they are the stories we tell each other at the dinner table, in a bomb shelter or in a book.” Moore’s latest novel, This Is How We Love, is rooted in her strong conviction that the violence in St. John’s has grown far beyond what she remembers growing up, and a widespread new tolerance for ultra-right bad behavior. The novel stems from a desire to trace the meaning of love through families, but also to recognize that families are based on will, and aren’t necessarily formed by blood relations. “Families are those who fall into our circle of love and love us
HARD TICKET
Edited by Lisa Moore Breakwater Books
THIS IS HOW WE LOVE
Lisa Moore House of Anansi Press
Bridget Canning
right back, so the novel is about mothers, foster mothers, people who care for other peoples' children, just because. Because children are vulnerable and they show up in the oddest places, looking for love,” says Moore. “And love between all kinds of people. I wanted to document the ways I have been loved, through fictional characters of course. The beneficence of it, the sheer luck and generosity. But also, the ways people fail to love, and the consequences of all that.” ■ SHANNON WEBB-CAMPBELL is a member of Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation. Her books include: Still No Word (Breakwater 2015), I Am A Body of Land (Book*hug 2019), and Lunar Tides (Book*hug 2022). Shannon is a doctoral candidate at the University of New Brunswick in the Department of English, and the editor of Visual Arts News Magazine. She lives and works in Kjipuktuk / Halifax, Nova Scotia.
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
27
Atlantic Books Today AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION
Being Anna Quon by Annick MacAskill
28
T
Photo by Julie Wilson
The novelist and poet discusses a new novel set in Slovakia and completing a trilogy she hadn’t known she’d started
hirty years ago, shortly after graduating from Dalhousie University, Halifax-based author Anna Quon spent eight months working as an English conversation teacher in Nitra, a small town in Slovakia two hours away from the capital city, Bratislava. Quon revisits this country, and specifically Bratislava, in her new novel, Where the Silver River Ends, a story about prejudice, discrimination, hope and connection. “It was a beautiful time of my life that ended with a great crash into depression,” Quon says of her months in Slovakia. “My couple brief visits to Bratislava were coloured by my mood, but I set my new novel there because I knew the feel of the city and have some images of it in my mind. I also wanted to honour my time in Slovakia by revisiting it in my imagination.” In this setting, Quon unites the protagonists of her first two novels, Migration Songs and Low. Thirty-five-year-old Joan, who we met as a cough drop-addicted unemployed 30-year old in
AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION Atlantic Books Today
“When I wrote my first two novels, I had no inkling of a trilogy, but I thought I might return to Joan because she was ready to embark on a new adventure...”
Migration Songs, seems to have found a path for herself, though is still hardly settled. At the beginning of Where the Silver River Ends, she moves to Bratislava to continue her work as an English conversation teacher after a two-year stint in Budapest. Shortly after her arrival in the Slovakian capital, Joan receives a call from her mother, who informs her that Adriana, the daughter of Joan’s mother’s new boyfriend, is coming to Slovakia to explore her own mother’s roots. “When I wrote my first two novels, I had no inkling of a trilogy,” Quon tells me, “but I thought I might return to Joan because she was ready to embark on a new adventure at the end of Migration Songs.” The pairing of the two characters works as more than a simple plot device, as Joan and Adriana have a fair bit in common, besides their parents. Notably, they are both outsiders in more than one way, and, at the beginning of Where the Silver River Ends, are still working on finding direction for their lives. “I left Joan on her way to Hungary at the end of Migration Songs, and Adriana in a liminal space in her life, after leaving the psychiatric hospital, at the end of my second novel, Low. I wasn’t really finished with the character of Joan, and I also wanted Adriana to find her way forward after the trauma of being hospitalized. Also, though the two stories were unrelated, it only made sense that Adriana and Joan would have crossed paths in a small place like Dartmouth, where they were one of a literal handful of half-Chinese kids.” Quon herself is of mixed Chinese and English ancestry. She’s lived most of her life in Nova Scotia, where she grew up “playing in scrub and woods” and “swimming and canoeing in Lake Charles in Dartmouth.” Like her characters, she hasn’t always seen herself reflected in her community. “Both my parents were immigrants,” she says, “and we were an unusual mixed-race family at the time I was growing up. I came to feel quite different and apart from the people who surrounded me.” This difference is something Quon embraces to an extent. “I would say that this region has shaped my identity by letting me be an outsider, not demanding that I enter into it in ways that I don’t care to but not pushing me away either.” Though she confesses to feeling like somewhat of an outsider within the artistic community as well, Quon is active with both the Healthy Minds Cooperative, with which she facilitates a writers’ group over Zoom, and the Bus Stop Theatre Writers’ Circle. Her work as a fiction writer also began close to home, when she workshopped Migration Songs in a Marathon Fiction course taught by Sue Goyette at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. In that course, Quon met fellow Nova Scotian novelist Stephanie Domet, who connected her to Invisible, the publisher of all three of Quon’s novels. Domet has served as editor on two of Quon’s books, including Where the Silver River Ends. “What I love most about her is that she is so generous,” says Quon. “She’s honest in her critiques, but kind, and she knows what it’s like to write a novel, all the uncertainty and insecurity and self-doubt and self-recrimination.” Quon tends to be somewhat self-effacing when talking about her own work, though she writes prose with an uncanny knack for metaphor. I wasn’t surprised to encounter so much striking language in Quon’s novels—Quon is also a poet, with a chapbook recently published by Kentville’s Gaspereau Press (Body Parts, 2021). Like her poetry, her prose is both vivid and dreamy, intensely visual. Where the Silver River Ends also benefitted from years of hard work. Quon tells me she started the book
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
29
Atlantic Books Today AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION
around 2015, while living in Dartmouth. In 2016, she received a grant from Arts Nova Scotia and was able to dedicate more time to the project, spending three months in a basement apartment in Toronto. “My space was a bit cold and sterile,” she says, “and I was alone (though I had my aunt and grandmother close by), so I found it difficult to be inspired there.” Still, Quon found a way to make the best of her time in Ontario, conducting research about Eastern European Roma and interviewing Paul St. Clair, a settlement worker for Slovak Roma newcomers. Quon returned home and continued her work on the novel over the next few years. After taking time off due to chronic pain, she worked to deepen her understanding of the different experiences she had woven into her book. A central character in Where the Silver River Ends, Milan, is a young Roma man who befriends Joan early in the novel, later falling in love with Adriana after her arrival in Bratislava. Quon used another Arts Nova Scotia grant awarded in 2020 to hire sensitivity readers for Milan and other Roma characters, as well as for Miša, a character who uses a wheelchair. “That was extremely helpful in bringing more accuracy and realism to the [novel].” When I ask her about the changes in the literary scene since the beginning of her career (her first book was published in 2009), Quon’s response is mixed. Before publishing Migration Songs, she worked as a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines. “I made a small living at it,” she tells me. “Now there are fewer print media opportunities in that line of work.” Other changes have been more positive. For one, there are “more BIPOC writers stirring the reading public’s interest. It seems to me there is more room for younger writers of different backgrounds to thrive and be recognized.” Quon lists El Jones, David Huebert and Damini Awoyiga among the local writers she admires. She also finds the Nova Scotian writing community to be quite welcoming. Nevertheless, she has some concrete ideas about what could be improved, notably with respect to arts grants and book awards. “I don’t feel comfortable any more with ranking one book over another for a number of reasons, or deciding which young BIPOC or disabled artist may be awarded a grant while another is refused,” she says. “I would be happy if Halifax and Nova Scotia led the way in rethinking these systems.” ■ ANNICK MacASKILL is a writer, poet and critic based in Halifax. She is the author of three poetry collections: the forthcoming Shadow Blight, Murmurations and No Meeting Without Body.
30
AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION Atlantic Books Today
Elaine McCluskey & Alexander MacLeod
Photo: Heather A Crosby Gionet
IN CONVERSATION
Elaine McCluskey
Alexander MacLeod
The master crafters discuss writing processes, the sonic quality of prose and subversive and dark themes in their short fiction NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
31
Atlantic Books Today AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION
Elaine McCluskey is the author of three previous acclaimed short-story collections and two novels. Rafael Has Pretty Eyes is a provocative and compassionate collection featuring characters living on the margins. Alexander MacLeod’s first short-story collection, Light Lifting, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award, the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Prize, and won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. His latest, Animal Person, masterfully explores tensions brewing just below the visible surface. The two master crafters of short fiction discuss their latest works. ELAINE: First, I would like to say how much I loved this book. The stories are all haunting, complex and gloriously written. To help me understand how you create such magic, I ask: When you are writing a story, do you start with a character, a setting or a dilemma: internal or external? Why? ALEX: Thanks so much for the kind words, Elaine. I feel the same way about your book and I’m very happy to get to do this with you. Rafael Has Pretty Eyes is one of the best collections I’ve read in a decade, so glorious and furious, and I love the raw energy that surges through every story. Reading it is like sticking your tongue into the outlet of another person’s life and feeling the pure current that runs there. For me, I start most of my stories with images. These are sometimes whole scenes or sometimes just little freeze-frame moments that get stuck in my head. The rabbit story, for example, started just the way it starts in the book, with that image of the narrator being caught in a staring contest with an animal, and wondering what the rabbit is thinking about. Another one began with the image of two bodies floating in the water, close to each other, but distant, and then the last one, “The Closing Date,” started by focusing in tight on that secret locked door you sometimes see in side-by-side motel rooms. Is it okay if I rebound that same question back to you? I deeply appreciate the way your stories sound: all the different voices and the quick back-and-forth dialogue, the perfect internal rhythms, the pacing, and then—there’ s no avoiding it—the final knockout punch you often save for the end. How important is that to you, the sonic quality of the prose? Do you start with a voice, or a special kind of narrative point-of-view decision? ELAINE: I am so glad that you revealed how the rabbit story began. For anyone who does not know, that story, “Lagomorph,” was internationally celebrated, a master class in short-story writing. 32
In Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, I started with setting and character. I was so intrigued by the dark world of payday loan companies that I set “It’s Your Money” there, then created a character to work within it. In “Skunk Boy,” I worked differently. I set out to explore a character who was inherently unlikable, and it did not matter where he worked. I placed him in a seniors’ home on PEI and made the narrator a comfort dog only because I wanted to. Then I gave the dog a voice. But to answer your question, yes, the sonic quality of the prose is paramount. I hum as I write. It helps with the rhythm, and nothing works for me without the rhythm. The dialogue does not work, the narrative does not work, the knock-out punch misses. There is no impact. Sometimes, I will read a section out loud and change an errant word. When I read your stories, I cannot find a single wrong note. Not in the dialogue—“I promise I will not kill Gunther.” —not in the descriptions. I am also uneasy in a good way. I am waiting to be disturbed and/or enlightened, probably both. Is it safe to say that most of your stories appear to be about one thing—let’s say a rabbit—but are often explorations of larger truths? If so, why? ALEX: It’s so nice to imagine you like that, Elaine, humming to yourself as you type, staying on the beat, reading out loud. I do that, too, when I’m trying to figure out “how it goes.” Sometimes I think that if it can’t go through the air clearly, then it’s not going to sit on the page very well either. And you’re right: the stories in Animal Person are all trying, in one way or another, to grapple with different “truths” as best they can. But it’s tricky business. Maybe “Lagomorph” is interested in something as large or small as “intimacy,” and “Once Removed” is trying to think about the flow of time, and how people at different stages of life interpret significance in different ways. “The Ninth Concession” was trying to work through the local cost of a “global trade,” and maybe a couple of the others are wondering in different ways about notions of “privacy” or “desire.”
AUTHORS AUTHORS IN IN CONVERSATION CONVERSATION Atlantic Atlantic Books Today
RAFAEL HAS PRETTY EYES
Elaine McCluskey Goose Lane Editions
In your stories, I like all the people who are jammed in there, so many sharply drawn individuals, but all together in these perfectly condensed worlds. “Is That All You Got?,” one of my faves, has 29 people in it! (I counted.) But it never once feels crowded. It’s just life, a beautiful and complex social portrait, nearly Dickensian, if Dickens was hilarious and lived precisely at the intersection of scuzzy and gentrified in contemporary Charlottetown. Can I ask you about how you understand your characters? Are they always revealed through their actions and/or their relationships to each other? ELAINE: I love how you just explained words getting stuck in the air. And thank you for sharing some of your literary issues. I think those explorations are what make your writing both of this time and timeless. I am happy you liked “Is That All You Got?” And yes, I read a lot of Dickens after I got my first adult library card. My story was inspired by an event. I went to an apartment showing and six strangers were waiting outside for the same appointment. It was awkward, and I like awkward almost as much as I like scuzzy. The narrator developed as I wrote the story. Her grandfather I already had in my head. He was based on an old boxer within my family, someone hard and soft at the same time. I revealed him through his interactions with others. When I create characters, I borrow from people I have met, and I transfer feelings I had in different circumstances. I transfer my sadness, my elation, my disappointment to them. Your stories appear effortless, but I will be crushed if you tell me they were all easy to write. “What exactly do you think you are looking at?” was a favourite of mine because you so completely inhabited the narrator, who is brilliantly original. How do you get so inside your characters? And is it ever a chance to do bad things you would like to do but can’t? That last part may be me projecting. ALEX: That grandfather is one of my favourite people in your book, hard and soft, as you say, and he has one of the best lines: “They don’t have time for that foolishness, Girlie.”
ANIMAL PERSON
Alexander MacLeod McClelland & Stewart
I’m glad you think the stories look or sound smooth, but I’m afraid the construction process is the exact opposite of effortless. In the end, most of them were just deep black holes where my time went to die. There’s one, in fact, that I worked on for two years, but it still didn’t make the cut. I look at the book and all I see is what isn’t there. So it goes. The piece you mention here, though, “What exactly…” was a different experience. It was inspired by two photographs by Henry Wessel: “Pasadena, California, 1974” and “Pasadena, California, 1975.” An art gallery gave me an assignment and I just dove into the empty narrative space between those shots and the story spilled out. The narrator does have a unique take on things, but I don’t think of him as a “bad guy” in the traditional sense. On the other hand, I do have another person in the book called “the murderer,” and he is, for sure, deeply committed to his horrible craft. I’m interested in the “Bad Things” in your stories, too, and I appreciate the way these elements are always there, not really lurking, just present, and often hinted at early in the story before they are revealed or changed or more fully explored later on. The journalist in you is probably fatigued by the worn-out axiom, “If it bleeds, it leads,” but that’s not what you’re doing here at all. Can you talk a little bit about the way darkness functions in your stories? ELAINE: In one of my previous books, a character said: “I nod, knowing that we all go through life with a great ticking time bomb of tragedy strapped to our chests.” And I suppose that philosophy infiltrates all of my stories. I have come to realize, as I age, that bad things happen to good people. And karma “is a concept created to keep people in their place, from seeking retribution. A panacea.” In my stories, I try to blunt the pain of bad things with humour. I try not to be defeated by it. I am happy that we had a chance to have this conversation. I look forward to seeing Animal Person everywhere. ALEX: Right back at you, Elaine! This has been great. Good luck with everything. I know that readers are going to love Rafael. ■ NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
33
Atlantic Books Today AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION
The prolific tales of Lesley Crewe The bestselling author gets personal in her new novel, but she’s as relatable as ever by Lyla Hage
L
esley Crewe is a prolific storyteller. Since 2005, readers have been hooked on her down-to-earth, easily relatable tales of family, relationships, love and loss. Crewe’s 14th book, Nosy Parker, will be released this summer. The book takes readers to 1967 Montreal and a year in the life of 12-year-old Audrey Parker, a bright, inquisitive girl, who, while on a quest to uncover a family mystery, experiences the ups and downs of moving into adolescence, alongside a cast of eclectic and mostly loving characters.
34
AUTHORS IN CONVERSATION Atlantic Books Today
New World Publishing 902-576-2055
“They’re so easy to read and there’s nothing difficult about them.”
When asked about the main character, Crewe says Audrey “came to me just as she is [in the book]. As soon as I had the name Nosy Parker, I thought, okay, I know exactly who she is.” Sharing many of the same experiences as Audrey, including living in the same Montreal neighbourhood, Crewe also had Audrey’s childhood curiosity, love of words and reading. She also loved listening to her writer father typing on his typewriter. Crewe feels that when she was going through many of her childhood experiences, she wasn’t quite as aware and articulate as Audrey. “I think I was a younger version (of her).” Nosy Parker is full of funny, sad and sometimes shocking moments from Audrey’s— and Crewe’s—life, including being at home with her father, her relationships with her multicultural and close-knit neighbours, her experiences at school and with her teachers and more. Crewe’s books, including Nosy Parker, draw upon “all those little things gathered in my brain. These are the things that I want to put in my books as much for myself as anybody else, just to remember those little moments. I think that’s what people love about the books because this is what their lives are as well.” Crewe believes that life is about the little moments and her readers appreciate that and can relate. “We all have junk drawers. We’ve all worn pajamas for the last two years. If I mention stuff like that, people nod. I’m not talking about anything esoteric. I’m just picking up on what we all go through.” Crewe goes on to say, “I love the ordinary moments because your whole life is made up of ordinary moments. When you look back, wouldn’t you just love to have your grandmother at the kitchen table again?” Of her books and their impact, she says, “They’re so easy to read and there’s nothing difficult about them. I’m creating the words, enough so you can see the picture in your head and it’s a picture that we’re all familiar with.” Nosy Parker is dedicated to Crewe’s father and is based in large part on him. Although some details differ, she says it’s the basis of the man he was. “My friend said your father was with you when writing this book.” Crewe’s father died before she wrote her first book, Relative Happiness. Nosy Parker took just a month to write. “It just came,” she says. After an intense month of writing, she went to a sandbar at her home in Cape Breton and “cried and cried and cried … I was really happy to have him back. I wanted him in a place where I could get at him.” When reflecting on her writing journey, Crewe says, “I started writing for my own reasons. It was mostly just to try to figure out how to explain my world and what had happened. I’ve always used writing to try to figure out life. So, I’ve only ever written for myself, and I never intended to be published.” ■ LYLA HAGE is an entrepreneur and teacher. She also spends her time travelling, reading and writing, and is a columnist for a local community paper.
www.newworldpublishing.com
2021 Best sellers
Acadia’s Warrior Priest: Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre ISBN9781989564172– $15.95 You’ve heard the controversy surrounding Gov. Cornwallisnow infamous scalping proclamations, but did you know his primary adversary was a French missionary priest who also paid for scalps? This is the other half of this story. Le Loutre spent 20 years in the colonial Maritimes during the worst period of conflict between the French /Mi’kmaq and British settlements, with the peaceful Acadians caught in the middle. Read his personal story to understand this complex manofmanyroles,thendecide legacies foryourself. Oak Island Uearthed! 3rd International Edition 978189581458 – $22.50. A Canadian Best-Seller! This is the only book on the Oak Island mystery that argues it was “people from the south” (Maya, & Aztec) who regularly visited the island betweenthe 8-12th Centuries, then returned in the 15th C to rework the “money pit” & install ‘booby traps’. The Maya had extensive mining, agricultural and navigational prowess; all carbondating& archeologicalevidence points to Mesoamerica. More recently, the only gold found was proven to be of Aztec origin. Author John O’Brien, experienced miner/researcher, has worked for 60+ years to find out what is really buried there! This challenges all other theories, inprintoronTV.
2nd printing in 5 months . . .
Amazing Ancient Astrolabe Adventure: 9781989564158$19.95 Wayne Mushrow’s 3-part story: early life in postwar Newfoundland; hazardous diving adventures; & finding twoextremelyrare (only3inCanada)&veryvaluable navigational devices – Astrolabes – followed by 20 years of conflict with government bureaucrats before coolerheadsprevailedforthebenefitofNL&Canada. Two 2019-2021 Acadian Best-sellers! Joie de Vivre & The Forgotten Acadians by Jude Avery, winner of a first Lt. Governor’s Award of Excellence for Acadie et Francophonie. Forgotten Acadians (2nd Ed) 9781989564127 - $16.95 ; Joie de Vivre: - $19.95 (First printing of Forgotten Acadians sold out in 2 months.) Deals with the resilience and tenacity of Les Acadiens relegated to the margins geographically and how they prospered in spite of these hardships. (Maps of settlements in all three MaritimePr. incl.) Joie de Vivre 9871989564196 - $19.95 presents Acadian culture: music, dance, food, religion, festivals, treating neighbours as ‘family’ & creating “Joie/fun” out of an internal resolve, aswell as fromtheir surroundings. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
35
Atlantic Books Today BOOK FEATURE
Confronting a difficult past
by Michelle Porter
Three new books use the power of research, story and the law to consider residential schools and the paths to healing, reconciliation and cultural renewal
MUINJI’J ASKS WHY
Muinji’j and Shanika MacEachern Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press
B
ooks can help us have the conversations that we don’t always know how to have. This spring, there are three books about residential schools that invite readers of all kinds to have necessary and healing conversations. These books offer the words many of us struggle with sometimes—especially when we’re talking with children. Told by a Mi’kmaq mother, Shanika MacEachern, and her third-grade daughter Muinji’j, Muinji’j Asks Why: The Story of the Mi’kmaq and the Shubenacadie Residential School is a beautiful picture book that will begin a conversation with the children in your life. Muinji’j returns home from school with questions about residential schools and her grandparents tell her about the Mi’kmaq community in Nova Scotia. What’s important about this book is that it begins with the story of the Mi’kmaq community before the residential schools, and lets the story continue into the present, where there is healing, reconciliation and cultural renewal.
This book gives us a large traumatic story through one family in one place. Muinji’j’s grandparents are strong, comforting figures who make sure their granddaughter—and the reader— knows that the people survived and remain strong. Each difficult part of the story is paired with parallel descriptions of present healing. This is a book that teaches compassion. It is what reconciliation looks like for our elementary school-aged children. The illustrations by Zeta Paul are done in colours that offer comfort and bring the sense of healing and renewal that is important to this gentle, loving story. The book ends with descriptions of two-eyed seeing, of living within two cultures. Muinji’j then asks how they will make sure others know the true story of residential schools. “We will tell them,” said Papa. “How?” “We just did.”
MICHELLE PORTER is a Red River Métis poet, journalist and editor. She holds degrees in journalism, folklore and geography. She is the author of Inquiries, Approaching Fire and the memoir Scratching River. She lives in St. John’s. 36
BOOK FEATURE Atlantic Books Today
RECONCILIATION AND INDIGENOUS JUSTICE
David Milward Fernwood Publishing
Reconciliation and Indigenous Justice by David Milward tells us what reconciliation can look like in action when applied to a focused area. For Milward, reconciliation is clear: “The understanding of reconciliation that will be advanced here is that Canada must accept responsibility for the social problems left behind by residential schools, with concrete actions and policies that go far beyond any verbal apologies.” Milward is an associate professor of law with the University of Victoria and a member of the Beardy’s & Okemasis First Nation of Duck Lake, Saskatchewan. He is concerned with the overincarceration of Indigenous people as a direct consequence of intergenerational trauma that began with the residential schools. He writes, “It is likely that for almost every Indigenous person who ends up incarcerated, residential schools will form an important part of their background.” The book is an extended argument for a guided transition to a justice system that is administered by Indigenous Peoples themselves. Acknowledging that there is much to work out, Milward nevertheless offers a path forward for Indigenous justice, one that includes procedural protections and restorative justice initiatives.
For some, the book will read a bit too much like an academic argument, but that won’t deter most readers because Milward’s book is an entry into a debate about the justice system that many of us don’t have the words for. On this topic, many of us are like the parents and children who will read Muinji’j’s story—we need a strong and compassionate guide. Milward’s concern with how to do reconciliation in the justice system is inspiring at a time when the details of reconciliation feel unclear to too many. Milward’s vision is both practical and idealistic and I’ll be using his book as a resource in my own work. These books are part of the path we all need to walk right now. We’ve seen a rise in awareness about residential schools across this land we call Canada over the past few decades. Most people know that more than 150,000 Inuit, Métis and First Nations children attended residential schools. Most of us have been following the ongoing news stories, about discovery of the remains of bodies of Indigenous children who died while at the schools, and were buried in unmarked graves. Illustration from Muinji’j Asks Why, courtesy of Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press.
THE MARROW OF LONGING
Celeste Snowber HARP Publishing
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
37
Atlantic Books Today BOOK FEATURE
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS
Melanie Florence Lorimer & Company
Residential Schools is a reprint of a book that walks a good path as it unfolds the story of the schools for young adults and adults. It is part of the Righting Canada’s Wrongs series. Like Muinji’j Asks Why, this book brings the reader the Indigenous story before, during and after residential schools. For me as a reader, the overall impact is to see the residential schools set within a broad perspective of time and cultures. Visually, it’s a wonderful book, organized by topic and time with pictures and blurbs, and it feels almost like a scrapbook, or a new travelling museum exhibit. Written by Melanie Florence, who is of Plains Cree and Scottish descent, this book does not allow the residential schools to be the first or the final word on Indigenous culture and life. It takes us into the vibrant life and culture before the schools, shows the horror and grief of the schools, and takes us through to the other side. Its storytelling method uses blurbs and short, focused texts. It is remarkably effective. The author includes a range of Indigenous voices and stories, including the origins of the Métis people (my people). In a future edition, I would like to see an updated map of residential schools in Canada. The map used does not recognize the residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, and for this reason the reader would assume there had been none. The history is different, but Indigenous people in Newfoundland and Labrador have fought to have their history of residential schools be part of the documented story, and I think this is an important omission in a book that reaches as widely as this one does. Andrea Procter’s A Long Journey: Residential Schools in Labrador and Newfoundland examines the history of residential schools in Labrador and St. Anthony, Newfoundland. Maps with locations of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador are available online, such as the one from The Canadian Encyclopedia at thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Most of us have also heard and read the calls for reconciliation. Yet, there remains a gap in understanding what reconciliation means—and each of these three books offers up a step along the path to reconciliation for its reader. ■
38
BOOK FEATURE Atlantic Books Today
LM Montgomery’s tales of time The famed author of Anne of Green Gables was also a prolific and skilled short story writer
E
ighty years after her passing in 1942, LM Montgomery continues to delight readers with her words. A prolific writer best known for her beloved Anne of Green Gables, she wrote more than 500 short stories, as well as the novels that brought her fame. Around the Hearth: Tales of Home and Family (Vagrant Press), edited by Joanne Lebold, is a collection of 17 of those tales. Lebold is well-respected as a Montgomery scholar and collector of her work. Around the Hearth is a continuation of a series of short story collections previously published by McClelland & Stewart, edited by the late Rea Wilmshurst. When asked why publish stories written over 125 years ago, Whitney Moran, managing editor at Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press, doesn’t hesitate. “Honestly, it wasn’t a difficult decision—we published a collection of forgotten Montgomery stories a few years ago, After Many Years, and it’s been incredibly popular and a very good seller. So when this manuscript came in, it felt very similar,” she says. The publisher has many Montgomery-related books in its catalogue, fiction and non-fiction. “As far as we see it, Montgomery books are a sweet spot: they’re important to the culture of Atlantic Canada, which suits our mandate, but they’re also perennial sellers. We are thrilled to be able to publish this work, and Montgomery fans are insatiable, so we’re always on the lookout for more of her work to share.” Within the heartfelt pages of Around the Hearth are moments of deep passion for nature, a sense of adventure, love of family and kindred spirits, all reminiscent of Anne Shirley and her creator. “Montgomery incorporated personal life experiences into her stories and books,” says Lebold. “In Around the Hearth, the most notable example of this is when a wrong ingredient is used while baking. It was while Montgomery was a teacher in Bideford, PEI from 1894 to 95, and boarding at the Bideford manse, that this funny incident actually occurred. The mistress of the manse accidentally flavoured a cake with anodyne liniment and served it to a visiting minister for tea. In her autobiography, Montgomery says ‘never shall I forget the taste of that cake’ but also notes that the minister ate every crumb without comment!” Such humour is sprinkled throughout Around the Hearth. Sisters hide burnt gingersnaps in a hollow tree stump, homesick
by Melanie Mosher
cows mend relationships and an engagement is called off because of the bride’s dislike of red hair. Over years or decades, published books change as people and cultures evolve. But the warmth and charisma of Montgomery’s stories have staying power. Although much has changed in the world, the core values of friendship, family and basic human goodness endure, ensuring the continued popularity of her work. “Times change, but human behaviour does not and LM Montgomery had a wonderful understanding of human behaviour,” says Lebold. “Although most of these stories were written well over 100 years ago, today’s readers can identify with the characters as people still think, feel and act in many of the same ways. “Take stubbornness for example. In ‘Why Faith Spoke First’ and ‘The Goose Feud,’ we find two sets of friends who have had falling-outs. The main characters in both these stories want to forgive and forget but no one wants to be the first to give in.” There are also examples of homesickness and financial troubles, which can occur at any point in history. “And then there are love stories. They never go out of style,” says Lebold. In 2022, more than two years into a pandemic and with revelations of many social injustices being brought to the forefront, Montgomery’s stories of the 1900s are pertinent. As fitting as it was in 1908, when the author wrote “By Way of a Brick Oven,” her character, Dorrie Woodburn’s words are worth repeating now: “Oh, it’s a good old world,” said Dorrie with a happy sigh, “and the people in it are good. I’m glad that I’m alive in it.” Perhaps a sentiment from Montgomery herself reminding us to look beyond our current circumstance. ■ MELANIE MOSHER lives and writes on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. As a young girl, she spent her summers swimming and searching for treasures along the Northumberland Strait. She still spends her free time on the beach looking for sea glass. Both her previous books, Fire Pie Trout and Goth Girl, made their way to the Canadian Children's Book Centre's recommended books list. Visit melaniemosher.com. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
39
Atlantic Books Today EXCERPT
An excerpt from The Volunteers How Halifax’s women provided help, hope and healing to win the Second World War Lezlie Lowe’s second book brings us the untold story of Halifax’s volunteer women—who kept the western end of the North Atlantic front stable, strong and supported through the Second World War. In this excerpt, the author discusses the importance of bringing women’s war stories to light.
A
s a child I knew nothing about the Second World War in Halifax. Nothing about the clamour and chaos of its population explosion. Nothing about the glamour, the glory, or the grind of the times. My grandparents met during the war, lived through the war, recovered from the war. But the war wasn’t part of our home. I find this odd in retrospect. After all, these events weren’t mere passing clouds in history. The Second World War rocked populations—and decidedly Halifax’s. But that’s just the thing: no one got out unaffected. No one in the city at the time avoided the impact of the war. It was, literally, what it was. The ubiquity made it benign. I knew my grandfather saw terrible things, but I only ever caught whispers of the details. My grandmother didn’t seem to know much more, though I caught her once telling the story of a stranger showing up at her door one day while my grandfather was at sea. The man had been rescued from the water and over tea he’d reported to Marie that my grandfather had taken the blankets from his berth to cover him, soaked, shivering, and reeking of spilled fuel. There are battle stories. So many battle stories. And there are the stories of those left at home. These parallel stories fall decidedly along gender lines, though it wasn’t strictly true during the Second World War that men went to fight and women stayed at home. After all, there were some seven thousand wartime members of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS), who provided operational support to the Canadian Forces. The Army and Air Force each had their own women’s branches. By mid-war, in June 1943, the WRCNS training centre in Galt, Ontario, became the first female commission in the Canadian Navy when Lieutenant- Commander Isabel Macneill took the reins. Macneill, one of those three formidable and challengingly named sisters, was a Halifax native. We’ll get back to Isabel; don’t worry. In our home, the battles went unheralded and the at-home tales unrepeated. Why bother talking up what’s universal, I guess…? This turned out to be a theme that came up time and again with the women I got to know writing this book. None dared declare the volunteer work they’d done was something important. They shared a similar version of the same line: they were only doing what everyone was doing. Some trained in voluntary nursing aid. Some were dedicated amateur musicians. Most gave simply by extending their usual routines and tasks to the many strangers in their midst—making meals, sewing buttons, visiting the wounded, or greeting trains. The so-called soft skills of kitchen and domestic competence, of sociability and small talk, don’t particularly rate today against hard skills and trades. And they were likewise devalued in Halifax during the war. But these women volunteers did a collective job no government could have organized or, frankly, afforded. This army of volunteer women helped win the war. Yet their contributions remain largely invisible in the documentary history of the conflict. The volume of help has been chronicled piecemeal, through scant archival material, personal photos, and oral histories. The small-but-mighty Halifax Women’s History Society has done the heavy lifting in daylighting women’s war stories since its inception in 2013. The organization also spearheaded the funding, design, and creation of a monument dedicated to women war volunteers. When they were unveiled on the Halifax waterfront in 2017, The Volunteers/Les Bénévoles became Halifax’s first statues featuring full-sized figures of women. (Real women, not headless or armless or naked; and not fictional women, like the three exceptional Victorian statues in the Halifax Public Gardens of Roman goddesses Ceres, Flora, and Diana.) The media attention around The Volunteers/Les Bénévoles was the first time many Nova Scotians had ever heard about Halifax women’s volunteer contributions during the Second World War. ■ LEZLIE LOWE’s work has appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Independent, Buzzfeed, The Walrus and the National Post. Her first book, No Place To Go, was listed as a top-25 pick by CBC Books and The Toronto Star and one of the top 100 books of 2018 by The Globe and Mail. 40
THE VOLUNTEERS How Halifax’s women provided help, hope and healing to win the Second World War Lezlie Lowe Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press
Atlantic Books Today EXCERPT
An excerpt from Brit Happens
Or Living the Canadian Dream From the highs and lows of London to beginning anew in New Brunswick, Brit Happens tells gut-busting stories of success and failure and the unpredictable grind of stand-up comedy. It also offers a laugh-out-loud look at life in Atlantic Canada from the region’s funniest outsider-turned-local. In this excerpt, Mullinger confuses Saint John and St. John’s with high-stakes consequences, resulting in an airport sprint. Fortunately, he was not alone.
A
fter two months of dating, and another night of drinking, Pam suggested I come and visit her family in Canada for Christmas. And with my alcohol-induced bravery I said, without thinking, “I would love to.” She said she would travel home first in mid-December and that I could follow shortly after, just so she could “warn them what you’re like.” Charming. So she flew home on December 19, 2000, and I flew in three days later, arriving in the evening. “I’m here,” I squealed excitedly over the phone. “I can’t see you,” she responded. “And it’s a pretty small airport.” Now I would like to do everyone considering travelling to Atlantic Canada a favour and issue the following travel advisory. There is a city in the Canadian province of New Brunswick named Saint John. Carefully note the spelling. This is very important because there is a city in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador named St. John’s. So I had journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean to be with the love of my life and impress her parents with my intelligence and wit, and now she was speaking to me on the phone at the airport in Saint John, and I was speaking to her on the phone at an airport one thousand kilometres away in St. John’s. I know. Why the hell are there two places with almost identical names? And so close to each other. (Although not quite as close as Sackville in New Brunswick and Sackville in Nova Scotia. Two hours apart. Identical names. Go figure. Who was naming these places? I imagine some white, colonial place-namer who was absolutely overworked and simply ran out of good ideas. And, yes, the
BRIT HAPPENS Or Living the Canadian Dream James Mullinger Goose Lane Editions
first time I was booked to perform in Sackville, New Brunswick, I did indeed drive to Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia.) It’s not just me. In early 2020, I was flying back from some shows in Montréal and I was dutifully at the gate for my flight to Saint John. A voice came on the loudspeaker saying, “The flight to Saint John, New Brunswick, will commence boarding in fifteen minutes. The flight to St. John’s, Newfoundland, is at the opposite end of the airport.” No word of a lie, fifteen people got up and started running. I then posted on Facebook that I had seen this, and the next time I was at the airport a few weeks later, the security guy told me that on that very flight someone had landed
“Why the hell are there two places with almost identical names? And so close to each other.”
42
in Saint John when their intended destination was St. John’s. Every time we have visitors coming from overseas to stay with us or clients visiting the region, they always plan their trip to St. John’s. And it makes absolute logical sense to assume that the St. John’s International Airport is the airport that belongs to the city of Saint John. And it makes no logical sense whatsoever that the Air Canada website doesn’t ask you if you are absolutely sure about your destination. ■ JAMES MULLINGER is a British-born writer and comedian, based in Rothesay, New Brunswick.
EXCERPT Atlantic Books Today
An excerpt from Sister Seen, Sister Heard Kimia Eslah’s second novel is a beautiful coming-of-age story that will be familiar to every immigrant in the diaspora who has struggled to find a way between cultures, every youth who has rebelled against their parents and every woman who has faced the world alone. In this excerpt, the protagonist experiences an uncomfortable ride home from a man she doesn’t know.
F
arah waited on the porch couch while Taari went inside to get something. She had drunk and smoked too much to remember what Taari was retrieving, so she thought about other things to pass the time. “Hey, you,” Charles said, stepping onto the porch. “Hey, me!” Farah replied and chuckled at her own joke. “You doing alright?” He paused briefly and continued, “I’m heading out now. I thought you might want a ride?” “Aw, you are so sweet,” Farah said. “I live, like, really far away. Like on another planet, almost.” “That’s cool,” Charles said. “It’s no problem.” He knelt close to the couch and gave Farah a gentle poke on her arm. “Uh, well, that’s really nice. I mean, I was gonna take the late bus but that’s always full of weirdos.” “Good, then it’s settled. Let’s go,” he stood up and offered her a hand. “Wait, I have to wait for Taari,” Farah said. She looked in the direction of the front door, expecting Taari to walk through that moment. “She went to bed,” Charles replied. “She did? Oh, but she…. I was waiting for her,” Farah explained. “Guess she got tired,” Charles offered. He extended his hand again for her to take. Farah gripped his one hand with both of hers and lifted herself from the couch. Looking back in the direction of the front door, she wondered if she’d misremembered her conversation with Taari. Weird. I must be really wasted. Charles took her arm and helped her descend the steps, walk a half-block, and
get into his metallic blue sedan. Farah leaned back in the passenger seat and enjoyed the warmer climate inside. As they drove past the house, Farah thought she saw Taari on the porch but she decided it was someone else. “So what do you do?” Farah asked politely. Her stupor had been lifting and it seemed that she was seeing Charles close up for the first time that night. The man was older than she had assumed. “I work in sales,” Charles said. He flashed a smile her way and returned his attention to the road. “Cool,” Farah said. “So, you have a boyfriend, Farah?” Charles asked, keeping his gaze ahead. “Uh, well, not really. I mean, I’m focusing on school, so,” she tried to sound convincing but she came across as uncertain. “Smart,” Charles said with an amused expression. His reaction got Farah laughing and her anxiety lessened. “Yeah, thanks.” “So which building’s yours?” Charles asked in a change of subject as they approached the dozen apartment buildings. “One-ten. It’s on the left. I can get out here, though.” “I’ll drive up, it’s easy enough,” he insisted, making a left into her building’s driveway. “Cool. So, like, uh, thanks, again. For the ride.” Eager to escape the awkward moment, Farah fumbled with her seatbelt latch, uncomfortable under Charles’ persistent stare. “My pleasure,” Charles replied unhurriedly. “Maybe I’ll see you at the next party?” “That’s possible,” she said as she stepped
SISTER SEEN, SISTER HEARD
Kimia Eslah Roseway Publishing
onto the curb, and smiled back, mostly out of relief for her escape. “You’re really fun,” Charles said, bending across the passenger seat to catch her eye. “Thanks,” Farah said weakly. “You, too.” She wanted to shut the car door and walk away but his face was too close to the opening. Then Charles reached into the glove compartment, grabbed a scrap paper and pen, and offered them to Farah. “Gimme your number and I’ll call if I’m going to the next party,” Charles explained. “Uh, well, uh,” Farah mumbled. He looked at her expectantly, not breaking eye contact. She placed the scrap paper on the roof of the car and began to write. Seven digits later, she realized she had recorded the number of a popular pizza chain. Frustrated by her error, Farah dropped the paper and pen onto the passenger seat. “Okay, bye,” she mumbled as she walked away, feeling worn down, and not bothering with the passenger side door which remained ajar. In the lobby, while she searched for her keys, she spotted Charles watching her from his parked car. I could’ve turned the six into an eight, or the seven into a two. Why didn’t I ask for his number instead?! Fuck! Farah chided herself during her elevator ride up. I should’ve just taken the bus. ■ KIMIA ESLAH is a feminist, queer writer who lives in Ontario, Canada. Born in Iran following its revolution, Kimia spent her early years as a refugee in New Delhi, India, before emigrating to Toronto with her parents and three siblings. She spends her days writing and thinking about writing. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
43
Atlantic Books Today ESSAYS & POEMS
Writings from the
HerStory Project
Two powerful stories from Atlantic Books Today & YWCA Halifax’s first-ever Writer-in-Residence program HerStory Writer-in-Residence Abena Beloved Green has been working with YWCA Halifax to mentor writers like Jill Clairo and Becky Nicholas, helping them bring their stories to life for readers. We are privileged in our 30th-anniversary issue to present Clairo and Nicholas’ work here, personal and profound reflections on their journeys and growth as individuals.
Learning to Speak (Again) Spend hours of your childhood with a bright pink and orange stopwatch, timing yourself saying things as fast as you can. Learn to recite the alphabet in under five seconds. Push yourself, make it under three seconds. Pretend to be an auctioneer. Get books from the library on tongue-twisters and practice them daily. Develop a personality around being fast. Walk fast. Take snap photos and never pause to frame them correctly. Crop later.
Jill Clairo
44
Always be the first one in class to hand in a test. Tell stories at a speed on the brink of incoherence. Roll your eyes when people can’t keep up. Learn new languages. Learn French but refuse to speak because you can’t do it perfectly and French people are particularly cruel about that. Try German. Give up when you can’t make your throat pronounce things properly. Learn Spanish. Ah yes, learn Spanish like Cinderella sliding into the lost glass slipper. Find a home in the cadence, rolling r’s and most of all—speed. Discover that everyone speaks fast in Spanish; this is your language. Move to a Spanish-speaking country, after years of entertaining the language as a hobby. Immediately realize your overconfidence. Drown in the inundation of words and expressions and rhythms of a language that feels increasingly like a pointed attack on your pride in speed. Develop an intimate knowledge of the feeling of your top and bottom lips pressed together by spending all day with your mouth shut, too lost to jump into the roaring conversations around you. Be confused in meetings. Be confused when you try to buy groceries. Be confused when everyone is making what appear to be jokes and you only catch every fifth word. Laugh when others do, trying to not stick out more than you already do. Stay at home to avoid more confusion. Feel very, very alone. Realize how much of who you are as a human is held in language and the ability to express yourself. Feel your personality erode, feel your confidence dissolve. Feel shame, feel embarrassed. Feel like other people think you are boring. Feel misunderstood. Meet a new coworker. Find out he grew up in a Haitian community, speaking four languages before hitting puberty. Understand everything he says. Feel good about yourself until you realize it’s because he is purposely speaking to you as if to a child: slowly, with simple vocabulary. Answer, pushing pride away, grateful for
ESSAYS & POEMS Atlantic Books Today
the small kindness. Begin to look for him in any large social gathering. Cling to him like you held the ladder as a child in the deep end of the pool while your sister and her friends swam just out of reach. Notice the difference between people who dominate conversation, ignoring you because you’re slow, and your new friend who gives you a chance to participate. Notice the gentle act of using language to create understanding, not just to hear your own voice. Notice the way it makes
Always Moving We grew up on the water in Eskasoni and were always out until 9:00 swimming and playing in the yard with other kids. My parents played in baseball tournaments so we travelled around to different communities playing baseball with them. My parents were always fighting. It was normal but normal isn’t always right. Around ’88 my parents divorced. That was a high note for me because there was no more violence in the house. We moved with our mom to Sydney. I was about 10-11 years old and had to learn English at the new school. I knew a little bit but not enough to understand what the teacher was talking about. I spoke Mi’kmaw. I came home from school upset at least once a week because I was picked on and got into fights because of my broken English. Rita Joe was a writer and poet of the Mi'kmaq nation. One day, she came to my classroom to share with us a book she had just published. The teacher said, “Grab a friend and sit on a mat on the floor.” All the kids grabbed a friend and quickly grabbed a spot. I was the only one left standing. I remember feeling so small. I walked to the back of the class to sit down, alone. I said hi to Mrs. Joe as I walked by her with my head down. I was about to take my spot on the mat when Rita said in English, “Becky, I need a friend to come turn the pages for me; will
you feel to be accommodated. Rethink everything. Think about every time you used language as a way to show off, as a way to trample over others. Think about every time you assumed those who were silent didn’t have anything to say, and all the times you didn’t pause to be proven wrong. Cringe. Stop cringing, decide to change. Slow down. Look for the person who is cut off, who is silent, who is learning new
you come up here and help me?” I was so excited! To have a friend and to show the class that someone liked me, that I knew the presenter and I had a spot in front! Mrs. Rita Joe was my Kiju's [mother’s] best friend, and I knew her my entire life. She spoke to me about her having to learn the English language, but what was important was not to forget or stop speaking my language. She saved me that day. I was somewhat a celebrity in the school playground for a week. Eventually we moved back to Eskasoni. I never stayed anywhere until I was 16. At 16, I had my first boyfriend and also started drinking and doing things I shouldn’t be doing. I was always fighting, so I got sent to Shelbourne youth facility for four months. I went to rehab for a month at 16, did another stint at 18. Around ’95, I was living in Sydney with my mom. I could basically do what I wanted because my mother would be gone for days. I was the main caretaker of the seven brothers and sisters underneath me. I got pregnant in 2000 and my daughter Jasmine was born in 2001, I think. Her father and I lived in New Brunswick. Shortly after Jasmine was born, he committed suicide one of those nights he had been drinking too much. After that I checked out for a little bit, mentally. My daughter was taken into care and I didn’t do much to get her back because I was so miserable myself.
vocabulary. Ask them a question. Take time. Discover how universal the pain of being left out is. Learn to listen. Ask another question. JILL CLAIRO writes from KjipuktukHalifax. She works deconstructing gender and social norms with youth, and is an avid sipper of tea, reader of stories, maker of dad jokes and lover of golden lighting.
Pushed to do Better
I met this friend, probably four or five years ago. We met a few times to get coffee when I hitchhiked to Eskasoni to get my cheque. He would be on the way over there too. When I got arrested, that’s who I called. He bailed me out for $5,000 and I had to be in house arrest at his residence. He took me places to get my ID, my beginner’s licence, to apply for jobs, for schooling, a lot of things. He sat down with me once a week and said, “Listen, I need you to write things down—goals you want to accomplish this week or today.” I was like, “Get out of here. Don’t put that shit on me.”
APMA and YWCA Halifax recognize funding for the HerStory Project from Support4Culture, a designated lottery program of the Nova Scotia Provincial Lotteries and Casino Corporation.
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
45
Atlantic Books Today ESSAYS & POEMS
He kept pressing and pressing and sure enough, I felt like I was a whole different person after doing some of those silly goals. Some of them were to call and register for a class and go find out information. One was as simple as, go read a book for an hour a day. I didn’t have support before. I didn’t have anyone really. I had lots of people around me but no one actually said, “Let me take you here, take you there.” I wanted to be sober; I wanted to be clean and have a home and all that. It just looked so far away for me. But when I had support and someone to help me get all my ducks in a row, it pushed me to do better. I would go to the Jane Paul Centre [in Sydney] often and I saw one of the ads on the wall. I put it off and then someone approached me and said, “Becky, you would be good for that job. No one has applied for it. That would work for you.”
Try and Help People
I applied and that’s when everything started. I started in February 2021. It’s peer outreach work for people who have been trafficked or are in that line of work. It’s important for me to try and help people. I kind of thought I’d always do something like social work, but I never did anything to make it happen because I was doing drugs for many years and was homeless at one point. Shortly after I
stopped using, I got arrested and got on the methadone program. After that, about three years ago, I got an apartment and went back to school for medical office administrator and also registered for social services. I wanted to go back and help people who were my friends. What keeps me going is that I want a better life. A better life looks like owning a tiny home, having a car and a license, having a little garden; just simple little things you know? I know I have to catch up to what I’ve been missing out on. I also like being involved in an organization like Jane Paul and the YWCA, something that’s helping others. In the social work program, I’ve been asked to tutor for the English class—writing and grammar. Imagine that. I often thank Mrs. Rita Joe for my love of words. ■ BECKY NICHOLAS is a peer outreach worker with Nova Scotia Transitional and Advocacy (NSTAY), a program run by YWCA Halifax. Becky recently graduated from NSCC, earning a social services diploma; she will attend CBU this fall. She is a resilient 45-year-old Mi’kmaw woman. She is a recovering substance user who in the last three years has made solid life changes, giving her a source of pride and sense of accomplishment.
What the Oceans Remember
Searching for Belonging and Home Sonja Boon 978-1-77112-553-6 | $22.99 NEW IN PAPER
“This book is a kind of prayer, a ‘map in words’ that navigates the treacherous, uncharted territory of our collective souls—a necessary exploration if we are ever to land safely, solidly, truthfully, on future shores. A triumph, Scratching River is proof that the healing power of narrative is a gift a writer can transmit to readers.” — SHEREE FITCH, author of You Won’t Always be This Sad and Kiss the Joy as it Flies
Rough and Plenty A Memorial Raymond A. Rogers A MEMORIAL
978-1-77112-436-2 | $24.99 | paper
Raymond A. Rogers
NEW BRUNSWICK AT T H E C R O S S R OA D S L I T E R A RY F E R M E N T AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE EAST
TONY TREMBLAY, EDITOR
New Brunswick at the Crossroads
Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East Tony Tremblay, ed. 978-1-77112-207-8 | $39.99 | paper
Catastrophe catastrophe
978-1-77112-544-4 | $22.99 | paper
Stories and Lessons from the Halifax Explosion
Stories and Lessons from the Halifax Explosion T. Joseph Scanlon; Roger Sarty, ed. 978-1-77112-371-6 | $39.99 | paper
T. Joseph Scanlon
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS press@wlu.ca | wlupress.wlu.ca Available from: UTP (Canada) http://www.utpdistribution.com | Ingram (USA) https://www.ingramcontent.com
46
YOUNG READERS Atlantic Books Today
Young readers’ reviews
by Jo-Anne Elder and Lisa Doucet
MISSION PELOCHON
Audrey Borduas-Tremblay Bouton d’or Acadie (Ages 4-8)
Confetti and Frisotti are two sisters, likely anteaters, who love each other and love to play with their stuffed toys. Confetti’s favourite stuffed animal is
Pelochon, a little lamb with a bell. One day, Confetti can’t find Pelochon. The two sisters don detective uniforms and set off to solve the mystery of the animal’s disappearance. Their thorough investigation leads them on a search through jars of pickles in the cupboard, behind the couch and finally over a mountain of laundry into the bathroom. As we follow them on their mission, we leave the house, stuffed animals and cupboards and embark on a magical journey over the waves on an ice floe. The washing machine has been transformed into an aquarium filled with fish. The detectives look through the porthole and there they find Pelochon, held in the arms of an octopus. They carefully rescue their soaking friend. This picture book is in the Trottinette collection for children aged 4 to 8. Younger children will also enjoy the pastel illustrations of familiar toys and household objects: a sock that has strayed from its mate, small items of clothing hanging on the line, a ball that has rolled away… The language is creative, not overly simple, and there are a few novel words for French Immersion and probably francophone children to learn. The style is rhythmic and interesting, with short sentences, little repetition and a variable rhyme scheme. Text and illustrations are by Audrey Borduas-Tremblay, based in Quebec City. She has a certificate in visual arts and a broad and constantly evolving artistic practice. This is her first publication. I hope we’ll see more of her words and pictures.
C POUR CIRQUE
Elena Martinez, illustrations by Daniela Zekina Bouton d’or Acadie (Ages 0-4)
This is the third alphabet book published by Bouton d’or Acadie, following Ah! pour Atlantique and B pour Bayou. C pour Cirque presents the world of the circus, from acrobats to zoom. It has been placed in the Poussette collection, designed for very young children up to four. In fact, this book will charm children of all ages as well as adults with its sophisticated illustrations—many of which would make beautiful posters—and unusual words. Each letter is accompanied by one of Daniela Zekina’s colourful, detailed images, and presented in a heading and 15 words or more of Elena Martinez’s text, about half of which start with or feature the letter. The single-word headings—Attraction! Bravo! Champion!— set the enthusiastic, superlative tone of the entries, as though the circus master (Monsieur Loyal) is shouting through a megaphone to draw in spectators. The choice of words shows inventive creativity, more like the play of tongue-twisters than lessons in common read-aloud words. For instance, excerpts of the six-line P (Première!) text translate roughly as “On the platform, a pantomime Pierrot with a powdered face adopts a pose… and presents with poetry the prestigious cast…” S (Sensation!) starts with “a suddenly silent stage.” Of course, X is for Xylophone, but it also introduces the reader to a xerus, and the word adrenaline pops into the description of an admirable acrobat. Elena Martinez lives in Montréal. Her Spanish background and interest in multiculturalism is reflected in her diverse and resonant word choices. She also published Les Sept Amis with Bouton d’or Acadie in 2017. Daniela Zekina was born and raised in Bulgaria and graduated from a fine arts academy in Sofia before moving to Quebec more than 20 years ago. She has illustrated many children’s books and exhibited work in Europe and North America.
JO-ANNE ELDER has translated more than 20 works of poetry, theatre, film, fiction and non-fiction from French to English and has been shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award for translation three times. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
47
Atlantic Books Today YOUNG READERS
MERMAID LULLABY
Briana Corr Scott
AND AFTER IT RAINS
Joanne Schwartz, illustrated by Angela Doak Nimbus Publishing (Ages 0-3)
Two delightful and visually arresting new board books for the very youngest of readers will make their way into homes and hearts this season. Briana Corr Scott’s Mermaid Lullaby is a gentle, lilting bedtime ode to the sea and its denizens. The soothing verse rolls easily off the tongue and has a light, musical cadence, while the illustrations are soft and diffused with warmth and light. The opening pages depict a joyful and diverse group of baby mermaids frolicking in the sea with loving mer-moms ever near. But when the sun goes down and bedtime draws near, even merbabies must rest whilst seabirds soar and playful seals swim nearby. The beautiful expression of light on the water and the soft and richly hued illustrations, with their filigreed lines, work perfectly with the text to evoke just the right tone for bedtime. In After It Rains, author Joanne Schwartz and illustrator Angela Doak have together crafted a charming and exquisite counting book celebrating the wonders to be found in the wake of the rain. From the ONE big puddle in the backyard to the FIVE snails on the fence post and SEVEN bands of colour in the rainbow that fills the sky with its beauty, Schwartz highlights the many delightful discoveries there are to make and to share after the rain. Doak’s exquisite and uncluttered collage illustrations are playful, brightly coloured and add just the right amount of visual texture to each page to provide depth and dimension. This is ONE counting book that countless numbers of children and parents will savour and enjoy. LANA LLAMA AND MR. BEAGLE CLIMBS SIGNAL HILL
Lori Doody Running the Goat Books & Broadsides (Ages 3-7)
Lori Doody’s latest offerings feature a new animal friend who learns to value her uniqueness and another adventure for an already beloved character. In Lana Llama, when Lana realizes she is not like the other members of her flock, she becomes self-conscious and tries her best to make herself more like them. But when she becomes aware of a bully who has been harassing her pals, she knows that she is just the one to take a stand for her sheep friends. 48
Meanwhile, Mr. Beagle and a whole host of his neighbours decide to hike up Signal Hill and do some whale watching in the latest book in his series. Along the way, it becomes clear that someone is stealing snacks from the hikers’ backpacks! Once again, Mr. Beagle puts his deductive skills to the test. Both of these books use spare, succinct text along with cleverly detailed illustrations to tell their tales and engage their readers. Mr. Beagle follows his predictable pattern, in which he formulates a suspicion, eventually discovers the culprit(s) and their motives end up eliciting sympathy and support from Mr. Beagle and the rest of the hikers. Understated humour, precise and fine-lined artwork and a caring, close-knit community make Mr. Beagle’s story a cozy and whimsical delight. The uncluttered and cheerful illustrations in Lana Llama adeptly convey Lana’s feelings that she doesn’t belong because she is different and her desire to make herself fit in. The straightforward and uncomplicated message about the value of being yourself is delivered simply as Lana decides to stand up for her friends and learns that standing out from the crowd can be a good thing. Valuable life lessons in playful, quirky and distinctively illustrated packages, these new additions to Doody’s ouevre will be warmly welcomed. SING IN THE SPRING!
Written by Sheree Fitch, quilt art by Deb Plestid Nimbus Publishing (Ages 4-8)
A jubilant collaboration that bursts with colour and life, this book captures the many-faceted wonders of spring, and the awe that they enkindle. With mama’s hum-along song to “bring in, ring in, sing in the spring” as a joyous refrain throughout, Fitch adroitly describes how even in the stillness and storminess of winter, whilst many creatures sleep, signs of spring nestle beneath the earth. Soon the snow and ice will melt and river waters will flow once more and birds and blooms and all of nature will begin to stir. The spring rains and mud puddles and hummingbirds reappearing like magic will bring freshness and new life in this time of new beginnings, with its “heart sparkly/gold glittery/glad shimmery LIGHT on EVERYTHING!” The author revels in not only the beauty of the natural world but also in the musicality of her chosen words, and in the ability of imagery and imagination to bring to life these wonders all around us. The poetry flows like the waters that ripple and break free from winter’s icy grip, and her carefully crafted word-pictures are a joy to read aloud and savour. Her observations are detailed and expressive, infused with reverence. The artwork is similarly evocative, richly textured and filled with delights to engage all of the senses. Plestid’s exquisite quilts add another layer of depth as they capture the warmth and light and life that emanate from the text. Intricate, infused with colour and radiant light, perfectly precise in their rendering of a myriad
YOUNG READERS Atlantic Books Today
of tiny details, each image is its own marvel that is meant to be pored over. ONE SUMMER IN WHITNEY PIER
Mayann Francis, illustrated by Tamara Thiebaux-Heikalo
AND SWEETGRASS
Theresa Meuse, illustrated by Jessica Jerome Nimbus Publishing (Ages 4-9)
In Sweetgrass, Auntie takes her two nephews to pick sweetgrass. She explains what they should wear and why, and that they need to bring sacred medicines to leave as an offering of thanks to Mother Earth and to the sweetgrass. She shows them how to clean the sweetgrass and how to braid it, and imparts important life lessons like picking only as much as you need and saving some to share with others. The threesome share a very special day, savouring the beauty of the world around them, the time with each other and this very sacred tradition. Readers will be touched by their familial bond and by the deep respect for nature and for this beloved cultural tradition that Auntie shares with the boys. The illustrations are rich and vibrant and infused with warmth as they depict the highlights of this day. DAPHNE’S BEES
Young Mayann Francis is facing a long and lonely summer ... until she discovers helping her parents cook traditional Caribbean meals and treats, embroidering and helping her father get organized for Sunday services. When she comes up with a plan to help her sister’s baseball team earn money to buy proper team uniforms, everyone pitches in to make her fundraising efforts a huge success. Francis warm and loving ode to life in a small community where friends and neighbours are akin to family deftly captures a spirit of place and time. Tamara Thiebaux-Heikalo’s loose-lined and detailed watercolour illustrations lend an air of nostalgia to the story with its uplifting message and evocation of a bygone era.
Catherine Dempsey, Illustrated by Veselina Tomova Running the Goat Books & Broadsides (Ages 8-12)
Daphne’s 10th birthday is a very special day indeed. It is the day that she gets her very own bee hive! After opening her presents (including a bee suit and a set of beekeeping tools) she gets to work building her hive. In the ensuing weeks, Daphne and her grandmother lovingly tend to the new hive with Gramma patiently explaining many things about the inner workings of the colony. Daphne eagerly watches the busy bees and when wasps
Mr. Beagle has a nose for mystery in Lori DooDy’s delightful picture-book series, and he knows that the best solution to any problem is community, inclusion, and acceptance. Follow all of this charming canine sleuth’s adventures!
7981927197800, $11.95
9781927917312, $11.95
9781927917428, $11.95 Cdn
Published by Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides. Distributed in Canada by Nimbus Publishing. For more information, visit www.runningthegoat.com
mr beagle ad.indd 1
25/03/2022 16:09
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
49
Atlantic Books Today YOUNG READERS
threaten the hive she and Gramma are there to help. Then, as the fall months draw to a close, the two carefully prepare the hive for the coming winter. Bursting with information, this book is a gentle story that celebrates the bond between a young girl and her grandmother while also conveying the genuine awe and wonder that the bees enkindle in both beekeepers. As Gramma guides and teaches Daphne, readers learn many things about the creation of a bee hive, the roles of the different bees and how they function, and how Daphne and Gramma are able to help protect the hive. Veselina Tomova’s vibrantly hued and richly textured illustrations magnificently depict Daphne’s excitement as well as the intricate world of the bees and the hive. Lush and light-infused, the images bring to life the beauty of the landscape and capture a sense of quiet joy. A lovely offering that is perhaps more instructional than strict story, this book provides a fascinating introduction to would-be beekeepers. CITY STREETS ARE FOR PEOPLE
Andrea Curtis, illustrated by Emma FitzGerald Groundwood Books (Ages 8-12)
City streets are remarkably busy places! While modern transportation vehicles rely largely on fossil fuels that are a major factor in global warming, it hasn’t always been this way and it doesn’t have to continue. Andrea Curtis provides fascinating information about the types of vehicles that have been used at different times and in different places. She discusses the importance of safe, affordable and efficient public transit options that don’t negatively impact the environment and that encourage people to spend less time in cars, and what is needed to create cities that are more pedestrian-friendly. This is a thorough overview of the ways in which transportation affects all of our lives, impacts our individual cities as well as the global community as a whole and the many questions we need to contemplate as we envision new possibilities. Informative and engaging, this book invites young readers to recognize that transportation is a key issue for many people, and the importance of providing options that meet peoples’ needs while also addressing the environmental impact that transit vehicles have had on our planet. Clearly written and accessible, it also looks at the ways in which safer city streets create happier, healthier individuals and communities. Emma FitzGerald’s whimsical and delightfully detailed illustrations perfectly depict the energy and vitality of these streets with their myriad of activities of daily life. The playful perspectives and deft linework create wonderfully dynamic and 50
expressive scenes that are teeming with motion and life. Using thin, loose and sketchy lines and energetic compositions, FitzGerald’s images manage to be both playful and instructive. THE TALES OF DWIPA
Prajwala Dixit, illustrated by Duncan Major Breakwater Books (Ages 9-12)
This evocative and lively retelling of a series of traditional tales from India is filled with profound truths that are as relevant today as they were when they were originally written. Set on the fictional island of Dwipa where animals converse freely with one another, Mima and her canine companions Lok and Neena share a number of adventures that unfold in a series of four stories. They encounter fish who refuse to adapt to changing circumstances, a hare who demonstrates the value of “mind over might” and unexpected friendships that remind readers that we all have our own individual strengths. With a distinctly Newfoundland flavour, these stories are filled with a range of colourful characters from Barasingha the caribou and Elee the vole to Timi the transgender orca whale. Mima, Lok and Neena learn valuable life lessons from their interactions with all of these creatures. Dixit has skillfully given these folktales a fresh and contemporary resonance while remaining true to their original spirit. Mima and her animal friends encounter situations where those who refuse to accept change and to embrace the unknown suffer the consequences. They learn about a power-hungry wolf whose egotism was his undoing and about an orca whale who betrays their dearest friend but also finds the courage to boldly proclaim their truth to the entire pod. The messages are both timely and timeless in their appeal. Duncan Major’s loose, organic and free-flowing illustrations with their subdued, earth-toned palette capture a sense of the enduring and universal nature of these tales as well as the elements that give them their more uniquely Newfoundland twist. A BEND IN THE BREEZE
Valerie Sherrard Cormorant Books/DCB (Ages 9-12)
After several days at sea in a lifeboat, Pascale Chardon is relieved to finally land on the tiny island of TeJÉ where she is warmly welcomed by its residents. Pascale is their very first visitor and the islanders hope that she will prove to be the Long Awaited, the stranger whose arrival has been foretold. According to legend, the Long Awaited will be able to tell the people of TeJÉ what their future holds... 17 days after his/her arrival. Pascale can’t believe
YOUNG READERS Atlantic Books Today
that she might truly be the one they have been waiting for. But as she makes friends and settles into the rhythms of daily life on the island, she begins to wonder, along with all the islanders, if it might be true. Yet as the days pass, despite how much she grows to care for her new friends and neighbours, she just yearns to return to her home and family. With a fairytale-like quality, this whimsical tale offers gentle reflections on the importance of friendship, forgiveness and community. As Pascale gets to know the people of TeJÉ she witnesses their tremendous kindness and love for one another as well as many of their heartaches, fears and insecurities. If Pascale is the Long Awaited, the islanders know that it is imperative that she find only peace and unity in their village. But even though she sees evidence of imperfection in their midst, more importantly Pascale is struck by the ways in which they come together to support one another in difficult times, to offer comfort and to try to understand and forgive when mistakes are made. Sherrard has created a touching reminder that “your hearts create the world around you.”
body’s Differe Every body’s S nt treet ery on Ev
now:
en français!
ISBN 978$16.95 |
2- 89750-23
0- 0
DECODING DOT GREY
Nicola Davison Nimbus Publishing (Ages 15+)
Living in a dingy basement apartment with a menagerie of animal friends (including gerbils, a gecko, a rat and an injured crow), Dot Grey spends most of her time at the animal shelter where she works, a job that she dearly loves and a place where she feels at home. There she can avoid her father’s ongoing efforts to get her to visit her mother in the hospital, her poor mum who is now but a shell of the woman she once was before the accident. Dot can’t bear to see her now, can’t bear to see her father around her. So she quietly avoids the things that hurt her and immerses herself in her work. Then Joe starts volunteering at the shelter and, despite her best efforts, Dot’s colleagues seem determined to befriend her. But ultimately, even the important work of the shelter can’t shield her from the painful realities of her life: those that she has been hiding from all along as well as those that she only now discovers. With precise, deliberate prose and deft characterizations, Davison’s first young adult novel is a masterful exploration of grief and resilience and finding one’s way. It is quietly powerful, and the relationships are understated but intricate and true to life in their imperfection. The gritty depiction of the animal shelter and the grim situations that they face is offset by the fierce love and commitment of the motley crew of people who work there, their genuine care for animals and the bonds that they form with one another. Dot’s story is at once one of heartache and loss, as well as of love and friendship and forgiveness. ■
Something’s abuzz this spring…
Daphne’s Bees written by Catherine Dempsey illustrated by Veselina tomoVa
an informational storybook about beekeeping from Running the Goat
9781927917503 / $14.99 Can distributed in Canada by Nimbus Publishing for more information visit: www.runningthegoat.com
LISA DOUCET is the co-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. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
51
Atlantic Books Today REVIEWS
Reviews
THESE BOOKS WERE REVIEWED FROM ADVANCED GALLEYS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHERS.
Rebecca Rose reviews a photographic history showing 2SLGBTQIA+ people have always been right here
T
he photograph on the cover of Len & Cub: A Queer History, is striking. Two young men stare directly into the camera; one has his arm draped over the other’s shoulders, the other gently holds his hand. The photo is black and white, from the 1910s or 20s. They almost seem to be saying, we were here. This is Len and Cub. The intimacy in this photo, and the dozens of other photos in this book, is unmistakable and remarkable. Written by Meredith J Batt and Dusty Green, this love story between two boys-cum-men in rural New Brunswick between 1914 and the mid 1920s is, too, remarkable. This is due, of course, to where and when it took place, but especially due to the sheer amount of photographic evidence that still exists, and is tenderly presented in this book. Green became aware of Len and Cub through a collection of photographs, the John Corey Collection, held at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, where Green was working. Archivist Julia Thompson relayed to Green that the donor had described the two men that proliferated the photos as “boyfriends.” They were Leonard “Len” Olive Keith and Joseph Austin Coates, nicknamed Cub for his wolfish appearance. The boys, eight years apart in age, found each other in the village of Havelock, New Brunswick, around 40 minutes from Moncton. When the boys were, well, boys, Havelock was home to about 150 souls. The vignettes featured throughout the book are of day trips in Len’s car, trips to the cabin, picnics, skating, drinking, reclining together in a hammock and more. The hints of their relationship, however they would have defined it, are not-so-hidden in plain sight; Cub nestling on Len’s shoulder, the two holding hands, lying in what the authors call an “intimate embrace” in the woods, and even Len jumping into bed at the cabin with Cub (both clothed). Even in group photos, the two are side by each and caressing, and in one photo taken in the spring of 1924 in Portland, Maine, nearly spooning in a line of friends with Cub’s hand on Len’s thigh. As Green notes, the photos of Len and Cub are some of the oldest images of a gay or queer couple in the Maritimes. Having found no letters between the two, the photos are the only known records of this romance. Starting from the point that
52
the two were “boyfriends” and the fact that Len was driven out of town for being a “homosexual” in the 1930s, Batt and Green have done an extraordinary job of filling in the rest. The authors track Len’s early life as the son of a fairly well off family (their prominence in the community making it easier to do so) and Cub’s later years, after Len had been driven into relative obscurity, as a husband, and as the owner of racehorses. Len’s families status, note the authors, likely contributed to the couple’s ability to avoid significant scrutiny or repercussions for their relationship. Having the money to buy the first car owned by anyone in the village also allowed them privacy not afforded to other men who were romantically linked with men at that time, who were forced to liaise in public spaces such as alleyways, docks and parks. Lastly, the Keith family’s wealth bought Len the camera he used to document their time together. The book includes brief histories of both of these new-at-the time inventions. It also follows the two men to war. As Dusty Green writes in the preface, “over time I became aware of the often-touted phrase in queer circles ‘We have always been here.’ I knew that we, queer people, had always existed, but the here never clicked for me.” They add later, “queer history in New Brunswick? Impossible, I thought.” It may be easier, even for members of the community, to conjure images of past 2SLGBTQIA+ people living and loving in big cities. This book pushes back against that narrative, proving that we have, indeed, always been right here. And that here, as Green writes, includes the “furthest of back roads in the most rural and forgotten-about places.” ■ REBECCA ROSE is a Cape Breton-born queer femme, feminist and freelance writer who has spent her adult life going between Halifax and Toronto. She is the author of Before the Parade: A History of Halifax’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Communities, 1972-1984, which was a finalist for the Evelyn Richardson NonFiction Award.
REVIEWS Atlantic Books Today
Paul Bennett reviews an analysis and exploration of a hallowed institution in a secular world
S
chool institutions with church origins still dot the landscape, but most live only in the memories of graduates, former teachers and their families. PEI’s St. Dunstan’s College and University has made a reappearance in Leonard Cusack’s historical memoir, Caught in a Changing Society, recounting the final years from 1950 to its 1969 closure in the merger that created the University of Prince Edward Island.
Authored by a former St. Dunstan’s student, Caught is reverential, spinning the struggles of a school for boys, founded in 1855, as it evolved into a small Catholic university offering degrees in partnership with Laval University. Much like Quebec’s Catholic colleges, it offered a classical education weighted to history, language and the arts. When Cusack attended, the school enrolled 200 students, drawn mostly from Charlottetown and vicinity. In Cusack’s retelling, the college’s “Golden Age” was from 1950 to 1963, when “the university reached the apex of its history as an independent Catholic institution.” Cusack seeks to put a fresh gloss on the college, with research from Lori Mayne, drawing on Edward MacDonald’s definitive history to 1956 and updating the story. The college was paternalistic, dependent upon subservient women from the flock doing
“domestic chores.” When St. Dunstan’s fundraising and finances improved in the 1950s, a science building and program enabled it to achieve PEI university status. It all ended when Liberal Premier Alex Campbell merged St. Dunstan’s with its Protestant counterpart, Prince of Wales College, creating UPEI. Today the shuttered college lives in downtown Charlottetown in a restored building with a sign proclaiming “SDU.” What was once a notable Catholic boys’ school and university college, occupying several buildings, is now an ornate museum facility offering a modest number of UPEI religious studies courses. Cusack’s history will ensure the glory days are remembered. ■ PAUL W BENNETT, Ed.D., Director of Schoolhouse Institute and Adjunct Professor of Education, Saint Mary’s University, is the author of 10 books.
Guyleigh Johnson reviews poetry reflecting on the preciousness of the moment
I
“
am trying to find ways to chronicle the Earth’s story,” writes Deborah Banks in her poem, “Whose Story Is it?” This line describes the essence of Hunger Moon, a collection of poems that takes us through a journey of seasons, narration of nature in the purest form and pieces of the author’s home (community). The theme through many of the poems is mindfulness, how important and precious it is to be in the moment. The gift of looking closely, paying attention to our environments and the messages we can perceive or receive based on where we are and what we’re doing. These poems are timestamps of memories. Banks describes so vividly I can picture the words as if they are a place I’ve been or seen, felt or known. Words that flow empathetically, melodic and calm, soft and eloquent in this deep conversation
with her inner thoughts of how nature feels and moves in this world. Reading through many passages, it seems as if she is inspired by what she perceives as nature’s resilience, moments where nature can distract and redirect her to hope regardless of the chaos in the world. Her relationship becomes one with nature, bringing her stillness, peace and comfort. The movement through seasons and different scenery reminds me that emotions range, life changes, things grow, die, adapt
and shift and there is beauty in all of it. Hunger Moon makes me think of the different stories, voices, perceptions, thoughts and inner feelings of all things bridging the importance and purpose of what we deem small, or even what we often forget about. How what we touch, see, taste and hear shapes our experiences in life. “I am relieved to know that nothing stays the same. It teaches me to love harder.” These last lines of “These Hands” sum up the writer’s expression to live freely, full of gratitude and fearless of time and what’s to come. ■ GUYLEIGH JOHNSON is a young spoken-word artist born and raised in North End Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, who has been passionate about writing since the age of four. She is the author of Expect the Unexpected and Afraid of the Dark. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
53
Atlantic Books Today REVIEWS
Heather Fegan reviews a valuable read for patients and caregivers Songlines is the third of a trilogy of books inspired by young people with cancer. These stories of adolescents battling life-threatening illness are aimed at both caregivers and care receivers. Author John Graham-Pole is a retired pediatric oncologist, and co-founder of HARP: The People’s Press, dedicated to highlighting the healing arts and the arts for health equity. Songlines is a touching story about finalyear university students (and couple) Ellen and Jonah, told from Ellen’s perspective as she navigates the cancer journey—the songlines, if you will—with her boyfriend, his family and their friends, as Jonah is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Songlines certainly strikes a chord. In facing Jonah’s life-threatening illness, Ellen and Jonah’s love grows and blossoms. Ellen is an aspiring med student. She, Jonah and their friends are part of a choir that performs in the hospital. They have patient buddies they spend time with, to provide company.
The story moves briskly through this cancer journey, spanning one year. It’s not so in-depth as to overwhelm, but provides enough context to understand what is going on and learn some new medical information. It also provides enough context for the reader to become attached to the characters. The story focuses on the beautiful concept of caregiving. This theme weaves
throughout the book through many different relationships. Songlines is a valuable read for patients and families, doctors, nurses and all kinds of caregivers. It would be an interesting read for students thinking of pursuing the medical field, as a peek into that world. Heavy at times, Songlines is also uplifting, filled with music, humour and tender, beautiful moments. A line from the book that stands out is when Ellen says, “Music can sure shake the emotions of hiding.” Music can evoke tears, smiles and heartaches. In this case, it can carry folks through a life-changing journey. ■ HEATHER FEGAN is a freelance journalist, book reviewer, columnist and content creator in Halifax. She’s working on her own soon-to-be published memoir about living with Crohn’s Disease. Follow her chronicles at heatherfegan.ca.
Andre Fenton reviews Sue Sinclair’s riveting collection of selfacceptance and empathy
S
ue Sinclair’s latest work, Almost Beauty, is a poetic exploration of a wide range of topics spanning mortality, love, nature, history, humanity and more. It is a versatile collection of over 100 poems. Throughout this collection, we are asked and challenged to find the deeper meanings within ourselves, and in our surroundings, as we are reminded that nothing in this world is guaranteed. Sinclair uses nature as a window to look deeper into ourselves, our insecurities and fears, as we come to understand that beauty can slip from us in the most unpredictable ways, no matter how hard we try to keep it within our grasp. These poems are a reminder that everything in our lives is temporary. We must understand these truths to accept ourselves honestly. In Sinclair’s poem, “The Most Important Room in The World,” we are tasked to see, as Sinclair puts it: “The gift no one wants,”
54
which is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, responsible for protecting global crop diversity. The life we see here is seeds— from wheat, pumpkins, spinach and so much more. This life breathes beneath the cold floors and walls created to withstand disaster and catastrophe, and it is a
reminder that life is not just surrounded by beauty, it can also exist inside steel walls, underneath mountains and inside plastic containers. Sinclair writes, “The opposite of a tomb—Or is it?” Sinclair also shows us the world through the eyes of a seeker, searching for ourselves in the most honest light possible. Sinclair writes in “The Prado:” “I want a world that is trustworthy. I want to lay the best version of my faults at your feet as you do the same for me.” This is a riveting collection of selfacceptance and profound empathy. Highly recommended for poetry readers. ■ ANDRE FENTON is an award-winning author, spoken-word artist and arts educator living in Halifax. He is the author of Worthy of Love, Annaka and The Summer Between Us.
REVIEWS Atlantic Books Today
Trevor Corkum reviews cerebral and urgent confrontations with anguish and sorrow
T
he opening poem in Shane Neilson’s latest, You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations, offers readers a series of deeply existential questions that probe what it is to be human. Why does it hurt when emotion spills out of the body? What does it mean to be good? Why is the surplus of beauty everywhere?
Neilson is a celebrated poet, doctor and academic whose body of work often explores the reality of living with an invisible disability in a world that does its best to mask complexity and despair. As a form of lived testimony, these new poems—cerebral and urgent, generous and wary in equal measure—confront the ways we are coconstituted within each other’s dreams and failures, how anguish and sorrow burrow inside even our most cherished moments. “Our laughs must not exaggerate, must state that we hurt—and hurt enough.” Shame appears frequently as one analytic for understanding human experience, in particular how shame tricks us into accepting a diminished kind of engagement with the world. Other poems explore the paradox of how pain underwrites certain forms of beauty, such as the
paintings the speaker contemplates in a crowded gallery. In the famous American art gallery, I see yet another archive of the sad and angry consolations. These sad and angry consolations—the gifts poetry (and art) provide—are never offered freely, the poems suggest. To absorb these consolations, a kind of alchemy is required, the emotional labour involved in allowing our full humanity. You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations is the work of a poet working across multiple scales of being, a collection haunted by love but also its shadow side: unavoidable grief, the inescapable end that awaits us. ■ TREVOR CORKUM lives on the South Shore of PEI, where he operates a residency program for writers at The Hideout. His debut novel The Electric Boy is forthcoming with Doubleday Canada.
Evelyn White reviews Stephen Dorsey’s haunting memoir of racism faced during formative years
I
n the first chapter of his debut release, Stephen Dorsey cites 1964 as the year US President John F Kennedy (19171963) was assassinated. Set against the backdrop of stellar recent works such as Out of the Sun by Esi Edugyan, Jude and Diana by Sharon Robart-Johnson and Africanthology, edited by A Gregory Frankson, it’s difficult to countenance the glaring (and wholly preventable) error in Black & White: An Intimate, Multicultural Perspective On “White Advantage”& The Paths to Change. Full disclosure: Frankson’s volume includes my essay on the pioneering African Nova Scotian poet Maxine Tynes (1949-2011). Some readers are likely to find merit in Dorsey’s narrative about his upbringing as the mixed-race son of a French-Canadian woman whose romantic liaisons proved detrimental to her children. Dorsey writes: “My mother was married at seventeen to … a white man … and that
same year gave birth to my half-brother. … My biological father … was a Black man who moved to Montreal from upstate New York. … They moved in together and … my brother was born. … I was born [shortly] after my brother.” Dorsey’s mother later married a “white, French-speaking immigrant from Belgium.” The couple had a daughter. Loathe to claim biracial children as his progeny, the author’s stepfather persuaded his mother to tell neighbours they’d “adopted” the Black boys
in their household. This to spare them their fate, in the stepfather’s eyes, as “inferior” children of African descent, pre-destined for disaster. “My mother and stepfather never actually sat us down to tell us which orphanage we came from, who our birth parents were, or to offer any insights as to our ethnic background,” Dorsey writes. “Nothing.” Steadily climbing from the abyss of abuse (including being forced to wear a diaper at age nine), Dorsey completed his education and found success in business and as a Toronto-area community activist. “[My brother] and I faced the harsh realities of racism early in our formative years from inside our own home, within our own family,” Dorsey writes in the haunting volume. ■ EVELYN WHITE is the author of Alice Walker: A Life. A resident of Halifax, she is passionate about okra. NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
55
Atlantic Books Today AFTERWORD
Teasers T
hey were borne away by the mindless wind. Great swells were brewing. The sloop coasted down their sides, dived into their troughs, and struggled out of canyons of water onto cresting waves. Water shipped over the gunnels. Jake bailed when he could. He was having a hard go of it. He had never been tasked with such responsibility before. When fishing far from land, Guy, friend and skipper of their crew, was the one who handled their boat when caught in sudden gales. With Guy at the tiller, under bare poles or full sail, the run home seemed easy. Jake was finding now that it was far from easy, and he was worried for his family. Then, as sure as the looming islands had appeared before the storm hit, Guy’s rugged face, chiselled by the bite of a thousand winds and wrinkled by a thousand willing smiles, appeared before him. Find ’er sweet spot, Jake! Every punt’s got one! A place among the lops, no matter the size, where only she will fit. ’Tis a wondrous, never-failing thing. The tiller has been polished by my hand, Jake. I give you my strength. The pulse of the sea through wood will guide you. You must find the punt’s sweet spot. Never fear. It will carry you home safe. My God, thought Jake, what is happening? Am I losing my mind? —Excerpted from Redjack by Gary Collins. Published by Flanker Press. flankerpress.com
W
hen I got home, I took the ribbon from my pocket and wrapped it around my fingers. It was soft and pretty. I owned nothing like it. Mother was busy baking in the kitchen. I quietly went to her room and propped the mirror up on her dresser. I tied the ribbon around my hair as I had seen Madge do. It wouldn’t stay in place and slid beneath my wiry curls. “You’ll never be like her.” My mother stood behind me in the doorway. I could see her in the mirror. “You’ll never be good enough for them,” she said. “She’s in God’s pocket, that Madge. And you and I, well, we’ll never be there. Everything will always go her way, you just wait and see.” Our eyes met in the round glass and we held each other’s stare. “ “Get to the laundry.” She turned and went back down the stairs. I looked at myself as Madge had earlier that morning, searching for something but unsure what that something was. I took the ribbon from my hair and put it back in my pocket. I thought of the mean old battleaxe from the mill, looking me over like I was trash, and Madge’s mother saying they were visiting friends. I felt the satin ribbon in my pocket and I hated my mother for saying such things. Maybe Boston will be better, I thought with a sudden longing for my father. —Excerpted from Birth Road by Michelle Wamboldt. Published by Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press. nimbus.ca
56
Atlantic Books Today AFTERWORD
I
n our work with social work students, pre-service teachers, justice workers and health care professionals, we note the troubling repetition of explanations “that let those accountable for on-going domination off the hook for pervasive inequality” (St. Denis 2007: 1085). Settlers often hold Indigenous Peoples responsible for the devastating consequences of inequitable conditions maintained by whiteness within our institutions. The most popular explanations for inequality today are rooted in deficit discourses widely circulated through what we are calling colonial scripts— these are the stories, narratives and statements that frame Indigenous identity as inferior and lacking and simultaneously construct a positive identity for white settlers and thereby naturalize settler-colonial power. So ubiquitous and so entrenched, negative and racist narratives about Indigenous Peoples are stated by white settlers as if they were reasoned facts (Schick 2002). Colonial scripts reproduce the national narrative that Canada is a peaceful, non-discriminatory nation that has been built on individual work ethic alone (McLean 2018; Thobani 2007). … Colonial scripts allow social workers, health care professionals and teachers to assume the familiar role of innocent do-gooders who simply wish to help and to see themselves as providers of what they imagine Indigenous Peoples are lacking — be it intelligence, work ethic or parenting skills. As mechanisms of white settler colonialism, the dehumanizing narratives that mark Indigenous Peoples as biologically different and inferior continue to impact Indigenous Peoples’ lives and deaths in Canadian systems today. In assuming positions of superiority and of knowing best, non-Indigenous people continue a pattern that began at first contact: “Ever since the two races first met, non-Indians have been trying to teach, convert, ‘improve’ or otherwise change Indian peoples” (Doxtator 2011: 33). —Excerpted from White Benevolence edited by Amanda Gebhard, Sheelah McLean and Verna St. Denis. Published by Fernwood Publishing. fernwoodpublishing.ca
S
he carries three names. The first, Sophia, is common. Its Christian meaning is “divine wisdom.” To Muslims, it means “beautiful.” Let’s think of her in these dignified terms. Her last name, Pooley, she took from the man she married in freedom. Pooley refers to a pond or a pool of water (from Old English pōl, from Dutch poel) that is located next to a ley—an area of pasture or grassland. Ley can also refer to a ley line, “a supposed straight line connecting three or more prehistoric or ancient sites, sometimes regarded as the line of a former track and associated by some with lines of energy and other paranormal phenomena.” Pooley is riparian, as in fed by or living near the banks of a river. Wise and beautiful, she sits by water, at the edge of a field. I am searching for the ley lines which still pulse, linking her across time and space to this moment. It is her maiden name, her enslaved name, Burthen, that carries the most weight and casts the longest shadow. Burthen is an archaic English word that will become burden, the th morphing into a single d. It now means a physical thing one carries or a psychological weight (of anxiety, trauma, or depression) that can or will be passed on to others, becoming a responsibility (“the burden of proof ”) and maybe a curse lingering in the past and shading the future. —Excerpted from It Was Dark There All the Time by Andrew Hunter. Published by Goose Lane Editions. gooselane.com
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
57
Atlantic Books Today AFTERWORD
Staff Picks
36 Atlantic Canadian books that are generating buzz this season
MEMOIR
unendurable, but responded to great loss by getting stronger and loving more.
A CHILD OF EAST PRESTON
Wanda Thomas Bernard Delmore “Buddy“ Daye Learning Institute
Wanda Thomas Bernard’s accomplishments are many. Senator, social worker, the first Black Canadian tenured prof at Dalhousie, Order of Canada. Her memoir is about her roots in East Preston during the civil rights era, where she learned resilience, resistance and triumph. FROM SHOWING OFF TO SHOWING UP
McNUTT’S ISLAND
Elizabeth Walden Hyde
Pottersfield Press Elizabeth Walden Hyde lived on this small island off Shelburne, Nova Scotia, from September 1984 to May 1985. Though she has help and company, this compelling account reveals the hardship, rewards and self-awareness that come from a life lived off the land and the sea. RIG WIVES
Nancy Regan Nimbus Publishing
Kelly Earle Flanker Press
Hemingway said all there was to writing was to open a vein and bleed. Make yourself vulnerable. The former Live at 5 host opens up about her fears and insecurities, adding practical advice drawn from her own experiences overcoming imposter syndrome and fear of failure.
Kelly Earle is a Rig Wife. Her husband works in the offshore oil industry, one long shift at a time. “Our husbands risk their lives every time they go to work,” she writes. She interviews other rig wives and provides deep emotional insight into the lives of the “women who wait.”
IF I CRY I’LL FILL THE OCEAN
Ida Linehan Young Flanker Press
IMAGINED TRUTHS
Richard Lemm Tidewater Press
“I’m proud to have written this book to honour my mother,” Young writes. “I hope it touches your heart.” It is bound to do that for many. Catherine Linehan endured the 58
Acclaimed PEI poet Richard Lemm’s memoir blends the personal— raised by alcoholic grandparents while his mother was in
a mental institution—the political— dodging the Vietnam War draft—and the philosophical—critiquing American exceptionalism. The story is an odyssey ending in PEI salvation.
ART & CRAFT QUMMUT QUKIRIA!
Anna Hudson, Heather Igloliorte & Jan-Erik Lundström Goose Lane Editions
Curators, scholars, artists and activists from Inuit Nunangat, Kalaallit Nunaat, Sápmi, Canada and Scandinavia address diverse topics: Sámi rematriation, revival of the ládjogahpir (a Sámi woman’s headgear), bringing Inuit stone carving to a workshop for innercity youth, the decolonizing potential of Traditional Knowledge and its role in contemporary design and beyond. WE ARE NOVA SCOTIA: 100 PORTRAITS Anne Launcelott SSP Publications
Anne Launcelott has a gifted eye and ability to relax her subjects, allowing them to show their true selves. Her collection features photographic portraits taken since the start of the pandemic. It is a profound and truthful celebration of real Nova Scotia in its diversity and glory.
Atlantic Books Today AFTERWORD
OUT OF THE TWILIGHT
Angus MacLeod Bradan Press
Angus MacLeod, a Gaelic language and song teacher, has written and illustrated Canada’s first Gaelic graphic book, a collection of 12 short graphic stories. The book is rich with Gaelic mythology and imagery, but focused especially on human foibles.
varying skill levels.
HISTORY IT WAS DARK THERE ALL THE TIME
Andrew Hunter Goose Lane Editions
A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING
Mike Parker Pottersfield Press
Human-touch Costco—purveyed by a single Shop Keep. One-shop stopping at its finest, your kitchen sinks, living-room chairs, produce for supper and ice cream for dessert. Plus the necessary farm implements. Images show where neighbours congregated. 305 LOST BUILDINGS OF CANADA Raymond Biesinger & Alex Bozikovic Goose Lane Editions
“Biesinger and Bozikovic’s artistry is in hooking a bigger story to that of a single building,” writes Jennifer Keesmaat of this work, a collaboration between an acclaimed artist and an architecture critic. City by city, these iconic ghosts show who we were, and are. THE QUILTED STASH
Ralph Jarvis & Corey Follett Boulder Books
Since 2016, Ralph and Corey Follett have worked as The Quilted Stash, which has developed and marketed
with more than 40 historic photos. A geographic examination of place, exploring rivers, roads and railways that enabled communities.
modern-traditionalist quilting patterns. Features patterns with Newfoundland and Labrador themes and icons, and can be completed by quilters of
This grim and powerful work is based on the only known first-person account from someone who was enslaved in Canada. In 1855, Benjamin Drew of Boston interviewed Sophia Burthen Pooley, who had been brought to Canada and sold here as a slave. HEROIN
ABORTION TO ABOLITION
Martha Paynter Fernwood Publishing
Abortion access is a key focus, but Paynter’s smart analysis is holistic, connecting diverse battle fronts for reproductive justice. As Emilie Coyle put it, “This book is a comprehensive, powerful, and essential resource for all of us working toward liberation.”
POETRY LAND OF THE ROCK: TALAMH AN CARRAIG
Susan C Boyd Fernwood Publishing
Heather Nolan Breakwater Books
From its discovery in 1898, heroin was prescribed for therapeutic use in Canada. Its prohibition is tied to colonization, systemic racism, class-and-gender injustice. Boyd says to create a more just future, prohibition and punitive policies driving the illegal overdose crisis must end.
Many of us— particularly those whose ancestors migrated so far— long for a greater sense of identity and belonging. Heather Nolan translates land, animals and people into that quest, a desire for ancient ancestral culture, rooted in Gaelic Ireland, reimagined in Newfoundland.
NOVA SCOTIA’S HISTORIC INLAND COMMUNITIES
Shannon Webb-Campbell Book*hug
LUNAR TIDES
Joan Dawson Nimbus Publishing
Dawson starts at the beginning, with traditional gathering places of the Mi’kmaq. She follows settlement by Europeans, Acadians, Loyalists. This is a visual history,
Poems organized by phases of the moon and dedicated to her late mother, Shannon WebbCampbell’s latest NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
59
Atlantic Books Today AFTERWORD
collection is deeply personal and reflective on natural imagery (“we become the sea itself ”), a beautiful calling to the divine. Consistently powerful and always moving.
is changing everything. The story covers many topical issues but is never preachy and always urgent.
PASSENGERS
Andrew Bomberry and Jane Hubbard Lorimer & Company
THE SIXTIES SCOOP
Michael Crummey House of Anansi Press
A book of poetry but a travelogue of sorts, following Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer on an imagined circumnavigation of Newfoundland, and Lucifer as a Middle Ages stowaway, and parts of Europe. Crummey mostly travels the depths of the heart, its desires and how it reaches.
A detailed look at Canada’s policy of taking Indigenous children and putting them into the care of nonIndigenous families, often burying records of their background. The book also details how Indigenous communities fought back and continue healing. THE SUMMER BETWEEN US
Andre Fenton Formac Publishing
RAGS OF NIGHT IN OUR MOUTHS
Margo Wheaton McGill-Queen’s University Press
Wheaton grieves for a suffering world, calls us to love it. She explores human and environmental vulnerability and crisis. Her imagery is real yet surreal, almost hallucinatory. She writes a variation of ghazal, popularized in Canada by New Brunswick’s John Thompson.
YOUNG READERS
Francesca Ekwuyasi calls Fenton’s sequel to his runaway hit (Worthy of Love) “a moving and victorious coming of age story.” Our hero Adrian Carter is graduating high school, a triumphant moment steeped in societal pressures to become the kind of person others want him to be.
NON-FICTION FUTURE ON FIRE
David Camfield Fernwood Publishing
RIPTIDES
Carol Moreira Moose House Publications
With his fisherman dad run off, Cam is running every scheme he can imagine to raise money so his mom won’t have to sell the house. He knows the ocean best, but the climate
60
A wake-up bomb for the skeptical or ambivalent, one that screams with urgency but also dives into the why, and from there to the how to change things and prevent the worst. Camfield offers clear-eyed analysis and accessible reasoning. His observations and arguments are sharp and to the point.
HIDDEN NEWFOUNDLAND
Scott Osmond Boulder Books
Urban explorer Scott Osmond’s guide eschews tourist traps and shows little-known NL treasures, geologic wonders, mysterious histories, curious structures and other off-the-beaten-path destinations. More than 120 marvellous places with historical context and geographic information. THE VERNACULAR STRAIN IN NEWFOUNDLAND POETRY
Mary Dalton Breakwater Books
The latest Pratt Lecture from Breakwater Books comes from poet and educator Mary Dalton exploring “the increasingly confident” vernacular voice in NL poetry. Young NL poets “have access to a body of Newfoundland poetry which affirms that their own voices can make themselves heard as they are.” KAANDOSSIWIN
Kathleen Absolon Fernwood Publishing
A second edition of an essential book from Kathleen Absolon on decolonizing and Indigenous research methodologies, which Western scientific means have worked to silence, and which are holistic, relational, inter-relational and interdependent with Indigenous philosophies, beliefs and ways of being.
Atlantic Books Today AFTERWORD
CAPITALISM & DISPOSSESSION
Edited by David P Thomas and V eldon Coburn Fernwood Publishing
Fascinating and disturbing case studies showing how our dominant economic system attacks people’s rights to land, security and comfort. Resourceextraction companies are frequently the source of such suppressive acts, particularly against women and Indigenous Peoples worldwide.
FICTION
THE PUNISHING JOURNEY OF ARTHUR DELANEY
Bob Kroll ECW Press
Can’t-put-it-down storytelling that has us rushing to find the conclusion, then relishing every moment of the journey. Arthur Delaney’s journey, and his quest to make amends, is indeed punishing, but the characters he encounters are fascinating and delightful.
A small farming hamlet in the Ottawa Valley, a dying town. A panoramic view of the residents in a time of decline, the loss of their very way of living. Tension is strung around that loss and the characters’ difficulties finding connection with one another, seeing themselves in their neighbours. HUNGER
THE WARDS
DEAD AND NOT DEAD
Terry Doyle Breakwater Books
Published as a print book and in braille thanks to the generous support of the National Network for Equitable Library Services, Dead and Not Dead is an at-times surrealistic tale of life (and death) at a crossroads, one man’s search for meaning, set largely in a trailer on Dream Road.
Much-anticipated new novel from award-winning author Terry Doyle, a funny and heartbreaking tale of a workingclass family and the construction of what we consider masculine. The Wards are in a time of great upheaval, an unexpected illness forcing them back together in early adulthood.
THE GOOD THIEF
THIS IS HOW WE LOVE
Larry Gibbons Boularderie Island Press
FEARNOCH
Jim McEwen Breakwater Books
Meghan Greeley Breakwater Books
Greeley’s playscript for a show that toured Newfoundland, based on an article she read about “children during the Holocaust who’d been hidden by adults,” she told CBC. There’s a twist, “...these people who saved them were also their private monsters.” In Greeley’s playscripts, a couple is paid to harbour refugees in a time of conflict. COLD EDGE OF HEAVEN
Leo Furey Flanker Press
Lisa Moore House of Anansi Press
When 17-year-old Sonny McCluskey’s father dies, he leaves him his small auto-repair shop and an old family secret. Sonny’s stuck in a quagmire of dense emotional terrain. This is a well-paced story of love, laughter and intrigue that entices from the first page.
Powerful story of trauma, family (however defined), perseverance and love from a master of craft. Moore’s characters are raw and tender yet strong—their struggles captivate us completely. The story centres around a violent attack on one family member, but supporting characters are treated with care and compassion.
Whit Fraser Boulder Books
Constable Will Grant investigates the mysterious deaths of two troubled RCMP officers in this taut page turner. Set in 1924 at a desolate police outpost on Devon Island in Canada’s far north, Fraser’s is a story of murder, mystery, love and clashes between Inuit guides and the RCMP.
NUMBER 95 | SPRING 2022
61
Read Local
Shop Local
5560 MORRIS ST. HALIFAX, NS www.atlanticnews.ns.ca 902-429-5468
1187 COLE HARBOUR RD. DARTMOUTH, NS dartmouthbookexchange.ca 902-435-1207
Over 2,000 square feet of quality used books and a growing collection of new books by local authors. Monday – Friday: 10 am – 8 pm Saturday: 10 am – 6 pm • Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm
Your destination for unique magazines, The Globe and Mail & Sunday New York Times, great selection of art & greeting cards plus a plethora of AN aECLECTIC SHOWCASE puzzles. Open 7 days week
FOR THE DISCRIMINATING Literature • Original Visual Art from Atlantic Canada • First Nations
1695 HWY 1 CHURCH POINT, NS https://magasin.usainteanne.ca 902-769-2114 ex : 7190
PRIVATEERS WHARF HISTORICPrivat PROPERTIES Privateers Upper Water a eers Wharf Historic Properties, 1869 Up at U per Wa W ater St. at Halifax NS. B3J 1S9HALIFAX | 902.423.2940 | carrefouratlantic@bellaliant.com 1869 UPPER WATER ST., www.carrefouratlantique.ca www.carrefouratlantique.ca Newfoundland EmporiumAntique & Souvenir Shop 902-423-2940
Looking to read in French? Notre boutique en ligne offre littérature (romans, BD pour adultes, poésie, etc.), livres acadiens et des maritimes, littérature jeunesse et bien d’autres!
11 Broadway Street. Corner Brook, NL
709.634.9376 www.NewfoundlandEmporium.ca An eclectic showcase for the| discriminating. Literature • Original Visual Art • Traditional Handcrafts from Atlantic Canada, First Nations and the Canadian North.
Words, Whimsy, Wonder for All Ages. We have books of comfort and joy, inspiration and education. AND A FEW GIFT ITEMS.
WOODLAWN PLAZA DARTMOUTH, NS www.tattletalesbooks.ca 902-463-5551
286 ALLEN ROAD RIVER JOHN, NS mabelmurplesworld 286 Allen Rd River John, NS @gmail.com 902.495.7295 | mabelmurplesworld@gmail.com 902-495-7295 “As long as we have stories we will never be alone” –S.F.
Books and toys for infants to young adults. Specializing in teacher and school customized orders. Open 7 days a week.
Words, whimsy, wonder for all ages. We have books of comfort and joy, inspiration and education and a few gift items.
We can’t keep secrets, spreading stories is our business™
“As long as we have stories we will never be alone.” –S.F.
#ReadAtlantic
AtlanticBooks.ca/Bookstores
Atlantic Books Today REVIEWS Atlantic Books Today NEWS FEATURE
MA R K ET P LAC E
Chocolate River Publishing www.chocolateriver.ca
NEW THIS SPRING We Are Nova Scotia
100 Portraits by Anne Launcelott 212 pages, pb, colour, $39.95 ISBN 9781989347126
“Photographer Launcelott portrays real Nova Scotians in this brilliant collection.”
The East Coast Music Book of Fame
“Music guru Mersereau celebrates the rich musical legacy of Atlantic Canada.”
Top 50 by Bob Mersereau
216 pages, pb, colour, $24.95 ISBN 9781989347133 eBook 9781989347157
2022 Atlantic Book Awards & Festival June 2–9
Nova Scotia Book Awards June 6 | Atlantic Book Awards Gala June 9 Visit atlanticbookawards.ca for more information
$24.95 | fiction | June 978-1-77471-042-5
$26.95 | memoir / self-help 978-1-77471-031-9
$18.95 | history /architecture | June 978-1-77471-076-0
$22.95 | picture book | Ages 4-9 | May 978-1-77108-960-9
$13.95 | board book | Ages 0-3 | April 978-1-77471-037-1
$22.95 | historical fiction | April 978-1-77471-040-1
$20.95 | short story collection | May 978-1-77471-041-8
$34.95 | art criticism | April 978-1-77471-058-6
$22.95 | history | April 978-1-77471-062-3
$12.95 | board book | Ages 0-3 | April 978-1-77471-038-8
$13.95 | picture book | Ages 3-7 | June 978-1-77471-043-2
$14.95 | MG fiction | Ages 8-12 | May 978-1-77471-065-4
$12.95 | picture book | Ages 3-7 | April 978-1-77471-060-9
$21.95 | YA Fiction | Ages 14+ | March 978-1-77471-056-2
