Notable 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)

“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)

“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) “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)

“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)

“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)

“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)