Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

Locate me
FR

#84 Fall 2017

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This peppy memoir of a life on the road and at home finds Alan Doyle, singer-songwriter and erstwhile front man for Great Big Sea, in fine form. Doyle has an eye for details and an ear for a good story, and a well-honed ability to play out a yarn of his own.

Where Doyle’s first book, Where I Belong, told the story of his poor-but-happy childhood in Petty Harbour, Newfoundland and set the stage for his rise with Great Big Sea, A Newfoundlander in Canada offers some of the gritty details of that rise. Doyle covers everything from the business-like way the band always conducted itself (finding ways to get paid not just by the venue they were playing, but also beer companies whose banners they flew on stage, paying themselves two-hundred-and-fifty dollars a week each, while putting all other proceeds into a band bank account for the future) to the realities of life on the Canadian road when your starting point is Newfoundland and Labrador (epic ferry crossings to Cape Breton, followed by hours and hours in cars just this side of breaking down, to crummy motel rooms shared with bandmates).

Doyle is an easy companion in these stories of a life on the road. He wisely breaks them up with vignettes from Newfoundland and Labrador. This book is as much a musing on Canada, and Newfoundland and Labrador’s place in it, as it is a memoir of the early days of a soon-to-be-famous travelling band.

Though Doyle doesn’t come to any deep or particularly surprising insights about this country or its parts (Ontario is Newfoundland’s most popular and successful sibling; Manitoba is the sister you think you know everything about but you really don’t; Alberta is Newfoundland’s big brother who moved away before you were even born and on whose couch you will inevitably sleep sometime), his travelogue reveals a kind and gentle Canada where the people may occasionally be a little odd, but their hearts are in the right place.

There is one fly that sticks in the ointment Doyle slathers on. He writes of Great Big Sea being invited to play on Parliament Hill before the Queen and the band’s rightful excitement about the gig—only to discover organizers planned to drag the band on stage in a dory and introduce them as Newfies.

Doyle reminds us that while he was born in Canada, his parents and his grandparents were not. They were born Newfoundlanders, through and through. Not that long ago, Newfoundland and Labrador was still the punch line of a mean national joke.

Even in the relating of this tale, and the determined way in which Doyle dug in his heels with the show’s producers, he is deft enough to bring a light and comedic touch to the telling. It’s a generous spoonful of sugar Doyle deals out to help the medicine go down.

And really, that’s as political or controversial or revealing as this book gets. This is a book that entertains, provides a few comfortable hours in the thrall of a pretty great storyteller and a warm and cozy feeling about the Canada in which you live.

For all Canada’s actual diversity, it’s a pretty homogenous rendering Doyle serves up. His final words on the subject are a ringing endorsement of multiculturalism and its success, and to a critical reader, this conclusion arises out of a pretty shallow bed.

Still, there is good company and charm to be found on every page.

A Newfoundlander in Canada: Always Going Somewhere, Always Coming Home
Alan Doyle
Doubleday Canada

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Any artist’s career, considered over enough time, can resemble a journey with an internal, retrospective logic that makes it seem as if their destination had been predetermined. “Here I am,” we think we hear, “and this is how I got here.” The retrospective exhibition, with its traditional chronological path from the earliest to the latest work usually reinforces that impression. The reality is that few artists know where they’re heading when they start out on their journeys. They follow the work, often stumbling in the dark, with the prospect of failure their constant companion. Their paths meander, double back, run into dead ends. They discover unexpected vistas. But in the retrospective exhibition (or the book that accompanies it), we rarely see the failures, concentrating, as I suppose they must, on the vistas opened up by the artist’s successes.

This is certainly the case in the new book on the work of Newfoundland artist Marlene Creates. Self-described as an “environmental artist and poet,” Creates works across disciplines, comprising elements of sculpture, performance, written word and video, though the majority of her work is photo-based. Since the late 1970s, Creates has been working in the environment, making ephemeral gestures in the landscape documented with her beautiful photographs in places across Canada and the United Kingdom. Always, it seems, circling around and towards Newfoundland, where she has family roots, and which she has made her home since 1985.

The five contributors to Marlene Creates: Places, Paths and Pauses each deal with varying aspects of her career, building a picture of the broad scope of her work. The editors and co-curators of the accompanying exhibition, Susan Gibson Garvey and Andrea Kunard, bookend the publication with thoughtful essays that look at the overall practice of Creates, each from their own perspectives. In between are contributions from British writer Robert MacFarlane, Governor General’s Award-winning poet Don McKay and art historian Joan M Schwartz.

The artist herself is a constant voice in the publication, providing short introductory statements to each of the many selections of images documenting various bodies of her work. Divided into five sections, there are 20 bodies of work covered in the book. This is not exhaustive, by any means, but it represents the majority of her projects, and, one must assume, the way she wants her career to be described. Such publications, with their mission to present as much as possible about their subject, can run the risk of exhausting the reader. Marlene Creates evades that pitfall through a combination of skillful design, a well-balanced selection of texts and the sheer visual richness offered by the numerous illustrations. The balance between installation shots, details, full-bleed images and double-page spreads keeps one’s eyes active and engaged. The spare, conversational, texts contributed by the artist function like the pauses of the book’s title, providing short breathing spaces before we fully engage, again, in our journey along the artist’s path.

Newfoundland, specifically her six acres of boreal forest on Blast Hole Road in Portugal Cove, has been, since 2002, the primary subject matter of Creates’ work. Of the seven projects documented here, three are listed as “ongoing.” One, the Boreal Poetry Garden, actually has multiple projects, comprising poetry and performance, walks in the acreage and an online component. Clearly, this volume documents a journey that has by no means ended, although it has tightened its focus to a small patch of land on the Avalon peninsula of Newfoundland.

As Creates wrote about some of her earliest work, “nature is never finished.” This is the sort of book that will repay repeat reading and most especially repeat viewing of the unique images that comprise its bulk.

Retrospectives may be guilty of suggesting more order to a particular journey than may have really been there. But with its retrospective depth of vision, this work allows the reader to retrace the artist’s steps, or, at least, a version of them.

The exhibition opened at Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery this September and will tour across Canada through 2020.

Marlene Creates: Places, Paths and Pauses
Edited by Susan Gibson Garvey and Andrea Kunard
Goose Lane Editions / The Beaverbrook Art Gallery

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The Boat Harbour Effluent Treatment Facility photographed by journalist Miles Howe for the Halifax Media Co-op

Reading Joan Baxter’s The Mill: Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest, the story of the infamous Abercrombie pulp mill in Pictou County, is shocking and upsetting. I can’t say what hits hardest. Perhaps it’s the desperate giveaway of Nova Scotia’s forests to foreign corporations with decades-long leases at bargain bin prices. Or it could be the obviously high-risk, careless decision to pump a healthy tidal estuary full of millions of litres of chemical effluent in hopes that nature would somehow clean it up. Or maybe it’s the deception and strong arming involved in getting the Pictou Landing First Nation to allow just that to happen in their own backyard, almost instantly decimating the waters its residents relied on for food and recreation.

Nova Scotia’s long-standing relationship with pulp and paper companies has resulted in clear cuts such as this one, photographed by author Jamie Simpson.

Any one of those aspects of this story is jaw dropping and agonizing to read about, but the straw that breaks the camel’s back is simply this: It’s been going on for over 50 years and it’s still going on today.

There’s little in Baxter’s friendly, highly readable account of the Pictou County pulp mill that is not still happening today, be it short-sighted forest management, lack of mill oversight, pricey government payouts to corporations or broken promises to clean up and restore Boat Harbour, the Pictou Landing First Nation’s beleaguered tidal estuary.

Through Baxter we hear from Pictou Landing Elders and activists and a multi-generational group of other Pictou community residents and activists. Many acknowledge that the mill has brought badly needed jobs to Pictou. But most question the price that was paid for those jobs.

The Mill is a valuable document of Nova Scotia history that connects directly to our present day. As I read it, I couldn’t help thinking that it should make its way into high school curricula. As Elizabeth May writes in her foreword:

“More people need to understand the political deals that brought this mill into being and protect it still. Can nothing change the political culture of Nova Scotia to protect its citizens?”

Of course the political culture of investment in and under-regulation of resource-extractive industries is not Nova Scotia’s exclusive domain. It’s a pan-Canadian political culture, one that in Alberta has seen public institutions penetrated by the oil industry to such an extent that they have formed what Kevin Taft describes as a “deep state.”

As a former Liberal MLA from Alberta, Taft has an insider perspective on the workings of political culture, which gives the stories in Oil’s Deep State: How the petroleum industry undermines democracy and stops action on global warming–in Alberta, and in Ottawa a sort of fly-on-the-wall quality. In Taft’s experience as a politician he’s been privy to conversations that might raise the hair on the back of your neck. (One particular threat from a “senior energy industry official” in 2007 stands out. Taft recalls being told, “We can do things you’ll never know. You won’t even know what hit you.”)

In Oil’s Deep State, Taft tells the story of the Alberta government’s journey from hard bargainers walking away from negotiations with Syncrude in 1973 over the first oil sands project (and later signing a deal with a 50 percent royalty on net profits and a 5 percent stake in the project) to the 1990s regime, which enacted policies written by oil-industry groups, offering open season on the oil sands and allowing firms to repay all their capital investments before paying just 25 percent in royalties. It’s a stunning turnaround of political philosophy and it all happened inside the same party, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

What accounts for such a dramatic reversal is the basis of Taft’s deep-state theory. He describes how corporations like Suncor, Imperial Oil and Enbridge threw money into political campaigns and created well-funded pro-industry groups like the Energy Policy Institute of Canada and the Canada School of Energy and Environment (housed within the University of Alberta), through which they were able to dominate the discussion around how to manage Alberta’s oil sands, and the province’s role in contributing to climate change.

Oil’s Deep State and The Mill tell similar stories–the hobbling of our democratic institutions by corporations whose profit margins are directly linked to their ability to control our natural resources. They are cautionary tales of what happens when the fox ends up running the henhouse.

Read ‘em and weep.

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Eat Delicious, 125 Recipes for Your Daily Dose of Awesome by Dennis Prescott, is the kind of cookbook you turn to when looking for inspiration, hoping to find an idea of what to cook for supper, or the motivation to visit your local market. It’s such a book for two reasons: the recipes and the photographs of ingredients and finished dishes.

Apart from a couple of sushi recipes–raw fish makes some people squeamish–the clear majority of the 125 recipes would appeal to most palates. Prescott’s dishes are the type you’d find in many first-rate bistros: French toast with grilled peaches, slow-roasted pulled-pork burgers, lobster mac and cheese, pizza and blueberry-rhubarb galette. A few are quite dujour, like the maple-bacon scones–yes, bacon with everything is still in.

Prescott has a popular Instagram account, so it’s no surprise he knows how to snap a smart looking photo. Instagram thrives on pictures of mouth-watering food. In the introductory portion of the book he says he likes to shoot “darker, moodier images that have a raw and rustic aesthetic.” That doesn’t mean they aren’t beautiful. They are. While many dishes are photographed in black, cast iron skillets and earthenware, and on stained, bare wood, I’d call them unpretentious and joyful. One, of roasted carrots with pesto, thanks to composition and lighting, is gallery worthy.

Some readers will be eager to make Prescott’s recipes–I’m sure with success–others may be uncomfortable with the large number and extra cost of ingredients required for many dishes. For example, 25 ingredients for roasted tomato soup with rosemary croutons is, in my view, excessive. Of course, experienced cooks will be confident enough to eliminate some of Prescott’s ingredients and still end up with very good-tasting food. His methods, after all, are sound.

 

[Ed. Note: Courtesy of HarperCollins, below are two recipes, a savoury and a sweet, from Prescott’s book. Here at Atlantic Books Today, our philosophy is that sweets should come first.]

 

(c) Dennis Prescott

SALTED CARAMEL APPLE PARFAITS

MAKES 8 TO 12 SERVINGS

If you love salted caramel and apples (so, basically everyone), this is your dessert. Jacked fall flavors with an extra heaping helping of sticky, salted heaven.

Salted caramel is far easier to prepare than the Interwebs will lead you to believe. Just be extra careful when stirring, as it is hotter than the sun. And best to keep any young ones away from the stove, just in case.

The number of parfaits that this recipe will make will depend on the glass size you use. I prefer smaller glasses or jam jars but have also prepared this recipe using large wineglasses. This is the essence of dinner-party friendly. Mix it up, put your spin on it, have fun, eat dessert. Win/win/win.

SALTED CARAMEL

1 cup sugar
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon sea salt

MAPLE SAUTEED APPLES

2 tablespoons butter
11/2 pounds Cortland (Honeycrisp or Sweet Tango are also delicious here) apples (4 large), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

QUICK PAN GRANOLA

11/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup pecan halves, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

WHIPPED CREAM

1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

  1. Make the salted caramel: In a high-sided nonstick pan, heat the sugar over medium heat, stirring continuously. It will turn into strange rock-ish pieces—it’s all good, fear not! Slowly but surely, the sugar will melt and turn into a gorgeous amber color. When the sugar has melted entirely and is now golden brown in color, carefully stir in the butter and let it melt. It will bubble like crazy. Stirring continuously, slowly pour the cream into the pan in a slow and steady stream until it has been incorporated into the caramel. Let the mixture bubble away for 1 minute, then remove from the heat. Stir in the vanilla and sea salt and very carefully pour it into a medium heatproof bowl. Set aside.
  2. Make the apples: Heat a large skillet over medium heat and melt the butter. Add the apple chunks and cinnamon and cook, stirring often, for about 15 minutes, or until the apples are very soft. Add the maple syrup and give the pan a toss to coat the apples. Cook for 1 minute, then transfer to a bowl and set aside.
  3. Make the quick pan granola: Heat a large, dry skillet over medium heat and add the oats and pecans. Cook, turning every minute or so, until the oats are fragrant and have started to brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a plate.
  4. Place the pan back on the burner and melt the butter and maple syrup. When the syrup is simmering, remove from the heat and stir in the oats and pecans. Mix thoroughly to evenly coat the oats, then transfer to a plate and set aside.
  5. Make the whipped cream: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, or armed with a whisk and ambition, whip the cream until thick and glorious and fold in the vanilla.
  6. Time to go to parfait town. Build each parfait with 2 tablespoons of the salted caramel, 2 tablespoons of the apples, and 2 tablespoons of the granola. Top with a dollop of whipped cream, then repeat. Finish with a final drizzle of caramel and serve.

 

(c) Dennis Prescott

MEATBALL PIZZA, THE FRIEND MAKER

MAKES TWO 12-INCH PIES • Of course two of the world’s greatest comfort foods—meatballs and pizza—were predestined to be together. It was fate! I’ve named this recipe the Friend Maker because, like it or not, if you start making food like this at home, your popularity is bound to skyrocket.

MEATBALLS

1 pound best-quality ground beef (80% lean)
1 large free-range egg
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

PIES

1 recipe Pizza Dough (page 112)
1 cup The Pizza Sauce of Your Dreams (page 113)
8 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese
4 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into chiffonade
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

  1. Place a pizza stone in the oven and preheat the oven to 450°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Make the meatballs: Combine all the meatball ingredients in a large bowl and mix gently with your hands. Roll the mixture into golf ball–size balls in the palms of your hands (you’ll end up with 14 to 16 meatballs). If the meatballs look a little big, fear not! They will shrink as they cook. Set the meatballs on the prepared baking sheet, leaving at least 1 inch of space between each, and bake for 15 minutes, or until nicely browned and cooked through. Set aside.
  3. Make the pizza: Increase the oven temperature to 550°F and let the pizza stone preheat for 30 minutes.
  4. Roll out the dough into two 12-inch rounds on parchment paper according to the directions on page 112. Spread 1/2 cup of the pizza sauce on each dough round, leaving 1 inch around the edges bare. Divide the meatballs between the pizzas and break the mozzarella over the top. Drizzle 2 teaspoons of the olive oil over each pizza.
  5. Working one at a time, transfer the pizzas to the preheated oven as directed on page 110 and bake for 6 to 8 minutes, until the crust is perfectly crisp, the cheese is melted, and your taste buds are going bananas.
  6. Top with the basil and Parm, serve, and become a neighborhood legend.

From Eat Delicious by Dennis Prescott. Copyright © 2017 by Dennis Prescott. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Eat Delicious: 125 Recipes for Your Daily Dose of Awesome
Dennis Prescott
HarperCollins

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“And if words mean something to you, if an idea moves you, aren’t you changed, just a little?” This is the question that teen girl, Sunday, poses as she records the words of her dying father. Each night she takes these audio files and parses them, indexing sound bites into a database—every heartfelt “I love you,” every terrible dad joke, every syllable of their secret phrase “Goodbye forever.” Even as the cancer spreads in her father, Sunday’s goal is to code and transfer this database into a computer virus that she will unleash upon the world after he passes. In that way, she hopes he will live forever.

Joey Comeau’s latest book takes place in the eponymous town of Malagash. Sunday’s family has moved to her father’s place of birth and settled into his childhood home with her grandmother as they prepare for the inevitable. Malagash is a straightforward but beautifully wrought story about a young girl’s unique means of coping with her father’s mortality. It’s a bittersweet novel but ultimately one that is filled with hope.

Sunday is a believable character who lives in her head and spends a good deal of her time hidden in a closet, where she has three computers set up to write and test code. In her own words, “I am going to summon the dead.” So it is that Sunday takes on a morbid fascination with preserving her father’s memory, even as he’s still living and breathing. Time is precious, life is fleeting, but code can live on eternally. The virus she writes is “a ghost story that computers tell one another in the dark.”

In a lot of ways, it’s quite fitting that she would use a virus to spread her father’s memory as it is metaphorically like the cancer that is killing him. She even admits at one point, “the virus will just do what it wants. It will be itself.” Although there is some discussion of coding as it pertains to Sunday’s obsession, Comeau doesn’t overwhelm the reader with computer jargon. Incidentally, the chapter headings are DOS input prompts which add a nice touch for those who used computers before the advent of Windows.

The chapters themselves are quite short, much like the recordings that Sunday makes. They include poignant observations about life and death such as the formulaic nature of obituaries found in newspapers and the notion of “winning the fight against cancer.” It is easy to slip into cliché when writing about the subject matter but Comeau handles the topic of mortality with grace and humour.

The author portrays the relationships between Sunday and her family in a believable manner. Her mother has an almost unwavering strength in the face of cancer, her gay uncle visits to make amends with his dying brother and her grandmother is always there to simply listen.

It is the development of the brother-sister dynamic though that is perhaps the most heartful. Because of a significant gap in age between them, Sunday begins the book referring to her brother mostly by the nickname “the waif.” However, the circumstances of their father’s terminal diagnosis brings the siblings closer together, particularly when she explains what she’s doing with her recordings.

When Sunday accidentally records a conversation her father has with her brother, she begins to understand that her father can never be fully realized in code because she’s only getting one view. This revelation motivates her to capture all of her father’s last words, but without the permission of others. While her actions raise questions about privacy (online and otherwise) as well as digital legacy, Malagash leaves them unanswered.

Likewise, any expectation raised by the book’s title of exploring life in small town Nova Scotia are thwarted. While the setting is a part of the characters’ experiences, it certainly isn’t the focal point of the overall story. Rather it is a backdrop to the greater story, that of one girl’s attempt at grappling with loss.

Malagash is a unique take on death in the digital age. Comeau presents a forthright yet eloquent story about life, death and what we leave behind. Highly recommended.

Malagash
Joey Comeau
ECW Press

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When Amayah’s mother suggests that she dress up as a ghost for the Halloween costume contest again this year, she knows she must think of something else if she wants to win a prize. Not a witch or a fairy or a princess but something unique, something “no one else in the world has ever been in the whole entire history of Halloween!”

But when she emerges dressed as a walking bathroom, her creativity is soon met with laughter and ridicule from her classmates. Just as Amayah begins to feel disheartened, her teacher offers a few words of encouragement. And then the judges announce the winners of the costume contest.

Celebrated poet Shauntay Grant has crafted a warm-hearted Halloween tale that focuses on one girl’s ingenuity and the courage it sometimes takes to dare to do something different. While Amayah’s originality is ultimately rewarded, she must persevere through the initial mockery of her peers, a purposeful reminder to young readers that it’s good to be different but it’s not always easy. The story is also a touching tale of sibling love and loyalty as Amayah generously shares her prize-winning costume idea with her little sister and the two of them head off to enjoy a night of trick-or-treating together.

The playful, cartoony illustrations perfectly complement the tone of the story. Brightly-coloured with bold outlines, interesting textures and facial expressions, they whimsically capture the energy and angst that Amayah generates. A delightful new offering for Halloween reading that is not at all scary, this book may serve as inspiration for young readers who have wrestled themselves with the question of what to be for Halloween.

The Walking Bathroom
Shauntay Grant, Illustrated by Erin Bennett Banks
Nimbus Publishing

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Anyone who spends time in Atlantic Canada will soon realize we have a distinct way of giving directions. There are none of the norths or souths most often associated with getting from here to there. Instead, it’s all, “Go up this road till you gets to where Mr Adams had his boat stored in the grassy field. Course, the boat’s not there anymore it’s out in the bay. We went for a little run around the harbour last week and wouldn’t you know it…”

Directions have been forgotten about for the time being; a tale is coming your way. But eventually, “Well you turn right where Smith’s General store used to be. Lordy, I minds [remember] the night she [the store] burned down. By the time the old fire truck got here from the station across the bay there was nothing left but fire, ablaze on sticks charred as black as the night itself. Poor old Mrs Smith, well she was…”

At this point, you might expect to be delayed for some time.

For Atlantic Canadians, our culture is not only about the way in which we speak, or the music we listen to. It’s in the tales and lessons of days gone by. It’s in memories of a colourful people who filled our hearts with joy, as their warm smiles and weathered faces enriched us with their past experiences. It’s in the buildings that were built–every board, nail and slick of paint applied by hand, labours of love more often than not shared by whole communities. Our culture lives on in the losses and achievements of a group of people who take the time to share celebrations and comfort each other in times of sorrow.

Sketch by Sketch Along Nova Scotia’s South Shore, written and illustrated by Emma FitzGerald, does a brilliant job of recording that culture for those who will come after us. FitzGerald’s carefully selected snippets in time share her yearlong travel with us: colourful heritage buildings, a rainy day, flowers in a window box, conversation with people who pass by.

Part journal, part sketchbook and part historic guidebook, Sketch by Sketch takes us through the ramblings and experiences of an artist; the people she encounters in a day, the places she visits and the things she learns. Through her vivid descriptions, one can almost smell the flowers as they sit on the windowsill and feel the rain on one’s face. It makes me want to go to the places she describes to experience the things she has and feel them for myself.

Just like Mr Adams, with his boat gone out in the bay, and Mrs Smith with her old general store burnt down, one day the people Emma FitzGerald talked to will be gone. The buildings will be repainted or faded, or sometimes crumbled to the ground from neglect and abandonment.

 

Sketch by Sketch Along Nova Scotia’s South Shore has collected them all for posterity and it bears witness to who we are as a people, the wondrous life we live and neighbours who walk with us. Years from now, people will pick up this book and with a glance, be taken back to a preserved moment in time that no longer exists.

That’s the mark of an artist.

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Newfoundland writer Bill Rowe is back again like a modern-day Solomon with more political tales to tell. Those accustomed to his brutal frankness in evaluating premiers Joey Smallwood, Frank Moores and Danny Williams have been clamouring for him to dish on the full cast of characters animating that province’s unique political culture.

With ten popular books under his belt, the recovering politician returns with a highly personal, “no punches pulled” report card on the Rock’s strange collection of political leaders since 1949 ranging from the heavyweights to the lesser lights.

His latest, The Worst and Best of the Premiers and Some We Never Had, provides another feast for political junkies. Some forty-two political leaders are essentially roasted in a highly uneven set of short vignettes concluding with the author’s rather idiosyncratic and dubious percentage grades.

Bill Rowe’s earlier books on Joey Smallwood and Danny Williams were insightful and brutally honest portraits of earth-shaking, messianic political overlords. His current offering falls far short of those standards and tastes, for the most part, like an assorted collection of leftovers.

Seven of the province’s best known and memorable premiers, Joey Smallwood, Frank Moores, Brian Peckford, Clyde Wells, Brian Tobin and Danny Williams, reappear in distilled individual portraits. Of the recognized provincial titans, only Joey, Danny and Clyde are covered in any comprehensive fashion.

Premier Smallwood is growing on Rowe. After savaging him in The Premiers Joey and Frank, he confesses that critics called him “nuts” for ranking Moores ahead of Smallwood. “Dragging Newfoundland kicking and screaming into Confederation” is recognized as his crowning achievement. Setting aside his personal dislike of Joey (“the prick”), he raises his standing to 85 percent and downgrades Moores to 75 percent. Moores’ sleazy and scandal-ridden politics needed to be weighed against his success in ending Smallwood’s 23-year stranglehold on power.

The best part of Rowe’s book is his more detailed and nuanced portrayals of the Crosbies, father Chesley A (Ches) Crosbie and son John Crosbie. As a leading St. John’s businessman and political kingmaker, Ches campaigned in the 1948 referendum for Economic Union with the United States and, according to Rowe, “built better than he knew.”

Son John fell short in his quest to become premier, but Rowe recognizes his accomplishments as “number two man” in St. John’s and a formidable cabinet minister in Ottawa. Bringing home the bacon also earns John a mark of 85 percent, equaled only by his political nemesis, Joey Smallwood.

Rowe is definitely old school when it comes to awarding grades. Sixteen of the forty-two politicians assessed are awarded failing marks, confirming their status as hapless and forgettable politicians. In one rather sad case, former Progressive Conservative leader Ed Byrne, who paved the way for Williams’ 2003 accession to power, is awarded a 25 percent grade for being convicted of fraud for grossly inflating his expense claims.

Rowe claims that his report card tends to judge the province’s third-party leaders differently. That may be so, but it is still heavily skewed toward electoral success, favouring those in the dominant Liberal and PC parties. One notable exception, Lorraine Michael, NDP leader from 2006 to 2016, earns praise and a 65 percent rating for winning a coveted seat and holding government to account while battling breast cancer.

Surveying this rather irregular and ragged collection of vignettes, it becomes clear that this is not vintage Bill Rowe. Constrained by the laundry-list format, he gives a few notables like Frank Moores and Brian Peckford short shrift in his attempt to get everyone in.

Merely cataloguing the political leaders comes at a cost, especially when it comes to drawing linkages and making connections across time. The Crosbies of St. John’s, elder and younger, consume many pages and would be better in a section of their own. The same can be said of the St. Andrew’s College boys, John Crosbie, Ed Roberts and Frank Moores, all of whom spent their formative years in that exclusive Ontario boarding school.

Rowe’s own personal biases colour his judgement, especially when assessing political rivals during his time in the House and in cabinet. He is particularly hard on his one-time cabinet colleague, Ed Roberts, an impressive Liberal politician who served as opposition leader from 1972 to 1977 and was foiled in his 1975 bid to become premier when Smallwood backed Liberal Reformers to divide the vote.

Rowe successfully challenged Roberts for the Liberal Leadership in 1977 in what the author describes as “a vicious process” with, it is clear, wounds that have yet to heal. His bitter rival–a Newfoundland public figure respected for his intelligence and erudition, elected in his home riding through thick and thin and serving as a legislator for 25 years–deserved better.

Grading contemporary politicians can be risky because their legacies only become clear in the fullness of time. As the afterglow of his colourful and activist PC regime fades, Rowe has downgraded Danny Williams in the light of the collapse of oil revenues and the incredible cost-overruns incurred with Muskrat Falls. He’s surprisingly soft on Williams’ successor, Kathy Dunderdale, and simply rolls the dice in venturing an assessment of current premier, Dwight Ball. That grade of 50 percent for Ball looks like a conditional pass at best.

Then again, attempting to rank political leaders anywhere may well be a mug’s game.

The Worst and Best of the Premiers and Some We Never Had: A Political Report Card
Bill Rowe
Flanker Press

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HowYaGettin’On? My name is Snook, and I’m what you might call a proper downtown, St. John’s, Newfoundland ‘Corner-Boy.’ That means I mostly just hang around, “shootin’ the breeze,” as they say. Don’t do too much at all, really–just try and enjoy easy days. Don’t even have to stop to smell the roses, right? And I’ve always been this way–forever looking for a light, a laugh, and a milder mood (if you know what I mean). It’s how Mother Nature knit me. Wicked.

But way back, maybe thirty years ago now, someone who knew I told stories asked me to come to a supper-type thing, and sling a few yarns around, once the eating part was over.

“Why not?” says I. “Free food, and a bunch of people not fed up with me yet? Deadly.” So I did that, and we all had a good enough time. One fella might have ruined his shorts, I think. Lo and behold, I get a phone call with another offer–with a few dollars in it to boot! Now, sir…

Long story short, ever since then I have been talking to, laughing at, and getting paid by people for entertaining them. I’ve ended up on TV and radio fairly regularly, and even put out some CDs and DVDs and what not, for them with bucks to burn. Blows my mind every day, to be honest. Who’d a thunk it? I guess if you just goof off, drink a few beer, and know some jokes, you too could end up with a comedy career.

Fast forward, now, to maybe two years ago, or so. The local TV Guide and entertainment magazine, called the Newfoundland Herald, invites me to write a weekly column–me!

“Yes boy,” I says. “How hard can it be?” I figure it’s still telling stories, but in a ’wrote-down’ way, right? Simple. So I start.

Well, doesn’t take long for me to figure out it’s a bit of a different beast altogether, this ‘author’ racket. It takes time! There are deadlines! And you have to think, and everything. What to wax-on about? What to steer clear of? How to word it so readers, should there be any, dig in at all, and bother to finish? In other words, how to make a piece of writing ‘fit-to-eat?’

The best notion I ever had was to start reading more, myself. A whole lot more. Get some ideas as to what works and what don’t, right? So I launch into some books and magazines and whatnot. Man–what a mother load of magic I was missing out on! I had plum forgot about the joy of books, and the rollercoaster ride that is a good tale told well. I found writers I can’t get enough of, now, imaginations that spark up my own, and respect for how they just glued me to their pages for the last seven hours. I found groups of people online who love the same books and can explain just what makes them wicked.

I talk to people about books and writers now–seriously. I do. I confess to trying to write like some of my favourite authors, and to using some of the words I learned from them. They taught me a fair bit, and made my own struggling efforts better, at least. Some stuff I’ve cobbled together might even be considered half-decent.

And guess what (and here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write) there’s a real book, of my columns, coming out any day now. An actual book! By me! Published! And they say God got no sense of humour.

Mudder is over the moon, sir. You’d swear I was becoming a doctor. The lads are shocked, and the girlfriend, Bette, can’t stop laughing for the life of her.

Oh, and as I mention in the dedication of my book, I want to acknowledge my High School Principal, Mr Mullett. He always said I’d “Never do nudding, never be no one, and always be proper useless.” Uh huh. Where’s your book to, Mullett? Yeah–didn’t think so.

Life is some strange. The world is magic, and writing just might be the best of it. It’s certainly made a chronic reader out of me, and a believer in the craft. I wonder if my little book could pay forward that gift for someone else? I Hope so. Write on.

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This latest entry in the world of concept books for the very youngest of readers features the distinctive art of beloved Nova Scotian folk artist, Maud Lewis. It is a perfect combination.

Lewis’s signature artworks feature vibrant images of everyday life in a rural community: assorted animals, houses and churches, adults and children at work and play. The rich and vivid colours will capture the attention of infants and toddlers who will be equally enchanted by the bold, uncomplicated images throughout. While each spread features a whole host of things to look at, even very young children will enjoy poring over the pages in search of the given number of objects. The book starts simply, with one hummingbird which is front and centre and easy to spot. So too with the two horses and three kittens. As the numbers get higher, children have a slightly more complex task at hand, counting the number of hooves on the two oxen and the number of roofs and then windows on the houses.

A welcome treat for parents who will get to savour the joyful whimsy of these celebrated paintings alongside their young readers, this is a counting book to treasure. It will also serve as a celebration of Nova Scotia and one of the region’s most iconic artists, making it an ideal gift for families who have moved away or visitors wishing to bring back a souvenir of their time in Nova Scotia.

Maud Lewis 1,2,3
Carol McDougall and Shanda Laramee-Jones, Art by Maud Lewis
Nimbus Publishing

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About halfway through The Effective Citizen, Graham Steele casually mentions that in some ways, politics is a lot like the mafia. If so, Steele is like the mafia capo turned police informant; he’s spilling the dirt on his former career to help you beat the politicians at their own game.

Steele delves into the psychology that drives politicians—what motivates them, what bugs them and why the system transforms good people into political hacks. Armed with experience from a 15-year political career—first as a staffer, then an opposition New Democrat MLA and ultimately as Nova Scotia Finance Minister for a three-year stint, Steele should know what he’s talking about.

The Effective Citizen begins with a short parable about the executive director of a small Nova Scotia non-profit trying to get help from the government. After months of runaround and upbeat platitudes from the local MLA, Steele’s imaginary executive director gets nowhere.

“You thought you did everything right, but nothing changed. What went wrong?” Steele writes. “You were a victim of political bullshit. I wrote this book so you might better understand how to recognize political bullshit, and what to do about it.”

The rest of The Effective Citizen is split up into two halves: first, a frank examination of the way politics actually works and second, a user’s guide for how to navigate the system and make government work for you. It’s a quick, engaging read, and the writing is approachable.

The first half, especially, is fascinating and relevant for just about anybody who’s interested in politics—even if you’re not an executive director of a small Nova Scotia nonprofit.

“Why is self-awareness so rare among politicians?” Steele asks, as he examines the theatre, the empty, partisan jockeying and bad-faith strategy that drives so much in politics. “It’s psychological self-defence. It would mean spouting bullshit while being fully self-aware that you are spouting bullshit, and being okay with that. Most people can’t do that.

“But what politicians are doing is forever weaving and re-weaving a story about themselves. It’s a story about what they’re accomplishing and why. To be an effective citizen, you need to understand the politician’s story, and then figure out how to knit yourself within it.”

(In an early footnote, Steele offers a solid academic defence of the word “bullshit” and then uses the word liberally throughout.)

At times, the examination of political psychology is almost sympathetic to the politicians; in other moments, it’s utterly devastating, peppered with anecdotes from Steele’s own political career. In its best bits, the book is a refreshingly clear-eyed, unsentimental examination of the worst aspects of political thinking, from somebody who really knows what he’s talking about.

If there’s one way The Effective Citizen falls short, it’s Steele’s own self-awareness. After a while, the political anecdotes start to feel too self-serving. There’s no mea culpa, no moment where Steele describes how he became the monster that he’s describing in so many other politicians. And in fact, there are a few times where the author specifically makes a point of saying that he always eschewed the ugliest tricks of the trade.

The second half of the book is more narrowly useful to that hypothetical small non-profit executive director. The vast majority of citizens will never have to use the kinds of tactics that Steele describes, because most people don’t devote their time to changing legislation or securing government funding for their projects. Steele’s guidance might make it easier but, as he repeatedly emphasizes, there are no secret tricks, no shortcuts to navigating the political world and no guarantees that you’ll be successful.

The Effective Citizen is a worthwhile read for anybody who cares about politics and wants to understand how it really works. As Steele explains, the political playing field is tilted heavily in favour of the politicians. All too often when they win you lose. Steele uses his experience to help shift the balance a little bit back in favour of the citizens and calls on the reader to demand more from their governments.

“Don’t give your politicians a free pass,” he says. “Their desire to please shouldn’t clash with your desire to get things done. Results count. Words are cheap and are the building blocks of political bullshit.”

The Effective Citizen
Graham Steele
Nimbus Publishing

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It’s tough to imagine Mary Walsh puttering around her house in sweatpants, scribbling notes and drinking coffee from half-empty cups. It’s far easier to envision the actor wielding a sword as Warrior Princess Marg Delahunty or sporting a moustache and leather jacket to play This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ “masculinity correspondent,” Dakey Dunn. Most Canadians know the St. John’s-born Walsh as a witty, fearless observer of national politics and culture, but it took a whole lot of pacing and scribbling to take on her favourite role to date: novelist.

“I love it,” says Walsh, whose first novel, Crying for the Moon, was released in April. “I can’t believe I’m saying this hoary old thing, but it’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life…When the book came out and I saw it, I just felt such a sense of satisfaction that I’ve never felt in my whole life.”

The novel follows 16-year-old Maureen, whose hardscrabble, “sell-your-mother-for-a bottle-of-beer” adolescence in St. John’s takes a dramatic turn after a choir trip to Expo 67 in Montreal. It’s a wry and heartbreaking story with a distinctive tone, which emerged naturally–Walsh spoke lines of text and dialogue aloud, then wrote each sentence out by hand.

She also enlisted her research assistant, Monique Tobin, and former theatre student Jamie Pitt to listen to the work-in-progress and offer feedback. “I could see whether Monique’s eyebrows knitted together in quite that way,” says Walsh, “and whether it was just an undigested piece of potato, perhaps, or really was that a terrible, terrible paragraph?”

Without their help, Walsh says she might have given up on the book. “I just thought it was the shits, and they went, ‘No, I can hear Maureen’s voice. Maureen’s voice is so strong and I think about her all the time.’”

Decades spent crafting scripts and comedy sketches have given Walsh a keen ear for authentic dialogue. That’s her comfort zone––and the writing style she loves to read. Slowly unravelling the plot, however, stretched her literary skills and required a helping hand from her editor, HarperCollins Canada vice-president and executive publisher Iris Tupholme.

“My first instinct, as you can probably tell from talking to me,” says Walsh, “is to say everything right off the bat, but it’s a murder mystery as well of a coming-of-age story. I remember that after the first draft, Iris said, ‘this is great, but we already know who did it and we still have four chapters left in the book.’”

Walsh began the novel in 2011, during a self-described dry spell in her TV and film career. She sent 200 pages to her agent, Perry Zimel, who set up a meeting with HarperCollins. When her schedule suddenly picked up, Walsh shelved the project until last February, when she “knuckled down” and finished the manuscript during a two-week residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Now 65, Walsh says age didn’t inoculate her against the first-time novelist’s instinct to mine your own life for material. “Not that Maureen is me or that I ever got knocked up or even went to Expo, for that matter,” says Walsh, “but I grew up on Carter’s Hill and Maureen grew up on Princess Street, so I knew her.”

A voracious reader since she was a child, Walsh had always longed to see her own reality on the page. Canadian literature often champions redemptive stories, but “so many people who write fiction in our country are people who grew up middle class. They didn’t grow up dirt poor and feeling like they were worthless, right? There’s very little of that voice in the world and I always wanted to hear that voice, because I knew that voice.”

Finding the courage to get it on paper, however, took decades. Fear doesn’t seem like a natural companion for someone who has ambushed prickly mayors and prime ministers alike, campaigned for social change, landed a Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award and joined the Order of Canada, but “your outside has very little to do with what’s going on inside,” says Walsh. That natural pre-occupation with our own fears, insecurities, failings and obstacles infuses the book––and inspired the title. We cry out to the moon and it doesn’t care. “We cry out for things we want and don’t have,” says Walsh, “and fail to notice what we do have.”