Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

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# 87 Fall 2018

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At Home: Talks with Canadian Artists About Place and Practice
Lezli Rubin-Kunda
Goose Lane Editions / Regal Projects

Can you go home again? Or do you carry home with you wherever you go?

Is home where the heart is? Or the art?

These are the sorts of questions pondered by Lezli Rubin-Kunda, and which she discussed with 31 artists from across Canada. At Home, co-published by Fredericton’s Goose Lane Editions, chronicles Rubin-Kunda’s journey as she returns to the country where she was born and raised after more than 30 years living in Israel.

The related tensions of post-colonialism in Canada and Rubin-Kunda’s ambivalence towards narratives of home and belonging in the face of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict permeate this book, and the author does not shy away from the apparent paradox of seeking home in contested territories.

Structured into thematic groups of interviews, Rubin-Kunda acts as a garrulous tour guide, bringing us along on her journey and regaling us with stories of her life and art practice. Completed over two trips to Canada in 2012-13, the interviews vary widely in length and depth, with some comprising chapters in themselves and others being brief descriptions of single works or series that fill less than a page.

Where the interviews are in depth and engaged with the thoughts of the artist—such as in the excellent sections on Montreal artist Francs Morrelli, on Saskatoon’s Amelie Atkins and Halifax’s Lorraine Field and Susan Fiendel—the reader learns about an artist and their work. The discussion of notions of home serves as an interesting entry point into what are very divergent approaches. The imbalances between the treatment of the artists are jarring, however, as if the author felt that the visit had to be acknowledged, despite having relatively little to say about the artist in question. In a book stretched over 13 chapters with a foreword and afterword, some of the sections, frankly, feel like filler.

Where Rubin-Kunda seems most comfortable is in discussions of practices that are performative, and which align with her own art practice. Rubin-Kunda’s conversation with Edmonton-based artist Tanya Harnett, a member of Carry the Kettle First Nation in Saskatchewan, and her articulation of her sense of home as based in culture, history and biology is particularly engaging and thoughtful. As Rubin-Kunda records Hartnett saying, “I think the land has a memory that would transfer into one’s bones.”

As the only Indigenous artist interviewed, Harnett’s chapter stands out in a book about place. Canada’s history of colonization is addressed by many of the artists, and the author’s thoughts are rarely far from it, but more Indigenous voices would have made the book stronger.

At Home: Talks with Canadian Artists About Place and Practice is a book that doesn’t fit easily into familiar categories. Not a travel book, but not solely an art book either. In the end, Rubin-Kunda is very present in every discussion, which is both a strength and a weakness. When she is present as part of a discussion, as she is with Harnett, Frank and Atkins in particular, the book works well.

Where it is weak is best summed up by the way she begins the afterword: “When I reflect at the end of this journey on the question I set out with—what is the relationship between art practice and a sense of home—I am reminded of an early work of mine.” As a reader, at the end of this long journey to visit Canadian artists with the author, that is not exactly what I want to hear.

Later, she writes, “When I started, I yearned for a sense of belonging to a place I could call home. The closer I got, however, the more the unity of the inquiry unravelled into many disparate threads. The beauty and the interest lay in the uniqueness of each artist’s path, and not in any thematic commonalities. Every artist, it seemed, was a world unto his or herself.” Indeed.

And it is when Rubin-Kunda shows us those worlds that At Home succeeds.

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Big Island, Small
Maureen St. Clair
Roseway Publishing

It’s been four decades since African-American writer Barbara Smith raised eyebrows with her reading of an early work by a future Nobel Laureate in Literature. In “Toward A Black Feminist Criticism” (1977), Smith examined Toni Morrison’s novel Sula (1973), noting that the title character and her childhood friend Nel maintain a relationship that “from the very beginning, is suffused with an erotic romanticism. … The ‘real world’ of patriarchy requires, however, that they channel this energy away from each other into the opposite sex.”

“There is no homosexuality in Sula,” Morrison later summarily declared.

Canadian scholar Laura Robinson prompted a similar reaction with “Bosom Friends: Lesbian Desire in L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne’ Books,” a paper she delivered at a 2000 gathering of academics in Alberta. Offering an interpretation that rattled Montgomery experts, Robinson ventured that the fictional Anne Shirley lusted after female friends such as Diana Barry and Leslie Moore (characters in the iconic Anne of Green Gables and Anne’s House of Dreams, respectively).

“Montgomery’s texts subtly challenge compulsory heterosexuality by drawing attention to the unfulfilled and unacceptable nature of women’s love for women,” Robinson noted. “Because Anne’s various expressions of lesbian desires emerge but are not engaged, they draw attention to what is excluded, what cannot be said to be, in Anne’s world.”

I was mindful of the controversy surrounding Smith and Robinson’s work (the latter garnered the author hate mail) while reading Big Island, Small, the debut novel by Maureen St. Clair, who lives in Nova Scotia and Grenada. The absorbing volume chronicles the bond between Sola, a young Black woman, and Judith, a fair-skinned, bi-racial woman who wears dreadlocks. After attending a summer music festival in an unnamed city (“kind of cold that make people miserable”), the women discover their common roots in a small community in the Caribbean.

Rendered in the lilting patois of both women (in alternating chapters), the narrative ushers readers into a world of joy, risk, sacrifice, hope and grief. Here, Judith imagines the skepticism she evoked when Sola first spotted her grooving to a reggae beat. “She watching not with care but with judgment…I know those kinda eyes, that kinda stare—the stare of people wondering what this white woman doing dreading up she hair, trying to be more Black than white.”

By chance, the women meet the next day. Attracted (if warily) to each other, they attend another festival performance. En route home, they kiss under a star-filled sky. “I don’t want [Judith] to stop,” Sola remembers. “…We kiss leaning up against a fence.”

The embrace transports Sola back to her childhood on the tropical isle. “Wet grass touching bare skin, cool breeze blowing…sea licking ankles, begging me to walk farther out, dunk my head and swim.”

The tender moment is interrupted when a gaggle of children flinging stones and expletives exhort the women to “get a man.”

Emblematic of the race, class, skin-colour bias, gender violence and emigrant motifs that course through the novel, Sola is unnerved by the incident that Judith appears to take in stride. “I just suck my teeth when I realized [the children] yelling down at us,” Judith muses. “But Sola she shove me away like she realize I woman not man. …I can’t understand how Sola afraid. And then I start to think what if she shame …cause she think kissing women criminal. I start to wonder if she think I criminal.”

Sola and Judith mend the divide and go on to develop a nurturing friendship that enables them to better cope with the difficulties (past and present) in their lives. Perhaps not surprisingly (these days) in a novel that includes flashbacks to the formative years of girls, the spectre of sexual misconduct looms large.

Here, Sola mines a childhood memory: “I was…busy…dreaming about the new bicycle Mr. Robbie say his wife was going to send me. …He said Mrs. Robbie was grateful I was spending so much time…keeping him company while she and the kids were away.”

As with the “bosom friends” crafted by Lucy Maud Montgomery and Morrison’s Sula and Nel, Judith and Sola provide sanctuary for each other. Kudos to Maureen St. Clair for a heartfelt (if at times wordy) contribution to queer and questioning literature infused with a calypso flair.

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The Creative City of Saint John
Edited by Davies, Larocque and Verduyn
Formac Publishing

The Lost City
Ian MacEachern
Goose Lane Editions

Shipwrecks Off the East Coast
Carmel Vivier
Formac Publishing

Saint John has often been referred to as a historic city and a renaissance city. It has a long history of achievements, including many firsts. It is filled with creativity in its endeavours, be they shipbuilding, architecture, literature or visual artists.

Boy on a tricycle, Moore Street, by Ian MacEachern, from The Lost City, courtesy of Goose Lane Editions

Saint John has been welcoming immigrants from the United States, Eastern Europe, England and Ireland for centuries, and more recently from the Middle East and Asia. With their arrival, each immigrant group brings more culture, and leaves a unique imprint on Saint John’s cultural and artistic scenes.

The population of the city started expanding with the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists from the United States, in 1783. Two years later, New Brunswick had its first official newspaper, The Royal St. John Gazette and Nova Scotia Intelligencer. By the 1820s, some books were being published locally, instead of in England.

According to The Creative City of Saint John, a new collection edited by scholars Gwendolyn Davies, Peter J Laroque and Christl Verduyn that portrays the creative work of Saint John in the century following confederation, one writer, Mary Agnes Fleming, sold her first story at the age of 15, to a New York magazine.

Fleming continued to write after her marriage in 1865 and moved to New York to be closer to her various publishers. A savvy businesswoman, Fleming was earning $10,000 yearly through her writing contracts with magazines and publishers. It was an unheard of amount for a woman in 1875.

Another prominent local writer was bestselling author William Edward Daniel Ross (1912-1995). He wrote an incredible 358 novels in various genres throughout his career, as well as more than 600 short stories and over a dozen plays. He wrote many of these under one of his 21 pseudonyms.

Ross’ popular vampire Gothic fiction books series sold 17 million copies. His novel China Shadow, written under the pseudonym Clarissa Ross in 1974, sold more than 2 million copies.

We’ll Be Shipbuilding

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, New Brunswick was the centre of tall shipbuilding in Canada, producing more than half of all tall ships in the country. Among the ships built here, the most famous was the Marco Polo, the “fastest ship in the world.” I wrote about the Marco Polo in my book Shipwrecks Off the East Coast.

Saint John master carvers were kept busy during the Golden Age of Sail carving figureheads for many of the ships being launched. One such carver, Amos Fales, carved the figurehead for the ship the Prince Victor. The Quaco Museum in the Village of St. Martins in Saint John County has the repatriated piece, the only fully restored figurehead from a locally built ship.

School girls with laundry, photo by Ian MacEachern, from The Lost City, courtesy of Goose Lane Editions

Fire and Architecture

The architecture of Saint John is unique in part because of the Great Fire of 1877, which gutted the city. What took the fire nine hours to destroy took a building boom of almost ten years to rebuild. Saint John’s diverse architecture stands as an homage to the craftsmen, designers and builders who travelled from across North America and beyond to assist in the rebuilding of the city.

Changes to the landscape have also been made through urban renewal. Fredericton-based photographer Ian MacEachern’s work in his new book, The Lost City, serves as a portrait of times gone by, specifically showcasing and documenting the changing landscape of Saint John from the 1950s through to the 1970s.

These landscapes at times resemble the much larger American city of Boston, and have in fact been used by film crews in Boston-set movies.

Much of the architecture from the late 1890s has been preserved and Saint John is unusual in having a designated heritage area in its downtown/uptown landscape. One heritage district is the Trinity Royal Preservation Area located in the heart of the city and encompassing more than 300 commercial and residential buildings. You can read more about the architectural heritage of historic Saint John in A Pictorial Walk Through Historic Saint John: Canada’s Oldest City, which I co-wrote with Ethel King.

In the Art of the City

Saint John continues to have a vibrant and eclectic literary and art scene. Many of the city’s artists exhibit their works at the Saint John Art Centre, which also holds workshops, classes and cultural events. Saint Johners are proud to claim prominent artists Fred Ross and Miller Brittain as their own.

Saint John was also once home to famous actors like Walter Pidgeon and Donald Sutherland, and film producer Harry Salzman, who produced many of the James Bond films and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Movie studio mogul Louis Mayer of MGM fame also came from Saint John.

Musicians like Ned Landry, the three-time North American fiddle champion and composer of more than 500 original fiddle tunes, was also from Saint John. Other local musicians include Landry’s cousin, Stompin’ Tom, Bruce Holder, Kenny Tobias, Frances James and Catherine McKinnon, to name a few.

Saint John Innovative

Saint John can also boast of having been home to some famous inventors and inventions, such as the SCUBA tank, invented by James Elliott and Alexander McAvity in 1839. Since modified for modern use, the SCUBA tank had its first patent nearly 180 years ago.

The Steam Fog Whistle, invented by Robert Foulis, was patented in 1853. The world’s first steam fog whistle was set up on Partridge Island to warn ships of the often fog-enshrouded location of the island at the mouth of Saint John Harbour.

Other local inventions include a clothes washer with wringer rolls, combination hot-and-cold water faucets, and the vortex flushing toilet.

Artistry in all forms is being created and viewed every day in Saint John. Look at the events being showcased around the city to get a flavour of just how much Saint John has grown, and of the bright road ahead. There are local music, dance and drama schools where all levels of these arts are taught.

People here embrace their heritage. Whether extolling Saint John’s architectural wonders to visitors, performing in musicals or plays, or writing novels, Saint Johners proudly create, and encourage their compatriots to do the same.

Saint John is a better city for it, one that embraces varied cultures and art forms, and one that continues to innovate.

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Between Breaths
Robert Chafe
Playwrights Canada Press

Reading plays in the quiet of one’s home is more solitary than immersion in a novel, poetry or non-fiction. The most significant difference is imagining how a stage direction would be carried out in such a way as to draw in an audience, as this random example from Robert Chafe’s one-act three-hander play, Between Breaths, illustrates: “JON stands in a tight spot of rain, alone, looking somewhat perplexed but immune to the cold … He stares up into the rain cloud above, then closes his eyes a moment.” As individuals we can picture this, but since water on stage is generally avoided we wonder how this can be achieved, and thus momentarily step away from the reading experience. When the presence of water is amplified from rain to an ocean, and that ocean is filled with whales—their conjured presence and the use of their calls making them nearly another character—the demand on our imagination is greatly increased.

Between Breaths is about Jon Lien (1939-2010), a scientist who originally moved to Newfoundland and Labrador to study seabirds. He was soon known as “the Whale Man,” credited with rescuing hundreds of them after they became entangled in fishing nets. That was not part of his duties when he took up his job at Memorial University of Newfoundland. As Chafe has Jon say: “This fisherman thought I was there to help. Heard I was into whales. Those potheads trapped in the ice the previous year. But I was just there to record them. Their distress.”

One intervention follows another until gradually it becomes a mission lasting many years, embracing ecological concerns as well as the economic damage to fishers from ruined and expensive nets, until Jon’s health declines. The play opens with him “trapped” in his wheelchair and ends with his release. In between the first and last scenes Chafe describes, through a mixture of exposition-laden and semi-dramatic flashbacks, how the healthier Jon—with support from an employee named Wayne, a former whaler who became his friend and right-hand man, and sometimes in the face of opposition from an unnamed MUN dean—grew to embrace his unexpected role.

Most of the life-saving events occur on and under the water. That means the stage directions contain explicit details of events that readers who are also theatregoers would not expect to see mounted. “The whale bumps the boat suddenly” is one instance that speaks to the canvas Chafe has created, and indicates that only a larger and more costly production than is usual could capture his full vision. A CBC story from May 2016, “Whale researcher Jon Lien’s life set to be dramatized this summer,” contained this remark about Between Breaths: “‘We’re doing a sort of stripped down version of this play this summer that can easily tour to rural communities, and we’re really happy about that,’” said [producer] Pat Foran, adding the skeleton and more elaborate sets may appear in subsequent productions.”

For me this mingling of Chafe’s ambition and an awareness that what is being presented cannot be truly grasped unless there is a full-scale production, made the reading process less than satisfactory. As well, there is at times an undercutting of dramatic moments or possibilities. Jon and Judy, his wife, argue about his involvement with whales, and the confrontation echoes what has been portrayed in countless movies and plays when someone (usually male) has to take a course of action that goes against common sense or the wish of a (usually female) loved one. Late in the play Jon declares, “I’m the guy, Judy, because there’s no one else,” but this is neither surprising nor incisive. Their clash of wills may be true to life, but as character development it resembles stale workshop advice on how to instill conflict more than living, breathing disagreement. Similarly, when Jon and the dean (never shown) butt heads any potential drama is swept away as quickly as it’s introduced.

It may be that Between Breaths isn’t meant to be a dramatic work but rather an affectionate and respectful bio-play, since Jon, for all his stubbornness, comes out quite well, and Judy “concedes something deep within herself”—that’s a bit mysterious—once she finally understands he is more than “a lecturer… a scientist.”

The play is not a tragedy and Robert Chafe designed its structure to avoid it ending as an “irredeemably sad” piece of work. Instead, he has provided audiences with a celebration of a life given over to helping endangered mammals. As such, it might be seen as preparation for a future screenplay where the real drama of lives on the line—the stuff that, in its present incarnation, occurs underwater and therefore out of sight—can be brought fully before our eyes.

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Grandes roues et petits pois
Christine Arbour, illustrated by Réjean Roy
Bouton d’or Acadie
(Ages 4 to 8)

Will today be the day Émilie rides her brand new bicycle for the first time? Right now she’s nervous. With no training wheels and no one to help, Émilie can barely bring herself to get up off the lawn, where she’s watching the clouds and daydreaming about being a champion cyclist.

Émilie feels small and frightened. She thinks of the big wheels on her bike turning like the water circling down the drain, the marbles rolling along the ground, the wind turbines where her father works and the hands on her watch counting off the seconds.

There’s no one to help her with the big challenge she’s facing or to witness her adventure. Her father’s at work, her brother’s off playing somewhere and her mother’s busy picking peas in the garden, unaware of the great event about to take place.

With the great care appropriate for this major feat, Émilie fills her water bottle, puts on her helmet, climbs on her bicycle…and she’s off! Her mother turns around just in time to see her big girl riding down the pebbly path.

This book is suitable for beginning readers as well as reading aloud. The bright and interesting illustrations, together with the simple but innovative text, express the complex emotions that accompany an accomplishment so important for young children. This book will be a starting point for discussions about fear, courage, determination and pride.

The author, Christine Arbour grew up on the Gaspé coast and now lives and works in Québec City. Grandes roues et petits pois is her first children’s book.

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Summer in the Land of Anne
Elizabeth R Epperly, illustrated by Carolyn M Epperly
Acorn Press
(Ages 5 to 11)

When Mama tells Elspeth they are going on a vacation, she is thrilled and rushes to share the news with her older sister, Willa. But why, the girls wonder, is Mama being so secretive about where they are going?

They know it has something to do with the special book she is going to read to them later that night. When the book turns out to be Anne of Green Gables, it doesn’t take long for Elspeth to deduce that they are going to Prince Edward Island.

anne of green gablesWhen they get to Cavendish, Elspeth is filled with awe as they visit all the places that were so important to Anne and to LM Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. In the core of her six-year-old being, Elspeth knows that she herself is really Anne and these places feel like they are her real, true home. But she is deeply saddened when she discovers that the house where LM Montgomery once lived has been torn down.

As Mama and the girls talk about Montgomery and her writing, Elspeth discovers a new source of inspiration. Now she knows that she isn’t really Anne, she is “Elspeth of Cavendish, the famous writer.”

The Epperly sisters have created a delightful new addition to the body of literature that is inspired by, and pays homage to, Montgomery’s much-loved heroine. Elizabeth Epperly, herself a long-time resident of PEI, renders Elspeth’s enthusiasm and passion, the relationship between the two sisters and the profound effect that this visit has on all three of them with great sensitivity. She is keenly aware of the deep connection that so many visitors to the Island feel to Anne and to Montgomery and she ably depicts that in Elspeth.

Many young readers will relate to Elspeth’s feelings and her belief that somehow this shared experience is still deeply personal and belongs just to her. This is truly part of Montgomery’s gift and her ongoing legacy, and the Epperlys portray it beautifully here.

Carolyn Epperly’s exquisite watercolour illustrations perfectly evoke the magnificent pastoral landscapes of the island and bring to life the sacred LMM sites. Her jewel-toned illustrations are infused with light and evince a sense of reverence.

This heartfelt ode to Anne and LMM will speak to the hearts of countless readers and will undoubtedly serve as a cherished keepsake for many who will find in Elspeth a “kindred spirit.”

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Son of a Critch
Mark Critch
Viking Canada

The only other uses of the phone table were the shining of the shoes and the washing of the cat—the two chores Dad took very seriously. Dad had one colour and type of shoe: black dress shoes were for work, formal events, jogging, beach wear, and shovelling. He went through a lot of polish. Shampooing our Siamese cat was more involved.

The cat was as old as I was. Dad brought home the newborn kitten the same week I was born. He’d won it in a card game. Dad had won all his opponents’ money, and in an act of desperation, the poor loser had wagered the animal. Mom had never wanted the cat, and so it was my father’s responsibility. He was proud of his prize and would heap praise upon the cat as if it were a Grand Prix–winning show horse.

“Look at that cat! That’s some cat. See the way her tail moves. When a dog wags its tail, it’s happy. But when a cat wags its tail, it’s angry. See? Look at her tail wagging. Something has her—ow! The damn thing scratched me!”

The cat never liked Dad. She would hiss at him and scratch him. This did nothing to deter him from pursuing the object of his affection.

Perhaps Dad was so adamant about this cat-cleaning chore because he wasn’t otherwise what you’d call a handyman. He had what he called a “tool kit.” It was an old metal bisqueen elizabethcuit tin with a picture of a young Queen Elizabeth on it. Inside was a half-used roll of black electrical tape, some random screws, a small flat-head screwdriver with a wooden handle, a can of black shoe polish, one roll of black thread, one roll of white thread, one roll of tan thread, eight buttons (mixed), a brand-new roll of masking tape, some change, and a seven-inch record of “A Night at the Copacabana with Tony Martin.”

Next to the tin he kept a rusty hammer and a collection of dried-out paintbrushes. If something needed fixing, Dad would open the tin and ponder which tool was right for the task at hand. Usually the electrical tape would win out and the old man would apply it sparingly to the broken glass, loose hinge, or wobbly table leg. There was never need of a second roll of tape in my entire lifetime.

Whenever there was work to be done around the house he would put on his work clothes. These consisted of a white T-shirt, a pair of tan pants, and dress shoes.This was also his preferred outfit for cat grooming.

Someone had convinced Dad that cats needed to be shampooed. So, once a month he would get a blanket and put it over his lap, don winter gloves, and shampoo the cat. Afterward, the cat would lock eyes with him as she licked herself, seeming to say, “See? This is how a cat cleans itself. And I would enjoy it a lot more, too, if you hadn’t spayed me, asshole.” Of course, first the cat had to be caught.

cat shampooWhenever it saw Dad in his handyman uniform it would hide under the biggest thing it could find—the stereo. The old man would reach underneath it, the cat digging her talons into his thick winter gloves in a timeless battle of man vs. beast.

Eventually, she would dig her nails into the carpet as he tugged at her hindquarter. “See? Her tail is wagging, that means she is—ow!”

Then he would carry his hissing prize to the telephone table and rub in the cat shampoo. Sometimes I’d be called upon to rub the cat’s fur with a damp tea towel to “activate it.” This didn’t so much shampoo the cat as anger her fur, making it stand up in little matted waves on an arch-backed sea of feline fury.

Dad would admire his handiwork and the “cleaned” cat. Now covered in shampoo and somehow drier than she was before, she’d hurl herself off his lap and disappear for days.

Excerpted from Son of a Critch by Mark Critch. Copyright (c) 2018 by Mark Critch. Publishing by Viking Canada, an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved. 

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Finding Grace
Daphne Greer
Nimbus Publishing
(Ages 11 to 15)

For as long as she can remember, Grace’s life has revolved around Dotty, her older sister. Living with the nuns in a convent in Belgium, she has always helped look after Dotty. Until now. Now Dotty is dead and Grace is being moved to the dormitory to be with the other girls her age, the same girls who used to call she and Dotty “sister retards.”

To make matters worse, cruel Sister Francis is in charge of the dormitory. As Grace tries to fit in with the other girls and make new friends, she also tries desperately to steer clear of Sister Francis, who always seems to be filled with anger and hate. Grace continues to hope and pray that one day the mother who left her and Dotty at the convent will come back for her.

When Grace finds an old diary hidden in the library, she becomes caught up in the sad story of the young woman who wrote it. As she learns about the terrifying events that transpired when the Nazis invaded Belgium, her heart goes out to the girl who witnessed and lived through such unspeakable horrors. She never imagines that this diary will lead her to the truth about her own family history.

diary

Recalling her own experiences at a Belgian boarding school, Nova Scotian author Daphne Greer has crafted a compelling work of historical fiction that is a poignant family drama. Although readers are only briefly introduced to Dotty, she is nonetheless a beautifully-realized character. The relationship between her and Grace is vividly rendered and realistically depicted.

Grace’s experiences, insecurities and fears as she begins her new life with the other girls will elicit empathy from modern readers who will relate to her feelings if not the setting. Through the diary entries that Grace reads, the author is able to give readers a glimpse of what life was like in Belgium during the dark days of Nazi occupation. The multi-layered plot is intricately woven and well paced. The resolution is emotionally satisfying, making this a story that will appeal to a wide range of readers.

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A Circle on the Surface
Carol Bruneau
Vagrant Press

In the Wake
Nicola Davison
Vagrant Press

Pavia Cafe at Halifax Central LibraryCarol Bruneau and Nicola Davison sit across a table from each at the Halifax Central Library’s fifth-floor cafe. Along with their drinks, each has a copy of the other’s forthcoming book in front of her.

Nearly three years ago, Davison was an excited and terrified aspiring writer who had just been accepted into the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia’s Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program. Bruneau—the mentor she was paired with—was an award-winning writer working on her eighth book.

Now, both those novels—Davison’s In the Wake and Bruneau’s A Circle on the Surface—are about to be published by Nimbus’s Vagrant imprint. And while they started off as mentor-protege, that relationship quickly evolved to one between peers, and then to a full-blown friendship.

Davison, a professional portrait photographer with a keen eye for observing people, started working on In the Wake in 2013, and submitted the manuscript’s opening scenes for her mentorship program application. She was turned down, but got what she calls “a lovely rejection” and an invitation to apply again.

“I was just lost. I had this gigantic manuscript. It was from three different points of view, and I felt like it was all sagging in the middle, and I didn’t know what to do. I needed somebody to guide me—a mentor who could say let’s clean this up,” she recalls.

So she applied again in 2015. And this time she got in.

“I was so happy and frightened. I thought Carol is this seasoned writer and she’s going to look at my manuscript. It was such a mess at the time, and I wouldn’t let her see it. Remember that?” Davison says, looking at Bruneau.

“I had no idea,” Bruneau replies.

“When they called and said I got the mentorship, I screamed, and then I said oh God, someone’s going to read it.”

“I had no idea,” Bruneau says again. “You hid it very well.”

Carol Bruneau (left) and Nicola Davison. Photo by Davison.

In 2001, Alistair MacLeod won the Portia White Prize, which recognizes artistic excellence and achievement by a Nova Scotian. He designated$7,000 of the award money to the brand new WFNS mentorship program, which now bears his name.

Linda Hudson, the Arts Education Officer for WFNS, says the program is aimed at “people who have been honing their craft for quite some time and need direction.”

Depending on funding, the federation offers three to five mentorships a year. Applications are due in October and then a peer assessment jury goes over them and chooses the winners based on “the merit of the writing, the direction they want to go in, and their commitment to the project,” Hudson says.

She explains: “When we have decided on our apprentices, then we match up with a professionally published writer as a mentor. We connect them based on style and genre, but also their personalities—hoping they will get along and also challenge each other.”

Jonathan Meakin, who was WFNS Executive Director at the time Bruneau was mentoring Davison, says matching up mentors with apprentices involves weighing experience, interests, projects, and distance—but is also “part hunch.”

He says, “The jury suggested several mentors for Nicola Davison, but the decision to approach Carol Bruneau came into focus from several, shared angles: an influence of the visual arts, to a degree, on matters of theme and craft; a gravitational pull to tell stories about Nova Scotian communities and families; and (perhaps extremely hunchy) a humble and yet steadfast, hardworking commitment to the craft of fiction-making. On paper, they seemed a perfect match.”

On paper and in person too.

During the five-month mentorship period, Davison and Bruneau met every two weeks, usually on the library’s top floor—drawn by the place’s openness and a sense of almost being outdoors, while still protected from the winter weather.

Davison knew going in that she had to cut about a third of her manuscript. And her first chapter was problematic: “It was almost me telling myself the story—here we are, here are the characters.”

Bruneau told her she needed to pick up the pacing too. Davison’s photographer’s eye was lingering too long in the early going. “I started out quite slowly, more descriptive, scenery and things, and then started moving more into the plot of the story,” Davison says. Looking across the table at Bruneau, she adds, “You had me pace that better.”

Mentors and apprentices in the program are free to set their own terms for how they will work together and how often they’ll meet. In December, before the formal mentorship begins, everyone gets together to discuss expectations and get to know each other. Without any formal publishing credits, Davison felt intimidated. “I had very little to say. The first part of the mentorship was so scary. And then I got to meet Carol one-on-one and sit and talk.”

Bruneau tried to reassure her, telling her she had mentored three writers previously, and all had been published. (One, Catherine Cooper, was a finalist for the Amazon First Book Award for White Elephant.)

Davison remembers half-joking “that I have to get published now so I don’t break her track record.”

Unwilling to show Bruneau the whole manuscript, Davison ruthlessly edited her work and sent it to her mentor in chunks of 50 to 75 pages at a time. Bruneau would email suggestions, and before their next meeting Davison would incorporate them and send the next chunk of text.

“It was a lovely rhythm, and it worked really well,” Bruneau says. “The combination of emailing stuff, critiquing stuff and meeting in person. It was a really good balance. You can use email, and that’s fine, but it is really different when you can hang out and have coffee and laugh about other stuff. It feels more organic.”

Bruneau took to the manuscript right away, and saw the strong influence of Davison’s background in photography. “Nicola’s a very visual writer, and that gripped me. I found the manuscript very sharp and precise and vivid.”

She also felt a connection between Davison’s work and the new novel she was working on. “I love your story,” Bruneau says, speaking to Davison. “It’s contemporary Nova Scotia rather than…” she pauses to touch the cover of her own book, on the table between them, “something that’s romantic and in the past. But I think there were parallels in our projects that were interesting too.”

The program allowed the pair to take a wide-ranging approach to aspects of writing going far beyond craft. “Carol talked to me about applying for grants, getting published—all sorts of side things I always wanted to ask an author but was afraid,” Davison says.

Davison even got coaching on how to elevator-pitch her book. “I still struggle with what to tell people,” she says.

“What’s your book about?” I ask her.

She laughs. Then says, “Oh, you really do want me to answer that question, don’t you?

“Well. It is about a young family who is coming back to Nova Scotia after having lived in Alberta for about 10 years, and they buy a house nova scotiathat’s a little bit beyond the price range that they had hoped to pay, and it’s this big modern house with a glass wall that faces the sea, and when they move in they start to make friends with the closest neighbours and they simply don’t realize how entangled they are going to become with their lives. It’s a little bit of a suspense, and it’s a lot to do with families, grieving, there’s some wonderful foggy sailing scenes, and it all ends up in a storm.”

Bruneau describes the mentorship process as being very different from teaching, “because you really are peers.” The pair would chat about characters—it almost felt like gossiping about people they knew—and, Davison says, “that would bring out aspects of them I hadn’t thought about.”

At a certain point, Bruneau started talking about her book too. She says, “Writing fiction can be sprawling and feel aimless. I never really like to talk about it when I’m working on something, because explaining stuff can be just like killing it. It was really cool that I got over that when I was working with Nikki, because I would talk a little bit about my story as I was working things out for myself—in a way that I would never do with anyone else. It’s a really lovely, inter-connected way of seeing story and the process.”

The mentorship period ended more than two years ago but Bruneau and Davison continue to meet regularly. “Last year for my birthday, my husband asked me what I would like, and I said I would like to have Carol Bruneau to drink wine with,” Davison says. “He called Carol to ask her to come over to the house, and she was my birthday present last year.”

The mentorship program is funded by the Canada Council, and accepts applications until October each year. It is open to all genres of writing except graphic novels and children’s picture books.

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Under the Floorboard
Wendy Ranby
Chocolate River Publishing
(Ages 13+)

As she deals with all the typical sorts of anxieties and insecurities that adolescence often brings, Aileen’s greatest source of stress seems to be her mother. Somehow everything her mother says to her feels like a criticism. Thankfully she has her Aunt Bea to spend time with and confide in when things with her mother are too strained.

When they learn that Aileen’s mom is going to have another baby, even this exciting news brings up long-suppressed worries as Aileen remembers when her baby sister Claire died many years earlier. She has always blamed her mother for Claire’s death.

When baby Katrina is born, things become even worse as Aileen’s mom struggles to deal with her “baby blues” and Aileen and her brother Scott try to function as best they can in the midst of the chaos.

baby blues

Just when things reach an almost unbearable point, Aileen finds her mother’s journals. In their pages, she discovers shocking secrets about her mother’s past and her own early years, some of which threaten to drive them even further apart and some of which may enable Aileen to see her mother in a new light.

Wendy Ranby, a New Brunswick native who now lives in Ontario, gives readers an up-close look at how depression and mental illness can take its toll on a family. The journals Aileen finds give readers as well as Aileen a chance to see her mother as a real person who has lived through great adversity and who has struggled through many dark and difficult times.

Told in the first person, this story realistically depicts Aileen’s anger and rage, her seemingly endless frustration, her feelings of being alone in her misery and always being misunderstood. However, just as her best friend Jenny often finds her constant negativity challenging, readers also may find Aileen difficult to like and/or synpathize with at times. Nevertheless, her story highlights the wide-reaching effects of mental illness.

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The Dalhousie University Story: A 200 Year Anniversary Portrait
Mona Holmlund, Curator, with Poetry by George Elliott Clarke
Goose Lane Editions and Dalhousie University

University and college anniversaries tend to inspire the publication of ponderous memorial volumes and a goodly share of attractive common room/coffee table books. Most such books end up as alumni keepsakes, visiting speaker gifts or table adornments in the admissions office.

Dalhousie University’s 200th anniversary year commemorative book may be of that genre, but it stands out as a cut above the rest. No attempt is made to duplicate the definitive and authoritative two-volume history, Lives of Dalhousie (1994 and 1997), produced by the venerable Peter B Waite. Instead, we are treated to a visually stunning, finely crafted and exquisitely tasteful living history exhibiting the richness of the university’s visual culture.

The 200th anniversary volume strikes a completely different tone from Waite’s books of record, seeking to build a bridge from the past to the future. The full-colour opening page features three Mi’kmaw Elders-in-residence wearing ceremonial dress. University president Richard Florizone conveys a contemporary message. “Drawing on our founding values,” he writes, “we aspire to academic excellence, to have an impact on local communities, and to become an inclusive institution where everyone belongs.”

Dalhousie’s founder, George Ramsay, the ninth Earl of Dalhousie, featured in Waite’s history, has almost disappeared. In place of the normally obligatory founder’s photo, we are treated to a visually attractive collage of founding artifacts, showing the original building, the cornerstone plaque and the silver trowel used in 1820 to lay the cornerstone.

The unbridled spirit and passionate heart of 200th Anniversary Portrait is to be found in a fiery poetic history composed by celebrated Canadian poet and Halifax’s favourite literary son, George Elliott Clarke. Commissioned as a Bicentennial Poem, it was initially delivered in a virtuoso performance on February 6, 2018 at the celebratory launch. That contribution, exhibiting Clarke’s distinctive lyrical style, sets the stage for a virtual kaleidoscope of images and visual artifacts encompassing university life over two centuries.

Building the volume around Clarke’s poem was an astute editorial decision. With the bicentennial celebration approaching, Dalhousie was embroiled in a very public controversy over its founder and revelations about his rather unsettling attitudes toward slavery and race. What better way to counter the backlash than by enlisting the support of Dalhousie’s most famous Black alumni to perform a poem summarizing the university’s past?

Clarke obliged with a feisty epic poem paying tribute to the Dalhousie tradition without whitewashing troubling aspects of the university’s past. “Dalhousie originates,” in Clarke’s words,

“as a trophy—a profit—of War, as actual booty.”

He captures well Dalhousie’s claim to be “free and open to all,” but, in practice, only welcoming white male Protestants, and mostly Presbyterians.

Dalhousie alumni will spot a few incisive poetic tweaks in Clarke’s verse. High Anglican King’s College, he notes, in passing, “spurned entanglements with Dalhousie” and went its own way. It’s also clear, in his verses, that doors remained closed to women until 1881 and Dalhousie did not record its first “coloured” graduate until 1896.

No official history comes without a nod to the institution’s benefactors. Sprinkled throughout the book are subtle tributes to major donors, including Ken Rowe (Kenneth C Rowe Building 2005), Elizabeth and Fred Fountain (Fountain School for Performing Arts 2013), Margaret McCain (Wallace McCain Learning Commons 2015) and Marjorie Lindsay (current IDEA Campaign Chair). Figuring prominently in the official opening photos is the Dal president widely recognized as the contemporary campus builder, Tom Traves (1995-2013).

Renowned Canadian novelist Hugh MacLellan once described Dalhousie as “The best-looking Campus in Canada.” That declaratory statement appears in the book, but it must have been referring to Hugh’s student days or the early post-war years. Surveying today’s sprawling University Avenue campus, one is immediately struck by the hodge-podge of clashing architectural styles ranging from traditional Leslie R Fairn classics to modernist monstrosities to futuristic glass-and-steel edifices.

A 200th Anniversary Portrait is experiential and organized around the stages and extensions of university student life. Scenes of a snow-covered square, a Dal spirit rally, open house days and examinations are interspersed with images of colourful Indigenous ceremonies, African Heritage Month flag raising and smiling graduates exemplifying diversity.

Feature pages do capture nicely the evolution of Dalhousie. Registration day visuals include a September 1932 application from Robert Lorne Stanfield of Truro, future Premier of Nova Scotia. The transition in libraries from the MacDonald Memorial Library study carrels of the 1930s to the food fair in the Killam Library mall is striking. Time-lapse group photos of formally dressed Dal students in 1919 are juxtaposed with today’s smiling, relaxed students, 100 years later.

Aside from one or two Lecture Hall photos, there is precious little coverage of professors in action demonstrating academic excellence. Instead, the book features students engaged in active learning on a geology trip, in a technical college lab, the Agricultural Campus milking barn, the music studio, the experimental science lab.

The 200th Anniversary commemorative book presents a presentist spin on the university’s history. Visual culture is the dominant modality and that reflects the creative priorities of Mona Holmlund, the bicentennial project lead. It is essentially a stylish, sophisticated album of fleeting memories.

“It is a cloud chamber,” Holmlund writes, “a place where transformation in time and space has been frozen, offering glimpses into multiple memories.” The result is a visually stunning book of fragmented images very much in tune with the contemporary world.

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Some Good: Nutritious Newfoundland Dishes
Jessica Mitton
Breakwater Books

“Some good,” they say.

Newfoundlanders and other Atlantic Canadians love the expression and use it often. “Some good” can refer to, for example, a talented singer. “Adele is some good.” It can refer to a movie, as in, “Jurassic World is some good.” It can refer to food. “Leo’s fish and chips is some good.”

In fact, the bound words can be used to praise any number of things.

Some Good: Nutritious Newfoundland Dishes by Jessica Mitton is aptly named, although a more accurate subtitle might be, Nutritious Reimagined Newfoundland Dishes. The recipes in Some Good may come as a surprise to Newfoundlanders brought up on foods prepared in a prescribed manner for generations. I can hear them say, “Whoever came up with riced cauliflower, instead of potato, in fishcakes? Or pea soup dumplings made from brown rice, sorghum and arrowroot flour?”

Mitton’s cookbook had just arrived. It sat on my desk on a stack of paper. A bright, cheerful image of the author—posed cutting a carrot—taking up most of the book’s cover space. Noticing the latest addition to the organized mess occupying my desk, spouse reached over my shoulder to grab the book. At this point I’d only given Some Good a cursory look and was inclined to think it might be a bit niche. At least that was the impression I got from one of the book’s introductory chapters.

It was 14 pages dealing with ailments associated with diet, and various food substitutions, subtractions and additions to manage them, called, “Living without Dairy, Gluten, and Refined Sugar.” I panicked slightly when I read the title. “What living?” I wondered. Spouse turned my thinking around. I might have gotten there myself, eventually, but it was obvious that what he was reading was making a positive impression. Mind you, he does have a food allergy; however, I’m certain his enthusiasm for Some Good went beyond vested interest.

Although much of the information is standard and preaching to the choir of people with dietary issues, Some Good contains several revelatory tidbits—well, for me at least. For example, in addition to lactose, did you know that some people’s bodies cannot properly break down casein and whey, the proteins in milk? Ingesting them can lead to gut grief and other distressing symptoms.

Interesting facts aside, Some Good’s main purpose is to entertain the reader with recipes described as “delicious Newfoundland dishes.” Most cookbooks these days offer between 100 and 150 recipes. Some Good contains 40, a surprisingly low number. More important is how well they work and how they taste.

I made several of the recipes quite successfully, including savoury salmon and roasted vegetables. Moose stew is a favourite of mine. I had some moose meat and decided to use Mitton’s method, ignoring the accompanying photo of what looked like watery beige soup. (I’ll discuss Some Good’s photos later.)

Unlike many Canadian publications, Mitton’s cookbook does not give metric measurements, only imperial. Also, instead of being specific about things like the size of dice or cubes, there is either no advice—just “diced turnip”—or words like “small cubes.” It would be helpful to know if a cube should be one inch or something else. Where guidance wasn’t specific, I went with generous bite-sized cuts and produced a delicious moose stew from Mitton’s recipe.

Finally, a few words about the book’s photographs. Some Good’s photos—by Becki Peckham—apart from the consistently excellent portraits of the author, run the gamut from perfectly fine to passable. I suspect the poorer results were due to inexperience in food photography and not using an experienced food stylist.

Photographs of salads, vegetable combinations and breakfast dishes—like poached egg on roasted veg, partridgeberry banana pancakes and blueberry oatmeal bowl—are very good, as well as a very appetizing close-up of roasted chicken. I was bewildered, however, by the decision to include others. The photos of battered cod, baked beans and lobster-stuffed mushrooms are unlikely to make anyone’s mouth water.

Despite the few uninspiring photos, Some Good is a cookbook with valuable information and recipes that will yield good-tasting results.