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“What are you grateful for?” 

That’s the question Nova Scotia author Janice Landry poses to 17 different people—herself included—in Silver Linings: Stories of Gratitude, Resiliency and Growth Through Adversity. 

This unique project marks the award-winning writer’s fifth book. Like her past works, it is deeply personal, for the author and her subjects. 

Landry’s journalistic talent for putting people at ease is evident. Every chapter is laid out in a captivating combination of interviewee biography, her own perspective of the interview, and transcript of those candid conversations. She spoke with fifteen Canadians and two Americans, many whom have overcome hard-to-fathom adversity with grace and the very gratitude that is Landry’s focus.  

Take, for instance, fellow Nova Scotians Paula Simon and Robert Chisolm, who lost their son at eight months old, but speak of the gift of loss. Or the book’s prologue writer, Saskatchewan native Alvin Law, a professional speaker who is most grateful for “being born without arms, because it sent my life on the course I have taken with pride and honour.”  

There’s also paramedic Stefanie Davis Miller of Paris, Ontario, who was diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—she prefers the stigma-reducing term PTSI, or Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. She suffered multiple unrelated traumas. Her wrenching stories of emotional survival accompany many others from first responders, who are near and dear to the author’s heart.  

Opening up about your personal traumas and darkest times is no easy task, especially knowing they will be printed for public consumption. One of Landry’s gifts is sharing these often-troubling yet relatable stories with a real sense of compassion and empathy. 

Landry herself lost her firefighter father Baz Landry in 2006. She shares his story in The Sixty Second Story: When Lives are on the Line. She also lost her dear friend Audrey Parker, who chose to leave on her own terms November 1, 2018, through Canada’s MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) program, after her breast cancer spread aggressively. Most recently, Landry suddenly lost her mother, Theresa, while working on Silver Linings.  

“It took me more than a year, and until after my mother died, to figure out my answer to this question,” Landry writes. “I am most grateful that my father, Capt. Basil (Baz) Landry, M.B., of the Halifax Fire Department did not die in the 1978 house fire from which he and his colleagues recued an eight-week-old infant. Our collective ability to cope, as a family, would have been severely diminished.” 

Like her interview subjects, and like us, Landry has her own stories of resiliency through hardship. She doesn’t hesitate to follow the openness of the people she profiles by pouring her own heart out on the page. 

Dr. Robert Emmons, a California-based gratitude expert, perhaps answers her question most succinctly, in a way that seems to sum up the overall sentiment of Silver Linings. His source of gratitude?  

“I’d have to say it’s the ability to love and be loved,” he says. “I think that would take precedence.” 

For Landry, who dedicates this book to her friend Audrey and mother Theresa, Silver Linings is clearly a labour of love. 

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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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Every fisherman has at least one good story. Bryant Freeman, owner of a speciality-fly shop, Eskape Anglers in Riverview, NB, a gathering place for tyers and anglers, and a raconteur par excellence, has hundreds of them. And now, as recorded by Doug Underhill, they’re set to entertain a much wider audience who enjoy “all things fishing” and want to know how to tie Freeman’s speciality, the Carter’s bug, dye feathers and fur and why the name of his shop, where he provides “therapy and consulting for fly fishing” is “Eskape” rather than “Escape.”

“People might think I don’t know the proper spelling of ‘escape,’” he tells Underhill, “but such is not the case.” He likes the idea of escape and says “fishing is just that, an escape from the daily rat race and a chance to renew oneself getting back to nature.” But, as it turns out, the “esk” is more than an eye-catching misspelling. It means “where two rivers meet.” New Brunswickers will be familiar with North and South Esk, where the Northwest Miramichi and the Little Southwest Miramichi meet; in addition, there’s a river in Scotland named Esk.

There’s also a serious side to All Things Fishing. Freeman tackles conservation issues surrounding recreational fishing, for which he was recognized in 2010 with the NB Lieutenant-Governor’s Award. Freeman’s father was a self-appointed guardian of the Medway River in Nova Scotia, and he himself is a member of the Petitcodiac Riverkeepers Association. This group was instrumental in the move to restore the river by removing the gates in the causeway between Moncton and Riverview after the river was named one of the 10 most endangered in the world by National Geographic.

The pairing of Freeman and his biographer is a match made in angler’s paradise. A retired English teacher and sports/outdoors journalist who lives in Miramichi, Underhill has combined his love of language and the outdoors to produce 13 books, including Salmon Country, which was shortlisted for the Best Atlantic-Published Book Award in 2012. But what’s particularly noteworthy about his writing here is his sensitivity to his subject, allowing Freeman to speak for himself in this engaging biography.

Bryant Freeman: All Things Fishing
Doug Underhill
Nimbus Publishing

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It’s an adventure book, a love story, double biography, scientific synopsis, feminist primer and modern history rolled into 438 pages. Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad were the Norwegian couple who identified and proved that the mysterious mounds at L’Anse Aux Meadows were the site of the only Viking settlement in North America.

The Ingstad’s discovery was considered so significant that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named L’Anse Aux Meadows the world’s first World Heritage Site. It confirmed the encirclement of the earth by the human race. To reach that proof and status A Grand Adventure, written by the Ingstad’s daughter, recounts the academic sabotage, professional jealousies and bureaucratic interference that hampered and frustrated her parents. But that doesn’t start until three quarters of the way through the action-packed lives of this odd couple.

After three years practicing law, Helge Ingstad devoted his life in pursuit of one adventure after another. He spent years living as a trapper in Canada’s far north, was cowboy in the US west, searched for “wild Apaches” in the Serra Madres, explored ancient Viking sites in Greenland, became a regional governor in a northern Norwegian outpost. He wrote numerous books and lectured about his life and the lives of the Caribou Eaters, trapper life, wildlife, Canada’s north and Indigenous peoples. His popular, potboiler-style accounts elevated him to celebrity status.

Anne Stine (she’s never just Anne), like other Norwegians, was enthralled reading of Helge’s exploits. She began an active, multi-year correspondence with him that eventually caused her to break off an engagement to a German noble for this older, famous, near-penniless, self-centred adventurer.

When the Second World War broke out, Ingstad worked with relief agencies to help his countrymen. He possessed the self-confidence (bordering on arrogance) to ride roughshod over the collaborator government and German officers. In one episode he saved a hundred men from execution and throughout the war managed to get food, medicine and money for thousands of rural residents. His wartime exploits would be a book. His trapping and cowboy lives were several books.

While Anne Stine was encouraged to make a good marriage, Ingstad was able to justify his continued self-indulgence as the requirement to support his family. A shining example of his status as a less than attentive husband is shown in 1963. While taking the long way home to Norway from Newfoundland via Asia, he and his daughter decided to make a last-minute detour that meant missing the holidays. Ingstad send a telegram to Anne Stine: “Travelling to Himalaya, Merry Christmas.”

He was the stronger personality, which overshadowed Anne Stine’s professional status and undermined her self-confidence. A lot of women can identify with how society treated her as an afterthought. Ingstad was the media darling who everyone thought was in charge. She was the trained archeologist and the one overseeing the laborious technical work confirming the Viking presence at L’Anse Aux Meadows, yet she was treated as secondary to him. For example, in recognition of the Viking discovery, he was awarded a Royal Order in 1965. Anne Stine didn’t receive hers until 1979. When a US college offered him an honorary doctorate the invitation said, “We also hope that your wife can attend.”

A Grand Adventure is a no-holds barred look at an extraordinary couple. It looks at them as individuals, as a couple that struggled in its relationship and as partners who thrived in their work. While responsible for one of the greatest archeological discoveries, they lived their lives looking forward. A Grand Adventure is an inspiring read that traverses the 19th to 21st centuries.

A Grand Adventure, The Lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking Settlement in North America
Benedicte Ingstad
McGill-Queen’s University Press

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Acadia University professor Karolyn Smardz Frost has rightly earned acclaim for unearthing (literally and figuratively) the hidden history of Blacks in Canada. In 1985, she helped to excavate the residence of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, enslaved blacks from Kentucky who took refuge in Toronto where they founded the city’s first taxicab company. Her award-winning book, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land (2007) documents the couple’s journey.

Steal Away Home chronicles the life of another enslaved Kentuckian, Cecelia Jane Reynolds. At age nine, Reynolds was “gifted” to her master’s teenage daughter, Fanny Thruston. In her forced role as a “lady maid,” Reynolds travelled, at age 15, with the Thruston family to a swank hotel on the US side of Niagara Falls. It was 1846.

There, with the aid of free Blacks who worked at the establishment, she fled to Canada.

“It was surprising … that Southern tourists still insisted on carrying their servants with them to the brink of the Niagara River,” Frost writes. “But they did it all the time, unable to imagine a circumstance without Black hands to fold their clothes or to ready them for bed after an evening’s entertainment. … One day the Thrustons returned to the (hotel) only to find that Cecelia had vanished.”

The absorbing narrative turns on Reynolds’ efforts to secure the freedom of her enslaved mother, Mary, from members of Thruston’s extended family. In an effort to do so, Reynolds exchanged a series of letters with her former mistress (who had taught her basic literary skills).

The correspondence gives rise to an astounding alliance between an aristocratic Southern belle and a determined Black woman who’d once been viewed as “property.”

In a letter to Reynolds, Thruston wrote: “I often think of you Cecelia … I can never forget you, and far from reproaching you for leaving me, I think and always thought it a very natural desire for the slave to be free.”

An intriguing “both sides now” examination of human bondage.

Steal Away Home
by Karolyn Smardz Frost
Harper Collins

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Hailed as effective learning tools since the days of Shakespeare, alphabet books are a mainstay in the publishing industry. Many ABC books are aimed strictly at teaching children the alphabet. Others are crafted to deliver a complex story with creative flair.

Kudos to the Grades 2 and 3 students at William King Elementary School in Herring Cove, Nova Scotia for a superb ABC account of a civil rights champion.

Rendered with honesty and charm, the book honours Halifax native Viola Desmond, a black beautician whose 1946 stand for justice in a segregated cinema helped to end discriminatory practices in the province.

Clearly well-versed in the Desmond narrative, the students bring a wealth of detail to the drawings and text in the volume. “G is for Green,” notes a panel. “Viola’s green car broke down on her way to a meeting.”

“M is for Manager and Move,” reads another.  “The manager told Viola Desmond to move to the balcony.”

Another drawing features a Nova Scotia flag and a group of stick people under a cartoon bubble that reads, “We are sorry, Viola.”  The accompanying letter? “P.” “P is for Pardon. The government of NS pardoned Viola Desmond in 2010.”

The next page showcases an illustration of a serene brown-skinned woman in a polkadot dress. The image also includes a cartoon bubble. It reads, “I didn’t mean to make such a fuss.”

The letter? “Q is for Quietly. Viola Desmond quietly made a difference in our history.”

Flip back to “E” for a sublime drawing of the scales of justice. “E is for Equality,” the panel reads. “The incident was the beginning of a long struggle for equality in our country.”

The winner of a 2016 African Nova Scotian History Challenge award, The ABC’s of Viola Desmond deserves pride of place in every home, library and school in the nation. And here’s a standing “O” for teachers Pam Caines and Beatrice MacDonald for bringing out the best in their students. Ovation.  

The ABC’s of Viola Desmond
2/3 Caines William King Elementary School
Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute

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John C. O’Donnell is the long-serving musical director of North America’s only coal miners choir, and The Men of the Deeps: A Journey With North America’s Only Coal Miners Chorus, is his contribution to a published history of the group that includes Diamonds in the Rough and The Men of the Deeps—The Continuing Saga, both by Allister MacGillivray. MacGillivray’s pedigree is that of songwriter and folk music enthusiast. O’Donnell does him one better with his personal connection to the choir over forty years of its fifty-year history.

O’Donnell’s book is amply illustrated with photos, newspaper clippings, and other reproduced ephemera, and though it follows the choir through the ups and downs of five decades, it’s an easy afternoon read. O’Donnell’s love of and pride in the choir is evident on every page, as he writes with awe of the reception The Men received everywhere from Communist China to the Juno Awards to Front Page Challenge, to Jeopardy.

This is a chronological telling of The Men of the Deeps story, and as such it lacks the drama a more nuanced narrative might offer. And though O’Donnell was there for most of the events he describes, his style is formal and a little removed, so the reader doesn’t really get the sense of being along for the ride. In fact, the sparkliest writing is supplied by Silver Donald Cameron, who accompanied the choir on its inaugural trip to China in the 1970s, eventually producing a series of four stories on the tour for Weekend Magazine. Parts of Cameron’s writing are reproduced here, and they are lively and give a good sense of what that groundbreaking three-week tour was like for The Men of the Deeps and the Chinese citizens who encountered the choir. O’Donnell occasionally falls prey to the pitfalls that await authors of local history. Meticulous naming of community members who helped the choir along the way and too much time spent on the intricacies of government funding available for the undertakings of the choir or denied it, sometimes bog the story down in the kind of bureaucratic details of interest to those backstage, but not those sitting in the audience.

Still, this book offers much to those who are interested in the history of Cape Breton itself, the coal mining industry, or who are already fans. Especially of note are the extensive appendices, with comprehensive lists of touring activity and festivals, repertoire and a full discography, along with complete introductions to the individuals who make up the chorus today and names of past personnel.

These additions, along with the variety of photos and illustrations, make this fiftieth-anniversary-marking book a valuable resource.

The Men of the Deeps
by John C. O’Donnell
Cape Breton University Press

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“You start with what you know. There was a beautiful young woman who grew up on a Nova Scotia farm, became a schoolteacher, and fell in love.”

Author and playwright Bruce Graham has published historical fiction before, and here his subject is the life of a family ancestor: Alice Eudora Graham Lewis. A farmer’s daughter in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, she became a schoolteacher in Pembroke and Lynn Mountain. Not an unusual arc for an intelligent young woman of her cusp-of-the-20th-century time. But Alice also fell in love with, and married, a much older man – who was divorced. That was then an extremely unorthodox social situation and it caused her family to disown her.

How did that happen? Didn’t Alice (who was very pretty) have any other offers? How much did she suffer for her choice? How did she cope? These are the questions that vexed Graham, and which he pursued.

For clues, he researched in archives and small community museums. He traced, and corresponded with, distant family members. He even located a few precious letters written at the time.

The result is a hybrid of historic data and historical enactments. The story unfolds from different perspectives, and includes many characters, two of whom are upfront fictional. Graham has also fashioned dialogue and created atmosphere, both external and internal. We are aware, for example, of Alice’s inner musings, hopes and worries. At times we also hear the voice of the author.

As a biography, it is re-imagined with detail. Many families have a teasing, almost-hidden secret like this. But they don’t always include such a dogged, able sleuth. As Graham deduces from his investigations:

“From what I’ve learned about Alice, she was a most unusual woman.”

The Life of Alice
by Bruce Graham
Pottersfield Press

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Who answers to the call of the ocean?

If there is anyone who can answer that question — and roll out 28 engaging chapters on the subject — it is Jim Wellman.

For starters, the author grew up in Newfoundland and has close ties to the sea. Although he chose the life of a journalist instead of following in his father’s footsteps as the captain of a schooner, Wellman’s life has been immersed in stories of the ocean and the people who ply her shores.

To wit: for 15 years Wellman hosted CBC Radio’s Fisheries Broadcast in Newfoundland. He’s also penned nine books that are associated with the sea and, in 2002, he took on the role of managing editor of The Navigator, which features marine life and the fisheries in Atlantic Canada.

It comes as no surprise, then, that in his career he’s met countless characters who are connected to the ocean and deeply rooted to the sea. Some of these characters have ended up in his latest book The Call of the Ocean.

You’ll meet people like Dion Faulkner who started off one day excited as a kid to be going “birding” (salt water duck hunting) but ended up in a living tragedy that claimed the lives of five others.

Further along in the book there’s Norma Richardson. Wellman describes her as “… not tall, but she casts a lengthy shadow in the world of fisheries in eastern Nova Scotia. In fact, someone said that if Norma were not there to help fishermen forty years ago, they would have to invent her.”

The characters in Wellman’s book are as varied as fish in the sea. Yet they have one thing in common: they all have led fascinating lives, and their stories are heartfelt. Expect a good dose of solid reporting, laced with liberal amounts of insights.

The Call of the Ocean
by Jim Wellman
Flanker Press

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Blank bookcover with clipping path

Author Sally Ross informs readers at the start that the book in their hands was requested and commissioned by the man who is the subject. Ross affirms she alone retained control over all content. Though he read the manuscript before publication, Louis R. Comeau requested no changes to what is a sympathetic and appreciative telling of his life story.

There is much in this book about Louis Comeau – one of the most prominent Acadians from southwest Nova Scotia in the latter half of the 20th century – that will interest many different readers. Sally Ross deftly covers a fair amount of Acadian history, politics and business as she presents her biography of a colourful and prominent figure.

In the opening chapter, the author traces Louis Comeau’s family back through ten generations, to the middle of the 17th century. It’s the broad sweep of Acadian history seen through the lens of one particular family.

Subsequent chapters follow Louis Comeau as he grows up in Clare in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s an effective portrayal of a vanished era. As a young man, Comeau successfully entered politics in the federal election of 1968 — following family tradition and running as a Conservative. Comeau’s time in Ottawa, however, was cut short. In 1970 he was named president of what then was the Collège Sainte-Anne in Church Point. (Today it is a full-fledged university, thanks in large part to Comeau’s leadership.) In the seven years Louis Comeau was at its head, the college underwent a dramatic transformation with new buildings, a secular orientation and a fresh focus as a bilingual institution that would attract Anglophones.

When Louis Comeau thought it was time to move on from Sainte-Anne, he turned to the family business. He took the helm of a lumber company in Meteghan that his grandfather had started in the early 1900s but which was going through a hard time. Comeau turned the business around.

Next, in 1983, came an even bigger move: Louis R. Comeau was named president and CEO of Nova Scotia Power. This was while NSP was still a government agency. Comeau would be a key architect of NSP’s transition to become a private company. That transformation was a huge accomplishment for Comeau, yet there were some at the time and since who have lamented turning a public utility into a private company. It would have been good if the author had added some of those contrary opinions in that part of the book.

A pleasant surprise near the end of the book was that Sally Ross added an entire chapter — “The Woman Beside the Man” — on Comeau’s wife, Clarice Marie Thériault.

The book contains a solid bibliography on the sources used to write each chapter.

Louis R. Comeau, Portrait of a Remarkable Acadian
by Sally Ross
Glen Margaret Publishing

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You can't bury them all Patrick WoodcockThe feel and look of Patrick Woodcock’s latest volume of poetry, You can’t bury them all: aesthetically pleasing. On the cover, the title words are partially eroded or, depending on how one looks at it, uncovered like a body that has been buried in a grave far too shallow. Within the book, Woodcock takes the reader on a journey of stark, uncomfortable and, at times, incomprehensible truths about conflict and the nature of humanity.

These poems are the result of Woodcock’s seven-year immersion in cultures of Azerbaijan, the Kurdish north of Iraq, and, closer to home, Fort Good Hope in the Northwest Territories. Despite the often dire subject matter, the poems sweep the reader along their urgent current, and here and there, through “barley clouds” come rays of, if not hope, then respite or startling wisdom such as the following:

did you know that the last bubble to come

from the drowning

carries a word

and that fish eat these words

that’s why fish are so smart

they carry us within them

By the time the last poem is read, the title seems to change from defiant to hopeful. Yes, you can’t bury them all. Yes, some will live to tell their story.

You can’t bury them all
by Patrick Woodcock
$18.95, paperback, 120 pp.
ECW Press, 2016

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A Stroke in TimeA wonderful story told well, Gerard Doran’s novel A Stroke in Time was inspired by true events. Doran grew up in Outer Cove, actively rowed and coached in the Royal St. John’s Regatta, making him a perfect person to weave a story based on the legendary 1901 rowing crew of Outer Cove.

The book is alive with colourful characters, making it hard to believe this is a debut novel. Each scene of the story matters: from selling fish at the market in St. John’s and the hardships endured by many to the rowing regatta, each word paints a picture in this turn-of-the-20th-century tale. The cadence of the words brings this story to life and you find yourself immersed in the relationships, local culture and communities, as well as the regatta itself.

Like all great storytellers, Doran has brought his characters and setting to life.

 

A Stroke in Time
by Gerard Doran
$19.95, paperback, 226 pp.
Flanker Press, July 2015