biography

June 30, 2020 by Philip Moscovitch

There’s an easy way to write a story about Stompin’ Tom Connors in time for Canada Day.

It goes something like this: Stompin’ Tom was a Canadian icon, who travelled the country for decades. A common man who reached out to the common people, wrote songs about the places he visited and stories he heard, and who succeeded despite being ignored by radio and the music industry.

It’s not that this story is untrue. But, like the history of Canada and our evolving views of our own country, it’s more complicated than that.

I have read Stompin’ Tom Connors extensive two-volume autobiography, so when I heard about Charlie Rhindress’ Stompin’ Tom Connors: The myth and the man—an unauthorized biography, I wondered how much more there was to say. But I had enjoyed Rhindress’ biography of Rita MacNeil, so I dove into the Stompin’ Tom book.

Rhindress relies on the autobiography, of course, but he also draws on many other sources, such as interviews Stompin’ Tom did with interviewers like Alden Nowlan and Peter Gzowski, and conversations with band members, including Nova Scotia’s Dave Gunning. He traces his subject’s life and career, from his painfully difficult childhood, to his travelling years, his remarkable run of hits, retirement, and a late-career renaissance after being embraced by a new generation of fans.

Rhindress points out inconsistencies in Stompin’ Tom’s stories—things that couldn’t have happened as he said—but The myth and the man isn’t a misguided “gotcha” of a book. Instead, it paints a portrait of two different people. One of them is the well-loved character of Stompin’ Tom. The other is Tom Connors, a well-read savvy businessman with an interest in literature and comparative religion, who carefully curated his image as the little guy. Connors makes this distinction himself, at one point asking a visitor not to call him Stompin’ Tom at home.

The two characters sometimes merge, as when Stompin’ Tom is a guest of honour at a Rideau Hall dinner (he was friends with then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson) and asks for a ham sandwich with mustard on white bread instead of the fancy cuisine on offer.

And one thing that is clearly not made up is Stompin’ Tom’s love for his fans and the personal attention he gave them. When she was in elementary school, my daughter went through a phase in which she absolutely loved Stompin’ Tom. So she wrote to him. He wrote back, sending a note he said he had typewritten himself, and including a pile of signed swag for her.

Stompin’ Tom’s love of Canada came from his endless travels (he got his first apartment at 35) and conversations, and one of his strongest passions was that Canadians should be able to make it at home. He was a nationalist and a populist, in an era in which nationalism and populism had very different connotations. His nationalism was one of celebration, and his populism was rooted in elevating working people, not in a politics of hatred and division.

Read Rhindress’ book in time for Canada Day, put on some Stompin’ Tom tunes, and celebrate a complex musician and country.

November 22, 2018 by Chris Benjamin

Fiction

The Smeltdog Man
Frank Macdonald
Pottersfield Press

Think: burgeoning fast-food empire. Think: Cape Bretoner with the munchies. Think: the smeltdog. Macdonald’s latest novel showcases his usual sense of satire and silliness, nods to an old character from Tinker and Blue, with a bit more of a freewheeling sensibility. But as always, common sense wins out over greed—at least in the hearts of the wise.

Treason’s Edge
Susan MacDonald
Breakwater Books

This is the third and final instalment in MacDonald’s YA fantasy series, The Tyon Collective. The tension is ramped up on high for protagonist Alec, whose terrifying abilities are being controlled by the traitorous Anna, with the fate of the world at stake.

Politics & Society

Crossing Troubled Waters
MacQuarrie, Pierson, Stettner, Bloomer
Island Studies Press

“Trouble” serves as a euphemism for unwanted pregnancy, in the old parlance. The trouble is magnified in societies lacking effective reproductive care. This work examines modern barriers to healthcare in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Prince Edward Island, an apt comparison given the power of the church on each island.

H ell’s Flames to Heaven’s Gate
Jack Fitzgerald
Breakwater

Jack Fitzgerald, journalist cum folklorist cum historian, talks about the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland, which has been a historical sanctuary for Irish-Catholic immigrants and is one of the most powerful political and social influencer on the Rock.

Viola Desmond: Her Life and Times
Graham Reynolds with Wanda Robson
Fernwood Publishing

Nine years before Rosa Parks made US history, Viola Desmond was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat in a segregated movie theatre in Nova Scotia. Desmond’s younger sister, Wanda Robson, played an active role in winning a posthumous pardon for Desmond. With Graham Reynolds, Robson tells Desmond’s life story, including her role as a pioneering African Canadian businesswoman.

Westray: My Journey from Darkness to Light
Vernon Therriault as told to Marjorie Coady
Preface from Steve Hunt, United Steelworkers
Nimbus Publishing

This is the memoir of a brave person, a survivor and a fighter. It is the story of the Westray mine disaster told by a man who worked in the mine and who won a Medal of Bravery for his part in the unsuccessful rescue efforts. In the aftermath—fraught with chronic pain and PTSD—Theriault found purpose in fighting for the Westray Bill to hold negligent companies criminally responsible.

Holiday Gifts

Christmas in Atlantic Canada: Stories True and False, Past and Present
David Goss
Nimbus

Old-world countries like England have grand narratives by beloved authors to give them a sense of Christmas past. But the holiday didn’t gain significance here until…well, 1604 as it turns out. Thankfully we have folklorist David Gross tracing the history of Christmas in our region, from the first live Santa sighting to the first awed crowd surrounding a Christmas tree in a store window.

Cape Breton’s Christmas, Book 5
Ronald Caplan, editor
Breton Books

Collected Cape Breton Christmas stories have become an annual tradition, and for editor Ronald Caplan a year-round endeavour. The Cape Breton Post reported him scouring the beaches for prospective writers saying, “everyone has at least one good Christmas story to share.” He proves himself right every year, with a diverse collection of well-crafted, touching stories.

Saltwater Mittens
Christine LeGrow & Shirley Scott
Boulder Publications

It’s a very Newfoundland book in one sense, but anyone north of say the 42^nd parallel is sure to appreciate a good pair of wool mittens, especially ones as stylish and authentic as those knitted by LeGrow & Scott. A perfect gift for your favourite knitters.

History

Halifax Harbour 1918
Anabelle Kienle Ponka
Goose Lane Editions

As significant as a centennial is, it is equally fascinating to envision the site of a disaster a year after the fact. How fortunate that Harold Gilman and Arthur Lisman—a co-founder of the Group of Seven—were working in Halifax as war artists a year after 1917’s Halifax Explosion. Their contrasting depict a critical moment in the history of Canadian art, and of Canada itself.

Album Rock
Matthew Hollett
Boulder

St. John’s visual artist and writer Matthew Hollett became fascinated with the question, “Why are a group of French sailors from the mid-1800s painting the word ‘ALBUM’ on a rock?” Album Rock: Looking back through the lens of Paul-Émile Miot is Hollett’s personal journey to solve the mystery of NL history.

Bounty : The Greatest Sea Story of Them All
Geoff D’Eon
Formac

Bounty was the 1787 ship where the most infamous mutiny in British naval history took place. They made a Hollywood movie about it in 1962 using a recreation of the ship built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which eventually sunk in Hurricane Sandy in 2012. D’Eon’s account of the famous ship spans 400 years of “romance…cruelty, lust, loyalty, jealousy, misadventure, hubris, heroism and death.”

The Blind Mechanic: Eric Davidson, Survivor of Halifax Explosion
Marilyn Elliott foreword Janet Kitz
Nimbus Publishing

Eric Davison lost both eyes in the Halifax Explosion. Supporting his fascination with cars and mechanics, his brothers read him auto-repair manuals. He learned well and went on to a decades-long career as an auto mechanic, winning the hearts and loyalty of his Halifax customers.

Personal Accounts

The Other Side of the Sun
Thien Tang
Pottersfield Press

Given the number of people from troubled spots across the globe who have found refuge in this region, it’s remarkable how rare published refugee memoirs are. Prince Edward Islander Thien Tang’s eloquent, honest, lyrical and heartrending story, in addition to personalizing the kind of harrowing account most of us only hear on the news, contributes an important thread in the fabric of our regional culture.

New Brunswick Underwater
Lisa Hrabluk, photography Michael Hawkins
MacIntyre Purcell

The 2018 Saint John River flood was a record breaker that affected thousands of New Brunswickers, cost millions to clean up after, and may have been but a glimpse of a changed-climate future. Award-winning journalist Lisa Hrabluk personalizes the statistics with moving individual accounts of despair, heroism and resilience.

The Nova Scotia Book of Lists
Vernon Oikle
MacIntyre Purcell

Be they to-do, to-see, bucket, top-ten or otherwise, we love our lists. Oikle’s collection, a combination of his own lists and those of experts from across the province, is geared to Bluenosers and anyone looking to get to know Nova Scotia better. Here you’ll find out where see the best waterfalls, eat the best pizza, drink the best wine, find the best sea-glass…

Sports

Brad Marchand: The Unlikely Star
Philip Croucher
Nimbus Publishing

Hammonds Plains’ Brad Marchand is widely considered one of the 20 best male hockey players alive. He’s also the single most annoying hockey player to non-Bruins fans. Whatever your perceptions of Marchand, there’s no denying the 5’9” forward, drafted 71^st overall, has defied expectations, becoming an elite scorer, Stanley Cup winner and World Cup hero. Croucher’s account features personal interviews and 40+ photos.

Hockey Card Stories 2
Ken Reid
ECW

Pictou native Ken Reid is back with “59 more true tales from your favourite players,” the follow up to his highly readable national bestseller of 2014. Reid’s a TV sportscaster but other than the sports angle these books have relatively little to do with his day job. It’s his childhood passion for collecting that drives his quest for the stories behind quirky cards featuring mullets, broken noses and, in one case, a rhinoceros and Hall of Famer together.

November 16, 2018 by Jeff Bursey

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.

March 13, 2018 by Lesley Choyce

Pottersfield Press has published such distinguished nonfiction authors as Harold Horwood, Thomas Raddall, Joan Baxter, Neil Peart, Jon Tattrie, Steven Laffoley, Lindsay Ruck, Jim Lotz, Claire Mowat, Harry Thurston and many others. Now the press hopes to further enhance its creative nonfiction publishing program with the first annual Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction.

Pottersfield is looking for submissions from writers who can provide a manuscript of 30,000 to 150,000 words in any of the following categories: history, memoir, autobiography, biography, literary journalism, political or social commentary, travel writing or virtually any existing or new category that uses the nonfiction medium to tell a story or put forward an idea.

Creative non-fiction is becoming the most popular genre in publishing today and we would like to find new manuscripts to add to our growing list of books.

The First Prize winner will receive a contract for the publication of the winning book along with a $1500 advance on 10% royalty for all sales. The Second Prize winner will also see the publication of the book and a $1,000 advance on 10 percent royalties.

The deadline is March 30, 2018 but early submissions are encouraged.

Submit your manuscript electronically as a double spaced basic Word document to pottersfieldcreative@gmail.com. Include on the title page your name, mailing address and email address.

The entry fee is $25 (including HST) and can be paid by Interac Transfer (also to pottersfieldcreative@gmail.com) or by cheque made out to Pottersfield Press mailed to 248 Leslie Rd, East Lawrencetown, NS B2Z 1T4, Canada, after the manuscript has been submitted by email.

Pottersfield Press was founded in 1978 and has published more than 180 books by some of the Canada’s finest writers. More information about our titles can be found on the Pottersfield website: www.pottersfieldpress.com

August 24, 2017 by Lesley Choyce

Creative nonfiction is becoming the most popular genre in publishing today and we would like to find new manuscripts to add to our growing list of books.

The First Prize winner will receive a contract for the publication of the winning book along with a $1,500 advance on 10 percent royalty for all sales. The Second Prize winner will also see the publication of the book and a $1,000 advance on 10 percent royalties.

Deadline is March 30, 2018 but early submissions are encouraged. Applicants should submit a manuscript electronically as a double-spaced basic Word document to pottersfieldcreative@gmail.com. A title page with the applicant’s name, mailing address and email address should be included. There is an entry fee of $25 (including HST) that can be paid by Interac Transfer to pottersfieldcreative@gmail.com or by cheque made out to Pottersfield Press mailed to 248 Leslie Rd. East Lawrencetown, NS B2Z 1T4 Canada after the manuscript has been submitted by email.

Pottersfield Press was founded in 1978 and has published more than 180 books by some of the Canada’s finest writers.

July 24, 2017 by Greg Marquis

Writing on Canada’s prison system tends to fall into three categories: academic works in criminology or sociology based on theoretical literature, interviews and the results of public inquiries and investigations, more popular works, usually by journalists and freelance writers

and autobiographical efforts such as the classic Go-Boy! by the late Roger Caron, originally published in the 1970s. Caron was not a guard but a repeat criminal.

Academics, whose work contributes to tenure and promotion and in part is designed to attract research grants, tend to write for other academics although their books can have an impact on policy makers. Writing by journalists and freelance authors can veer towards sensationalism, focusing on the dramatic, feeding or reinforcing public stereotypes that prisons are violent, drug-ridden and controlled by gangs.

Given the size of the system and the fact that it holds inmates sentenced to two years or more for crimes like murder, most authors have focused on federal corrections.

Down Inside: Thirty Years in Canada’s Prison Service is an insider’s account of three decades spent working in federal corrections. Robert Clark has produced an informative and well written book that is a barometer of Canadian corrections from 1980 until 2009, when he retired, disillusioned with what he calls “a culture of collective indifference.”

Clark’s first experience of being “down inside” was at the Millhaven Institution at Bath, Ontario, when he was a student at Queen’s University. The Toronto-born Clark was an education student who needed to find a volunteer service credit. He chose the maximum-security facility a few miles west of Kingston, where he played hockey with hardened offenders and hung out in the gym and weight training area. Early on, Clark learned that if you treat inmates with respect and compassion, they usually will return the favour.

Clark’s account is never judgmental of even the worst offenders, although he admits that his long-established faith in rehabilitation was shaken by taking part in parole hearings where victims or their families confronted perpetrators of murder and sexual abuse. He is more critical of certain political and institutional agendas that have shaped the Correctional Service of Canada (CRC). For example, there is the “blue wall” mentality of many correctional officers and managers that makes them reluctant to address wrongdoing by staff. And the internal dynamics of many prisons is such that following all rules and bureaucratic procedures creates a lot of work. Human nature prefers to resist and cut corners.

In addition to offering significant analysis, Clark entertains with an array of interesting characters, including career “cons” with whom the author shared a bond, an overly cautious and perpetually worried manager nicknamed “Dr. Doom” and a young escapee who was shocked that Clark personally called his mother when he was on the lam–a call that appears to have contributed to the prisoner turning himself in. Although he discusses serious issues such as violence, drugs and suicide, the author avoids sensationalism and provides a detailed account of how maximum, medium and medium-security institutions really work.

Clark’s last position before retiring was deputy warden of the Regional Treatment Centre, a mental health facility located inside Kingston Penitentiary, where many of the inmates had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. As Clark notes, many federal inmates have mental health challenges, a situation compounded by the confining environment of prison. Most of these prisoners go untreated, contributing to long-term problems for not only themselves, but also society in general.

But the keepers can also be affected by conditions “down inside.” Working in corrections at any level can be stressful and hard on personal relationships.

In the author’s opinion, there were plenty of reasons for those working in the system to be optimistic in the 80s and 90s, when there was a genuine interest in rehabilitation. Things began to change with the election of the Harper Conservatives and their tough-on-crime agenda. Clark, like many in the know, predicted that when applied to corrections these policies would actually increase recidivism by ex-offenders. And he was particularly puzzled at how quickly CRC management, who had built their careers on the rehabilitation agenda, embraced “an abrupt and wrong turn in correctional philosophy.”

Overall, this is a critical, but fair and compassionate insider’s view of a relatively unknown sector of our society.

June 28, 2017 by Margaret Patricia Eaton

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

May 16, 2017 by Allan Lynch

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 19^th to 21^st 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

May 10, 2017 by Evelyn C. White

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

January 26, 2017 by Gordon Pellerin

Some years ago, the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere reached the alarming level of 390 parts per million. Last year we were told that the level had now reached 400 ppm. And in less than twenty years from now carbon dioxide levels are projected to reach 450 ppm. Climate scientists have been warning us of the grave dangers for the planet and its inhabitants if we don’t deal with this issue and succeed in reversing this trend.

In 2009, one of the most respected climatologists in the world, Dr. Jim Hansen, published a book with the alarming title, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. In the years since, many other reports have been issued by reputable scientists from around the world with equally dire warnings. Most of us have paid little attention and continue on our merry way, like lemmings headed for the cliff, oblivious of the precipice ahead.

It is in this rather negative and hopeless frame of mind that I was recently sent a copy of Silver Donald Cameron’s latest book, Warrior Lawyers: Attorneys for the Earth. At first I wasn’t keen on delving into it, yet another book on a subject – climate and the environment – that no one seems to be able to do anything about. But after reading the first few pages, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down until I had finished it.

Cameron is a born storyteller and a people person, an enviable combination for any writer. In this, his latest opus, these skills again serve him very well. The book is a series of interviews he conducted with lawyers from literally around the world, who have dedicated a good part of their professional work to protecting and preserving our ecosystems through enshrining and enforcing environmental rights in the constitutions and the laws of their countries, and in international law.

In the book, we meet a fascinating and inspiring group of seventeen men and women, pioneers doing groundbreaking work, often pro bono, in the field of law and the environment. I call them pioneers because, if we, as the residents of the planet, survive the present onslaught of global warming and climate change, that’s exactly how these people will be known by future generations.

I’m embarrassed to admit that before reading the book, I had not heard of any of them. Having just finished the book, I now feel that I know them as friends, and my admiration for them and for their work is boundless. David Boyd and John Borrows (Canada); Cormac Cullinan (South Africa); Pablo Fajardo (Ecuador), Antonio Oposa, Jr. (Philippines); Marjan Minnesma and Roger Cox (the Netherlands); Polly Higgins (the United Kingdom); Steven Donziger (the United States) – these are some of the amazing people I’ve met in the pages of this book. They are fighting and winning groundbreaking and precedent-setting cases having environmental rights enshrined in national and international law. These, as well as the rest of the seventeen people profiled, should be household names around the world and, hopefully, if this book is widely read, as it deserves to be, they will become well known and they will motivate thousands of people to get involved in environmental issues, wherever they are.

Three of the precedent-setting cases described in this book need to be mentioned and need to be made known internationally: the Mendoza case in Argentina; the Chevron-Texaco case in Ecuador; and the Urgenda Case in the Netherlands. In each of these cases we have judicial decisions that were not thought possible at the time and that will empower the environmental movement in the immediate and long-term future. These cases should be made compulsory study in every law school, in every country, in the world. The Chevron-Texaco case, in particular, is an international one that has been going on for years, and has a Canadian component which is presently playing itself out in our judicial system. The chapter describing the history of this case is worth the price of the book itself.

We all owe Silver Donald Cameron a huge debt of gratitude for all the work and effort he has put into this project and in other environmental efforts over the years. An almost octogenarian, he could well sit back and enjoy his remaining years and let the rest of us worry about the fate of the planet. Instead he soldiers on. He and his work are an inspiration for us all. According to a leading climatologist, Dr. Mark Jacobson, of Stanford University, “There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources. It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will.” All of us need do our part, all of us need to get involved, and make our voices heard.

[Editors note: This book is not available in stores, but can be purchased in paper or as an e-book format from Amazon or from the author at the link below:]

Warrior Lawyers: From Manilla to Manhattan, Attorneys for the Earth
by Silver Donald Cameron
Paper Tiger Enterprises

January 18, 2017 by Stephanie Domet

The unlikely trailblazer, whose father prayed for her death, opened the door for countless Atlantic musicians

When Rita MacNeil died in 2013, of complications following surgery, flags flew at half-mast, and tributes poured forth. Cape Breton’s First Lady of Song had had a long and storied career, one that started in the women’s movement in Toronto in the 1970s, made the requisite stops on CBC television, where MacNeil hosted a hugely successful variety show, at the Juno and Gemini Awards, on international Top 40 and Country charts, and on to the Orders of Nova Scotia and the Canada.

Every story about MacNeil noted that she was an “unlikely” star, because of her cleft palate and her size. She was known also for being tremendously shy and yet stepping out on stage — barefoot — and belting out her songs with her unparalleled voice. These are Rita MacNeil facts even the most casual fan could likely cite.

I’m Not What I Seem: The Many Stories of Rita MacNeil’s Life by Charlie Rhindress takes these facts and many more about MacNeil’s life and fleshes out the stories beneath them. Rhindress is well versed in those stories, having written the play Flying on Her Own, which premiered at Live Bait Theatre in Parrsboro in 2000.

In this new biography, Rhindress writes of his own awakening to MacNeil’s music, when he was a Maritimer far from home. He listened to MacNeil sing “I’m Not What I Seem” and felt as though she sang directly to him, that there was much more to her than met the eye. That understanding led first to the play — the writing of which MacNeil chaperoned, encouraging Rhindress not to let her off the hook for her failings, nor show her in a better light than she felt she deserved — and from there to this posthumous biography.

Rhindress takes a chronological approach, from MacNeil’s birth (she arrived with a badly cleft palate, and her father prayed for her death), through her struggle to find her place on the musical stage, to the ebb and flow of her career, to her death. Rhindress relies on his own interviews and conversations with MacNeil and those who knew her, along with archival material and MacNeil’s autobiography, co-written with the poet Anne Simpson and published in 1998.

Any biographer worth his salt reflects on his subject’s legacy. Rhindress puts it: “Rita MacNeil was a trailblazer. For both her involvement in the women’s movement and for helping to create a music industry on Canada’s East Coast … At 68 and in ill health, when she could easily have rested on her laurels, she was working with young musicians to create a new sound, to take her music in another direction.”

Kim Dunn, who played keyboards in MacNeil’s band for 14 years and who keeps her spirit alive hosting a concert series at Rita’s Tea Room in Big Pond, agrees MacNeil paved a road for Cape Breton artists to take their music to the world — without having to go down the road to do it.

“I think it’s certainly a big part of her legacy,” he says over the phone from his home in Halifax. “And she did it in a way that was so pure and true to form. All the while being very supportive.”

If MacNeil knew her band members were trying to also have a solo career, she would make sure they sang a song or two of their own during her concerts and she’d invite them to sell their merchandise alongside her own.

“She was very generous with her time and her platform. You might think that somebody who broke the mould the way she did — she didn’t have the image in the industry others had — you might have thought she had more reason to be overprotective of what she had,” Dunn says. “Lots of people are very insecure, but she just let it all out, she wasn’t worried about being upstaged or anything like that. I always interpreted that as another sign of strength in her.”

As for what MacNeil might think of a biography being written, Dunn imagines she’d say, “Oh my God, darlin’, people must have better things to do with their words.”

And yet, fans of MacNeil’s music, or indeed of east coast music, will beg to differ.

January 2, 2017 by Joan Sullivan

“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.”