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St. John's

January 29, 2021 by Atlantic Books Today

It didn’t take long before the door on the other side of the confessional opened and someone came in. Father Cooke slid back the cover to the small screened window as the unknown parishioner knelt and blessed himself.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been months, maybe years, since my last confession.”

“Very well, my son. Carry on.” Father Cooke leaned in closer to the mesh window that hid their faces from each other.

“Father, I did it again. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

“What did you do?” Father Cooke urged him on.

“Father, I touched another boy. You can’t tell the cops, right?”

“I can’t reveal to anyone what I’ve learned during confession.”

“That’s good, Father, ’cause I can’t help it.” The man sniffed and put a tissue to his nose. The red dots of his own blood stained the white material.

Father Cooke slammed his hand against the dividing wall separating the two men. “You must stop this. It is a sin against God.”

“They say God’s gettin’ His revenge, Father. The nosebleeds won’t stop. I can’t even describe the pain.”

“Then stop it. Stop doing it.” Father Cooke’s hand dragged down the wall, leaving a trail of sweat. “Ask your victims for forgiveness.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants, Father.” He chuckled. “What’s my penance?”

“You must go to the police and turn yourself in this very day.” The sound of laughter from the other side infuriated Father Cooke.–Excerpted from Operation Wormwood: The Reckoning by Helen C Escott. © by Helen C Escott. Published by Flanker Press. flankerpress.com

Filed Under: News Tagged With: fiction, Flanker Press, Helen C Escott, Newfoundland and Labrador, Operation Wormwood, St. John's, The Reckoning

July 7, 2020 by Bridget Canning

Some People’s Children
Bridget Canning
Breakwater Books

 

prologue, August, 1974

Maggie wakes on the bed. The bedspread is itchy on her bare skin. Smells like cigarettes. She is alone. It is not her bed.

She remembers standing outside the bathroom. Tony’s voice was a hiss: “I thought you said you were seventeen.” She tried to speak around the lump in her throat: “Please.”

Someone walked by and laughed, sharp and small like a bee sting. Tony pulled her into the bedroom.

“But we care about each other.” She kissed his neck. That’s one of the things he likes. He shook her off. He slammed the bedroom door as he left.

She was crying on the bed when the voices started. The party banged on around the edges of the door, but these were new sounds. Mostly barked commands:

Get back in there, my son.
If you don’t, I will.
Get it get it get it.

And then Tony was back. He shut the bedroom door to a rising cheer. She remembers reaching for him. They’d never been inside before—twice in the woods on a blanket, twice in the backseat. She remembers wishing hard for no one to come in. Please let the door be locked.

And now he’s gone. She has to go home. She sits up.

Cecil Jesso stands by the bed. Her jeans and pullover are bunched in his hands. His pale eyes are bulging like marshmallows. His pants are undone to reveal a triangle of white cotton. Matted hair. She buckles into a ball.

“Cec! Get out of here!”

“This is my room.” He points at her. “You’re on my bed.”

She pulls the bedspread up from under her, to cover herself. Cecil clutches her things to his chest with one hand. He reaches out with the other and grabs the bedspread from her hand. “Lemme see,” he whispers. His bottom lip trembles.

“No!” Maggie swipes at his hand. Her naked breast brushes his forearm. She scrambles to the foot of the bed. It is hard to move away and keep herself covered. She hears Cec’s breath suck in, wet and beastly. He moves closer. No no no no. Everything is no. Everything is help. Her guts fold in on themselves. They remember something sweet and sickly from earlier and don’t want it anymore.

Now Cec is gasping mouthfuls of garbled fury. He drops her clothes and puts his hands to his wet face. Maggie wipes her mouth, panting. The smell of her own bile hits her and she’s sick again, this time off the side of the bed. Cec backs out of the room. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Her hands move without thought, top on, legs in jeans, underwear and bra shoved in pockets. She stands. Her body sways. Get out, get out. The hallway outside the room reeks of cigarettes and rum. Everyone is gone. She half skates down the hallway, through the kitchen. She snatches her shoes from the porch. Cecil stands in the doorway to the living room, rubbing his face with a towel. “You’re a little savage,” he says.

“You’re a piece of shit. You ever touch me again, you’re dead.”

“I never touched you, Maggie Tubbs,” he says. His voice is sooky and slurry.

A half-empty Labatt 50 bottle sits in the porch, like someone left it when they were tying their shoes. Maggie grabs it around its stubby neck and flings it at him. He steps back, missing the splash of beer. It hits the floor and rolls away.

“When Tony finds out, he’s gonna kill you,” she says. “You’re fucking dead, Cecil Jesso.”

Filed Under: Excerpts, Fiction, Web exclusives Tagged With: Breakwater Books, Bridget Canning, fiction, Newfoundland and Labrador, Newoundland, Some People's Children, St. John's

December 20, 2018 by Vashti Campbell

transVersing
For the Love of Learning
Breakwater Books

TransVersing is a fishy tale, to use the metaphor of co-crafter Daze Jefferies; it slips along, weaving six unique narratives of transgender (trans) youth in Newfoundland and Labrador. The beauty of the “fishy” metaphor is in its capture of the queer-ness of trans identities, its harkening to the ecosystem and culture of the province, and its use as means of connecting embodiment and place.

The stories presented in transVersing are diverse. They come from around the bay, with vernacular and local accents well represented; from life in the capital city and from experiences crossing borders. There are stories of growing up in small town Newfoundland, small town USA and small town Ontario. These stories converge in St. John’s.

TransVersing is a layered series of convergences really, both in narrative and in its creation. It grew out of a need for a trans-specific opportunity for expression and was born of a collaboration between the Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland theatre company and For the Love of Learning, an arts-based and skill-building program. First funded by a Canada 150 grant, transVersing was written originally for stage. It’s had three runs and continues to evolve in an iterative, collaborative way; keeping time with lives and loves, hopes and dreams, politics and passions of the six young writers and performers.

Before this collaboration was created, another had been tried. A few years prior, Gemma Hickey–local trans activist and educator and a household name for many–had invited LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual) community members to stage a performance called “Queer Monologues.” There was keen interest from folks who identify as LGB but Hickey found few trans folks wanting to participate.

In a place where religion has figured prominently in community life, and where difference has been seen as dangerous, identifying as LGBT, or queer, in these parts has meant risking everything. And for trans folks, even LGB/Queer spaces have at times not been understanding of trans identities, trans embodiments or trans ways of being. It became clear to Hickey that trans people in Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t feel safe or comfortable or even welcome in many queer spaces. But if you know Hickey, you know how tenacious they can be!

Hickey approached Artistic Fraud, identifying that a space for the plurality of trans narratives was needed, that it was–and is–essential to foster spaces that give rise to trans voices. And so transVersing was born. Dramaturge Bernadine Stapleton of Artistic Fraud has helped weave these narratives into a cohesive piece of theatre they regularly receive requests to perform.

The strength and vulnerability of this creation is its magic, as is its distinctly local voice. The narratives presented raise authentic, and too often silenced, voices of trans people in the enclaves of Atlantic Canada. Following a recent performance, an audience member commented that having come out as trans in their small town, they were told that there had once been someone else trans in the community … back in the 1970s. Imagine the isolation of knowing that the only other person from your hometown who might have understood your experience had left more than 20 years before you were born.

Isolation in these parts is stark and true, and the feeling of being frozen out is all too real. But, this person says, they have been going home as trans for more than five years; there are now three young people in that same community who have bravely opened up about their own trans identities.

Sharing our trans and queer stories changes lives. Sharing our local stories creates community, builds trust and makes our lives real–and even normal–for the people around us.

And now these stories are being shared even more widely. The incredible team behind this project has worked with Breakwater Books to bring their fishy tales to the page, captured this time in stillness and no longer living within their transmorphic qualities or slipping through iterative presentations.

I imagine however, given the creative strengths of these youth, and of Artistic Fraud’s contributors, that while the book will freeze these narratives in a particular moment, their slippery, queer qualities will not be lost. This book is both education and emancipation.

Filed Under: # 88 Winter 2018, Editions, Features, Young Writers Tagged With: Artistic Fraud, Bernadine Stapleton, Breakwater Books, Canada 150, For the Love of Learning, Gemma Hickey, identity, Isolation, LGBT, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, queer, screenplay, St. John's, Theatre, Transgender, transVersing

December 20, 2018 by Lisa Doucet

Seasons Before the War
Bernice Morgan, illustrated by Brita Granstrom
Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides
(Ages5-13)

In this tale that begins, “Once upon a time, long, long ago…” author Bernice Morgan lovingly recounts the joys and trials of everyday life in her childhood home of St. John’s, Newfoundland. With the Second World War casting a vague but ominous shadow, she and her siblings spent their days playing in the streets and fields, the back alleys and parks.

There were more horses than trucks at that time, and in their neighbourhood there were bulls-eye shops and a blacksmith shop, dressmakers and shoemakers and a carpenter shop where their father worked. 

Morgan recalls starting school—and the disappointment it turned out to be despite the exquisite pencil box Aunt Sophie bought her—and the long, cold winters, the almost unbearable anticipation of the announcement that Toyland would soon open, meaning that Christmas was very near. Fond memories of simpler times, just before the world would change forever, that she holds in her heart even still.

This nostalgic recollection of a particular time and place exudes a sense of wistful longing and the sober recognition of how much has changed. Morgan’s poetic descriptions are vivid and evocative, and tinged with the sadness of knowing what dreadful darkness lay just around the corner.

For young readers of today, it feels like the best type of picture-book diary: one that is heartfelt and affectionate as it portrays the small but meaningful minutiae of daily life in a different time.

This beautiful ode to times past is also a coffee-table book to be savoured by adults. Brita Granstrom’s delicate and intricate illustrations are a perfect complement to the text, beautifully depicting each scene with myriad details. The free and sketchy brushwork gives them a vague and indistinct quality that suits the narrative.

Exquisitely designed, written and illustrated, this is a charming work of historical fiction/remembrance.

Filed Under: # 88 Winter 2018, Editions, Reviews, Uncategorized, Young Readers Reviews Tagged With: Christmas, Illustrated, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nostalgia, picture book, Running the Goat Books & Broadsides, Second World War, St. John's, young readers

December 10, 2018 by Hilary MacLeod

Operation Wormwood
Helen C Escott
Flanker Press             

For the first time in social media, God began to trend.

With that line, Helen Escott provides a moment of light relief in an otherwise harrowing story of child molesting, corrupt priests and a vengeful God. Add to that murder, suicide, PTSD and spewing blood that challenges the puking in Rosemary’s Baby and you’ve got Operation Wormwood, a new thriller out of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The story takes hold immediately and doesn’t let the reader go until it’s over, featuring a plot peppered with philosophical questions, moral quandaries and personal nightmares. You might say, “my cup runneth over,” and you would be well in the spirit of this novel with its biblical quotations, religious refrains and a multiplicity of moral issues.

Archbishop Keating is admitted to hospital in St. John’s, Newfoundland, suffering from massive nosebleeds, agonizing pain and a thirst he can’t slake because water tastes like vinegar to him. Other victims suffer the same symptoms and check in at ER in St. John’s and in cities across Canada, afflicted by a plague that attacks men (and at least one woman) who have abused children.

It’s quickly established that, unlike a plague, the disease is not infectious. In fact, it’s limited. What the victims have in common is that they’re pedophiles.

The novel turns on two main possibilities: that the plague is a poison, wormwood, that someone is using against child molesters; or that God is the guilty one, visiting revenge on pedophiles with the creation of a disease that punishes them with merciless pain. Underscoring this suspicion is that the pain seems to be worse when the victims of abuse think about the torture they experienced at the hands of unscrupulous priests, teachers and other people in power.

Grappling with this mind-bending situation are Dr. Luke Gillespie, RCMP Sgt. Nick Myra and Father Peter Cooke. Dr. Gillespie considers himself duty-bound to treat these patients, distasteful as they are. He calls on doctors and hospitals nationwide to share information about the disease but a cure eludes him and one after another his unsavoury patients die. His is not a popular position. Many believe that wormwood is a justifiable plague against pedophiles.

Father Peter Cooke is one of them. For him, wormwood is a blessing.

He rallies the city’s Catholics to a mass of thanksgiving to the Lord for bringing this punishment down on the sinners. It brings the faithful back in droves to the church, grateful that #GODISBACK.

Cooke’s prayers have been answered, his church pews filled by the justice the Lord has meted out. For him, wormwood is the cure: divine punishment for the ungodly. It provides a worldwide boost for the Catholic Church that brings Cooke to the notice of the pope.

Sgt. Myra is not ready to accept the church’s view of what’s happening to pedophiles and mounts an investigation of the molesters and their victims, desperately seeking a common thread, a solution. Blood tests and common sense prove that it can’t be poisoning by a single serial killer or a string of multiple killers. But Myra doesn’t see the disease as the work of God either.

So what is it? To answer that here would be telling. The ending is, at the least, unexpected. It may not satisfy all readers.

The author asks readers to consider a host of moral dilemmas throughout the book and in the end tests their faith with a surprising conclusion. Or perhaps Escott has provided the ideal realistic ending; after all, in life, where are the easy solutions?

The casualties mount on the way to this uncertain conclusion, made the more surprising by the revelation of two characters suffering PTSD and finally a pair of suicides that add to the mountain of tragedy.

As a retired civilian member of the RCMP, Escott certainly knows her stuff. She took a decade to work on this book. It shows in her meticulous research and use of facts to flesh out a dark story of murder, abuse, suicide and human frailty.

Operation Wormwood is a story that pulls readers in at the very start, draws them through a frightening series of events and finally explodes, leaving them to question their own beliefs.

Filed Under: # 88 Winter 2018, Editions, Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: Church, Disease, Flanker Press, God, Helen C Escott, Hospital, Human Frailty, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Operation Wormwood, Pedophiles, Plague, priest, Religious, Social Media, St. John's, thriller, Wormwood

November 29, 2018 by Sarah Sawler

Kat Frick Miller from If I Had an Old House on the East Coast

There are winter days when, even as a weather-worn East Coaster, you simply don’t feel like wearing six layers of clothing or attempting the near-impossible task of walking as briskly as possible to your car while trying not to end up with your ankles by your ears. On days like that it’s better to shake out a packet of Carnation instant hot chocolate (or, for the fancier among us, reach for that emergency stash of hot chocolate from Sugah or Newfoundland Chocolate Company), settle into the squishiest, most overstuffed armchair you own, and cuddle up with a great book.

If you do decide to opt out of winter for the day, how do you choose the right book? For me, a good winter read is an immersive experience, with vivid characters, an epic story arc and a setting so real that, by the time I put down the book, I feel like I’ve lived there and then, in the world of the book, away from all this sleet and snow.

That’s the key to staying warm with books. Atlantic Books Today has the books to get you through at least a couple weeks’ worth of snow days. Buckle up, because we’re going to take you on a bit of a road trip (while the roads are still passable).

Growing Up Next to the Mental
Brian Callahan
Flanker Press

Wish Mooney is just four years old when he finds the dead man in the Waterford River at nine in the morning. For most people, the discovery would be horrific, but Wish is so young that fear isn’t his first response, or even his second. In fact, he’s not even sure the body is human.

“I didn’t think it was a real person, mainly because I’d never seen a real person like this before. Absolutely motionless. Reminded me of the mannequins in the windows down at Woolworths—save for the pose, and his clothes.”

The discovery puts a keen focus on a central feature of St. John’s, rich in trope and theme. Wish’s childhood is spent living just seven feet away from the grounds of the Waterford Hospital—then the Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases. To the locals, however, it’s simply known as The Mental—because it’s the 1970s and unfortunately, political correctness wasn’t really a thing yet.

The Waterford Hospital opened in 1855, making it the oldest mental health hospital in North America. Callahan draws a vivid picture of what the institution was like almost 50 years ago: the chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that borders the large field, the brick buildings and the “ominous, sky-scraping smokestack.”

Patients rarely use the fields but the neighbourhood kids pick up the slack, playing sports or throwing snowballs, depending on the season. Here on rare occasions, the worlds of the kids and the patients overlap. As Wish grows up, a first encounter with a patient leads to lessons that his neighbours don’t fit neatly into the boxes society shoves them into.

Something for Everyone
Lisa Moore
House of Anansi Press

Depending on where you live, Moore’s latest collection of short stories may require a quick mental trip over the gulf or straight—but there’s very little time travel necessary. Most of the people who inhabit these stories don’t hail from the long-ago version of Newfoundland we read about so often; instead this book is populated by characters with their feet firmly set in the modern world—they’ve been devastated by the Pulse nightclub massacre, empowered by #MeToo, and one is so desperate to save his grandmother’s life that he’s willing to rob an establishment with a syringe.

These people—widows and students, nurses and sex workers—hustle across skywalks, watch YouTube and know a surprising number of guys named Chad.

Something for Everyone is true to its title; there really is a story to suit almost any taste in literature. It’s primarily a work of contemporary fiction, but the stories contain hints of other genres, from mystery to speculative fiction.

Overall, it’s a beautiful and sometimes biting depiction of modern-day Newfoundland (and in some cases, the wider world). Moore never flinches from the truth, no matter how much it hurts. And sometimes it does—but Moore’s work is compassionate. She’s received no shortage of critical praise over the years, but it’s worth noting again that she’s a clear-eyed writer, never forgetting the effects of a parental suicide on a nurse’s life, or an unwanted pregnancy on the mental health of a young woman.

Old Newfoundland isn’t completely absent though from the book and it makes its presence known in more than just the story of Guglielmo Marconi. Traces of the past show up in Moore’s Newfoundland like the sound of after-dinner jigs and reels carried on the unrelenting wind.

Moore’s pacing is impeccable. Her stories can be savoured one at a time or devoured as a 10-course feast.

Oderin
Agnes Walsh
Pedlar Press

St. John’s poet Agnes Walsh’s new collection is dedicated to her mother. It’s fitting then that the opening poem, which serves as a sort of prelude, is about her 93-year-old mother reliving old memories while recovering from a broken hip. “Made in Canada?” is about how despite spending years in Canada, it still isn’t really home to Walsh’s mother—and, as Walsh herself asks, why should it be? Her formative years were in Ireland, and

The ways of Canada were foreign to her / as hers would be to Canadians.

Walsh’s mother may have had Ireland on her mind, but Walsh is firmly planted in Newfoundland soil. While the collection’s overall narrative focuses on the decline of Walsh’s mother’s health, her death, and Walsh’s grief, the individual poems guide us through various places in Newfoundland and their histories.

In “Southern Harbour, Two Cemeteries, One Name,” Walsh walks us through a Southern Harbour graveyard, where we encounter a gravestone with the word “Toslow” (a resettled fishing community in Placentia Bay) inscribed on it, prompting readers to consider the plight of a community forced to relocate and the importance of remembering where you came from.

Although “Rushoon 1,” “Rushoon 2” and “Rushoon 3” are all set in different times, the common thread of domestic abuse runs through all three, highlighting the idea that no matter how quickly neighbours will pull together when someone needs a new roof, they’re still slow to help when it comes to “private matters.” These poems make it clear that no matter how much time passes, the scars left by these wounds are slow to fade.

Later in the collection, specific Newfoundland and Labrador locales are mentioned less, but the province maintains a strong presence in the imagery of Walsh’s poems, in her mother’s “floating mind,” her “harbour of drugs,” and later, in the “bunched paw mark of moose” and the “calligraphy of bird claw.”

Life on the Mista Shipu
Robin McGrath
Boulder Publications

When Robin McGrath and her husband decided to move from Conception Bay, Newfoundland to Happy Valley-Goose Bay in central Labrador in 2006, she was looking forward to a change of scenery. But when she embarked on a journey down the Mista-Shipu (or Churchill River), she discovered that she had far more to learn about her new surroundings than she realized.

McGrath’s first introduction to the reality of life in Labrador was as unfiltered as it could possibly be.

Innu environmentalist Elizabeth Penashue guided the eight-day survivalist trek from Churchill Falls to Gull Island. McGrath and 13 other travellers spent the time navigating strong currents, constructing Innu-style camps from scratch, searching for non-contaminated water and dining on boiled beavers and roasted porcupines. The trip also helped shape much of the work McGrath would do over the coming years.

Canoeing the Churchill River highlighted for me two of the things that became most important to me during my decade in Labrador: the people and the land.

The land and people of Labrador unite the articles and essays in McGrath’s book, Life on the Mista Shipu. Informed by her interactions with the people McGrath has met and befriended, and her experiences exploring and diving headfirst into Labrador and its culture, the non-fiction collection is broken down into categories by theme: Life on the Coast, Justice, Food, Natural History, Visitors and Sojourners, Labradorians at Home and Away, On Land and Sea, People of the Interior, Life and Death, and L’Envoy.

The result is a marvellous and thorough collection where story, history and culture cross paths, intermingle and provide an informed view into an area many of us will never have the opportunity to experience firsthand.

A Boy From Acadie
Beryl Young
Bouton d’or Acadie

Just a 23-hour drive (including the ferry ride) southwest from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, nearly 90 years ago on December 18th 1927, a baby boy was born to a large Acadian family living in Cormier’s Cove, New Brunswick. Like many children at that time, the boy didn’t have an easy childhood. His family ran a small farm and, even at the young age of six, the boy was expected to help out, fetching water from the well, weeding the gardens, piling wood, and feeding livestock.

His mother was devoted to her family, but experienced chronic depression after losing an infant and had frequent debilitating headaches. When she wasn’t feeling well, the boy would have to be quiet and his sisters would have to step in and cover the meals. She died young, when he was around seven.

All this was in addition to studying at the one-room schoolhouse with its 57 children, single teacher and a big black stove to keep them all warm. The boy wasn’t cut out for farm work; school is where he thrived. While the rest of the children in his family left school at the end of Grade 7, the boy’s sister helped pay his way through high school, and more family members chipped in to get him through university.

The boy was Roméo LeBlanc, who eventually worked his way up through various political posts to become Canada’s first Acadian Governor General. In addition to the story of Roméo’s childhood, A Boy From Acadie also tells how he gave more than 800 speeches, protected the rights of Canadian fisherman by establishing the important 200-mile fishing limit off Canada’s coasts, dined with the Queen of England and hosted President Nelson Mandela.

A Boy From Acadie book makes it clear that despite all this, Roméo’s family and childhood home in New Brunswick remained closed to his heart. In that sense, it acts as a tour of Acadian culture itself.

Searching for Terry Punchout
Tyler Hellard
Invisible Press

Province hopping again, a shorter drive this time, Tyler Hellard’s debut novel takes place in a small (fictional) Nova Scotia town, called Pennington. To hear Hellard’s main character Adam tell it, though, it doesn’t matter that the little community isn’t real—because it’s intended to be a stand-in for all the small East Coast towns that do exist.

Within the first few pages, Adam returns to the town after spending years out west. He describes Pennington as:

a small town in the way all towns in Nova Scotia are small. In the summer, it smells like salt and in the winter, it snows that wet, heavy Maritime snow—heart attack snow, they call it. Everybody knows of everybody else and their business… It’s a town that thrives on routine and expectation and neighbourly kindness. There are hundreds of towns just like this—Pennington, Pugwash, Tatamagouche, Antigonish, Pictou—and the specifics don’t matter.

I won’t pretend this paragraph didn’t cause me to feel a bit of knee-jerk indignation. I’m someone who doesn’t mind making the drive to Tatamagouche just for the beer, and I was recently amazed by the high-quality service at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in the unique small town of Antigonish.

But, shoving my internal biases aside and reminding myself it’s the character saying this, not Hellard (who is from PEI), Pennington works well as a familiar-feeling small Canadian town obsessed with hockey. Whether or not my Nova Scotian sensibilities are comfortable with the sameness of our towns, that idea serves as a benchmark for how Adam’s feelings change. The more he learns about his hometown’s role in his family’s history, and the more time he spends with old friends, the more assumptions he shoves aside.

Until he finally realizes moving away isn’t quite the same as moving on.

Now it’s time to hunker down. Hit up your local bookstores and libraries, and most importantly, restock the hot chocolate cupboard…

 

But wait! Here are some additional winter reading suggestions from our editor, all with a strong setting to take you away from it all:

Ned Pratt: One Wave
Ned Pratt
Goose Lane Editions

“He shows us the beauty of a quiet moment in a rugged and difficult place,” writes Anne Chafe, director of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in her forward. Perhaps this is the best description of how to find warmth in a winter space. It’s like the old adage, “There’s no bad weather, just bad preparation.”

Pratt embraces this harsh land, celebrates it, in all its glorious starkness. His sharp, in-your-face angles crash hard, whether he’s giving us a glimpse of ocean from a ferry, a wave crashing over a breaker, a snowdrift, a red-striped trailer or a guardrail by the roadside, fog on rocks, a frozen slab of seawater or a lone shack shelter in a storm of white.

These photos are so illustrative one might wonder if they are in fact drawn that way. They aren’t. They simply take the elements in their arms, or lens, with well-thought-out abandon. Taking in One Wave is like watching an awesome storm through your window. 

Threads in the Acadian FabricSimone Poirier-Bures
Pottersfield Press

Stories of nine generations of Poiriers—whirlwind touring, sometimes by force, from France to Port Royal to Beaubassin to Port Toulouse to Isle Madame and Halifax—told by the Evelyn Richardson Award-winning Simone Poirier-Bures give insight into the collective experience of Acadie, the physical and cultural landscape.

If I had an Old House on the East Coast
Wanda Baxter & Kat Frick Miller
Nimbus Publishing

Sit (warmly) at home, and imagine a home as seen from above, dating way back, with slate stairs and surrounded by trees, all bright and filled with souvenirs. Think sunny kitchens where recipes come to life, wall stencils full of stories and generations of DIY ingenuity that somehow comes together just right. Think animals, inside and out. A casa abierta generates warmth from all the life inside and around it. Even in such a lively house, Baxter and Miller tell us, comes a time “to go in, cozy up, and rest for a while…and dream some new dreams, while the snow flies.”

What Your Hands Have Done
Chris Bailey
Nightwood Editions

Clearly we’re not above romanticizing our region. We live here for a reason after all. But, as much as we want to trumpet its many charms it has its dark side, its “world of hard-scrabble, hard-luck ports and hard-living, hard-drinking fishers” as George Elliott Clarke puts it on the jacket of Chris Bailer’s new poetry collection. Bailey’s voice here is all authentic; he’s a North Lake, Prince Edward Island fisherman and an award-winning poet. A significant portion of his poems reference fish in the title; other eye catchers include “Crow Piss: a Pantoum,” “Beetles Running Mad,” “Uncle Stormcloud” and “Like Warren Zevon.” This is the fishing life of the 21st century.

Filed Under: # 88 Winter 2018, Art Books, Editions, Features, Fiction, History, Nonfiction, Poetry Tagged With: #MeToo, A Boy From Acadie, Agnes Walsh, Antigonish, Atlantic Canada, Beryl Young, Bouton d’or Acadie, Chris Bailey, Churchill Falls, Churchill River, Cormier’s Cove, cuddle, East Coast, Elizabeth Penashue, George Elliott Clarke, good winter read, Goose Lane Editions, Growing Up Next to the Mental, House of Anansi Press, If I had an Old House on the East Coast, Invisible Publishing, Kat Frick Miller, Labrador, Life on the Mista Shipu, Lisa Moore, Marconi, Ned Pratt, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nightwood Editions, Nimbus Publishing, Nova Scotia, Oderin, One Wave, Pedlar Press, photography, Pictou, Placentia Bay, Prince Edward Island, Pugwash, Roméo LeBlanc, Sarah Sawler, Searching for Terry Punchout, Something for Everyone, Southern Harbour, St. John's, Tatamagouche, The Rooms, Toslow, Tyler Hellard, Wanda Baxter, Warren Zevon, Waterford Hospital, Waterford River, weather, What Your Hands Have Done, Winter

November 15, 2018 by Mark Critch

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. 

Filed Under: # 87 Fall 2018, Editions, Excerpts, Non-fiction Tagged With: Anecdote, Cat, Cats, Dad, Fathers and Sons, Gambling, humour, Humour Writing, Kitten, Mark Critch, memoir, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, NL, Penguin Random House, Queen Elizabeth, St. John's, Tony Martin, Viking Canada

October 25, 2018 by Elizabeth Johnston

All Good Intentions
Trudi Johnson
Flanker Press

As our plane descended, the Rock came into view and took my breath away. I was coming to St. John’s to give a talk about the memoir writing class I had created at a large senior citizens’ community centre in Montreal.

The great swaths of rock and greenery seen from our plane seemed to swell with silent testimony to the highs and lows of life. I looked forward to touching down and entering into the stream of story that was ceaselessly flowing below.

It was with that same sense of wonder and excitement that I immersed myself in Trudi Johnson’s historical fiction, All Good Intentions, a book that shines a light on how family secrets can wreck havoc for generations.

Though All Good Intentions picks up on the story of the Newfoundland Sinclair family, which Johnson wrote about in her first novel, From a Good Home, it is a book that stands on its own.

In reading Johnson’s most recent book, it was delightful to come across mention of various streets including Water and Military, as well places I remember from my short trip to St. John’s. No doubt people with deep roots in the area will find much to connect with in All Good Intentions. Johnson is careful to make mention of towns, streets and landscape features that anchor her story in time and place. One particularly visual description stands out:

“Later that evening, on board the schooner bound for Falcon Cove and points north, Hannah bundled her belongings around her and hoped they would cut the chill. She focused on the steep rocks of the Narrows, the entrance to St. John’s harbour between the hills, then Freshwater Bay, until they disappeared from sight in the dusk.”

With just two deft sentences, Johnson creates an atmosphere that reflects how Hannah must have been feeling at this point in the story—a young woman who had just given birth to a baby she was unable to keep.

Yet, these forays into the feeling world of the many characters in All Good Intentions are often too brief and few throughout a novel that relies mainly on dialogue to convey the narrative. In their brevity, they remind me of fingers that merely trail on the surface of what is most definitely deep waters, and in that sense, they leave me wanting much more.

Throughout the novel, I longed for more showing and less telling. However, Johnson’s expository style is no doubt a function of her academic background. “Ideas for the story grew out of my academic research in Newfoundland legal history,” shares Johnson, who has a PhD in the island’s history. In All Good Intentions, her specialization in matrimonial law and inheritance practices is put to good use in crafting a story that unfolds as a direct result of one family member’s decision to ignore certain legalities.

I’m sure many people will find something to relate to in this story about family issues, and that is actually the great appeal of genealogical stories, whether imagined or real. In fact, positioning oneself along the story continuum of place and family is a phenomenon that has only gained in popularity with genealogy shows. And before those shows, there were memoirs, autobiographies and historical fiction such as Johnson’s books that fed our thirst for knowledge about perennial questions of identity.

The issue of identity—how we create a sense of it for ourselves in the present and how much of it is determined by those who have come before us—is one that we all grapple with, to one degree or another. Whether we go to books such as All Good Intentions for entertainment or answers that fire our imagination, or we pick up the pen ourselves, the urge to know who we are by understanding our ancestors is clearly a strong one.

All Good Intentions reminds us of how important family memories are to making sense of who we are and, perhaps more importantly, who we want to be. Ironically, though, we cannot make those crucial decisions about our destiny without knowing the truth of our family stories.

Trudi Johnson’s historical fiction inspires us to look back so that we can go forward with confidence and surety.

Filed Under: # 87 Fall 2018, Editions, Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: All Good Intentions, Flanker Press, From a Good Home, Historical fiction, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, sequel, St. John's, Trudi Johnson

July 19, 2018 by Lisa Doucet

What do you do when you are a moose who is being followed by two unassuming mallard ducks? The moose in this story, who finds himself in precisely that predicament, strolls into St. John’s in search of a home for the wayward mallards. He traverses the entire city looking for someplace to divest himself of his unwanted companions, but to no avail.

He tries to leave them at a park or possibly downtown or by the harbour but they are uncomfortable with the swans and the pigeons and the seagulls. A bakery and a local restaurant give him pause but then neither spot proves to be quite right. What is a moose supposed to do? Fortunately, just when his patience appears to be wearing thin, the answer appears.

This is the third picture book from Lori Doody, a Newfoundland artist whose two earlier tales, like this one, combine droll humour and delightful illustrations to wonderful effect. Short, simple sentences outline the moose’s plight and clever word play provides amusement throughout (as when he couldn’t find a place to “fit the bill”).

Also as in her previous tales, the text and illustrations very much work together to weave their magic. The images of St. John’s are distinct and easily identifiable and the folk-art style that Doody employs auits the story perfectly. Bold, bright and flat colours, thin lines and comic details enable the illustrations to tell their own tale and expertly capture the setting.

Children and adults alike will be gratified when they reach the final page where the moose finally says goodbye “to the duck, the duck and the goose,” the answer that the story was, of course, begging for all along.

Mallard, Mallard, Moose
Lori Doody
Running the Goal Books & Broadsides

Filed Under: # 86 Spring 2018, Editions, Reviews, Young Readers Reviews Tagged With: Ducks, Lori Doody, Mallard, Mallard Mallard Moose, Moose, nature, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Picture Books, Running the Goat Books and Broadsides, St. John's, Wildlife

March 13, 2018 by Andrea Edwards

Congratulations to Gary Collins, who has won the first annual NL Public Libraries NL Reads competition.

On February 28th, 2018 the first NL Reads event was held at the AC Hunter Library in St.John’s, Newfoundland. Sculpted by NL Public Libraries Collections Librarian, Jewel Cousens, this program was designed to be similar to the popular literary event, CBC Canada Reads. NLReads showcased four books from local authors to celebrate Love Our Local Author (LOLA) Month.

Four readers were selected to read and defend their titles, Jane Adey of CBC for Joel Thomas Hynes’ novel We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night, author Paul Rowe for Alan Doyle’s A Newfoundlander in Canada, library assistant Daniel Murphy for Gary Collins’ The Last Beothuk, and library patron Cynthia Kelly for Bridget Canning’s The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes.

The voting was held online and at libraries across Newfoundland and Labrador with the final votes taking place live at the event.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Alan Doyle, Bridget Canning, Flanker Press, Joel Thomas Hynes, Literary Contest, literary prize, Newfoundland, NL Public Libraries, Paul Rowe, St. John's, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes, The Last Beothuk, We'll All Be Burnt In Our Beds Some Night

January 31, 2018 by Sarah Sawler

Chad Pelley is the kind of writer readers and critics adore. He produces commercial bestsellers that get made into movies. He wins major awards, like the CBC NLAC Emerging Artist Award, and earns praise from writers like Lisa Moore, who called his work, “stylistically fresh, taut with emotional torques and charges, can’t-put-it-down compelling.” Essentially, he’s one of those rare authors who gives pretty much everyone who picks up his books exactly what they didn’t know they wanted. And that’s as good as it gets, really, because as we all know, you can’t please everyone.

Fifteen years ago, Pelley wasn’t writing at all. He was going through a breakup with someone he’d been with for six years and shifting into a new group of friends. But mostly he was spending days on end staring down the barrel of a microscope at a lifetime of tedium.

“I was reading a Michael Winter book when this all happened. He wrote a novel about what was going on in his life while he was writing another novel.” says Pelley. “I was in this flux in my life, and for some reason, reading Michael Winter’s book, about this guy going through all the same stuff, really resonated with me. Which was interesting because I had no real aspirations of being a writer. I grew up writing lyrics for a band I was in, that was about it.”

At the time, Pelley was exploring a few career options—he was writing a grant to start a record label and studying the MCAT for med school. “I was interested in a whole bunch of stuff, but nothing really pulled me towards it until I read Michael’s book, and then started writing my own book, and then it just felt right,” he says. “I didn’t want a job where I felt that if I quit, I’d be replaceable. When I’m writing my books, I feel like no one else would have written them if I hadn’t, and there’s a certain satisfaction in that.”

If Pelley hadn’t picked up that particular book (it was Winter’s This All Happened) at that exact time in his life, Pelley might be writing doctor’s notes instead of novels. But he did, and there was something about Winter’s writing that showed Pelley exactly what a well-written novel could be.

“[It showed me] there was more to a novel than just plot,” says Pelley. “It’s about engaging readers, and that interested me to the point that my Eureka moment wasn’t an award or an interaction with a reader, so much as me stumbling headlong into the purpose of an artist, or at least what art’s purpose for me is. Which is having this conversation about the world through the stories I write. I wrap them up in plot and employ tactics and techniques to make the writing engaging, but everything I write is a conversation I’m having with myself about the world.”

Pelley says he wrote until writing was all he was doing, and it was its own reward. But his validation came when he started submitting to journals and literary awards. “The first award I won was actually a huge validation, like maybe I can take this seriously,” he says. “I won a short story award in The Telegram in St John’s. It’s one thing to enjoy something, it’s another to be validated in your pursuits.”

The winning story was called “Holes to China.” It was one of the first stories he wrote and is included in his recent short story collection Four Letter Words. “It’s about this kid whose father just died of cancer and his mother isn’t taking it well, so he’s trying to dig a hole to China to get away from it all,” says Pelley. “It was a challenge because it was in a newspaper so the limit was 1,200 words, and it’s really hard to sum up a short story in 1,200 words. But I really enjoyed the challenge.”

He also really admired the jurors. Kathleen Winter was on the jury, and Pelley had read and enjoyed her books for years. Receiving recognition from her was a big deal. But she’s not the only writer who’s had an impact on his work—he also credits Newfoundland authors Larry Mathews and Jessica Grant. He connected with both Mathews and Grant when he enrolled in some creative writing courses at Memorial University.

“[Mathews] brought in a lot of people in my position, who weren’t necessarily English students but wanted to learn more about writing, and his feedback—more than anybody else I’ve come across in 10 years or so of showing people my fiction—he could just see what I was trying to do and articulate it very well. I found that helpful. I went back a couple of years later and took a class that Jessica Grant taught and that was just as beneficial. Anything I write, she reads it and gives me feedback. So obviously, Larry and Jessica were huge influences.”

Right now, though, Pelley’s going through another (less extreme) shift, and it sounds like the recent political climate is having a bigger influence on his in-progress work than any writer. Except for, perhaps, George Orwell.

“George Orwell was the epitome of a perfect writer because he wrote really engaging stories, but they’re also talking about society and where it’s heading,” says Pelley. “1984 was a humongous influence for me, especially with what I’m starting to work on now, which is all these semi-conspiracy theory novels that are playing into modern fears, the whole ‘what if’ scenario. What he was playing with is what I’m playing with now.”

Filed Under: Columns, columns-origin-stories, Web exclusives Tagged With: Breakwater Books, Chad Pelley, fiction, Four Letter Words, Jessica Grant, Larry Mathews, Michael Winter, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, novel, short fiction, short stories, St. John's

January 23, 2018 by Michelle Butler Hallett

Newfoundland author Trudy Morgan-Cole tells Michelle Butler Hallett how the women in her books found their way to the fore, “…most often the characters who end up wanting to tell the story are the women.”

Michelle Butler Hallett: Your characters are vivid and nuanced and early in your new novel, Most Anything You Please, I was waiting for the various male characters to, well, take over, as tends to happen in what we privilege as Serious Novels Which Tell Important Stories. The male characters don’t take over, of course. Would you say you’ve written women’s fiction—or just fiction?

Trudy J Morgan Cole: I would say I just write fiction—unless we are going to start calling fiction with predominantly male characters “men’s fiction.” I don’t know that I deliberately privilege female voices. I love some of the male characters I’ve created in this and other books and I have occasionally written from a man’s point of view, but women’s stories interest me.

I had originally intended to have four main point-of-view characters in this novel, one from each generation of Holloways: Ellen, Audrey, Henry and Rachel. As the story unfolded it felt more natural to keep Henry’s point of view just in the musical interludes, the scenes where he is performing, and leave the narration in the main chapters to the women’s perspectives. So there are long stretches where Henry disappears from the narrative, just as he disappears from his mother’s and his daughter’s lives. The reader, like Audrey and Rachel, doesn’t know what’s happening with Henry during those stretches.

Ellen and Audrey, as women running a small business (which women often did in the family-owned corner shops), were interesting to me. Audrey’s experience as a war bride, one of the thousands of Newfoundland women who married American servicemen–that was a perspective I wanted to explore. My stories are very character-driven and most often the characters who end up wanting to tell the story are the women.

MBH: Songs run through this novel like a nervous system. Can you comment on why songs root your characters?

TJMC: Music is really important to me, so it’s often important to my characters. But beyond that, this is in many ways a novel about aspects of Newfoundland culture, and maybe especially St. John’s culture, cultures that changed as I grew up. The loss of the family-owned corner shop is one casualty of those changes. It seems to me that at the very time much of our traditional way of life was changing Newfoundlanders were also finding their voices and using art to lament a lost way of life. Our music, literature, theatre, all really blossomed in the 1970s, 80s, into the moratorium years of the 90s. It’s as if we began performing this idea of Newfoundland culture just at the time we were no longer living it firsthand.

That same cultural change is reflected in the Holloway family in Most Anything You Please. Ellen’s husband, Wes Holloway, sings and plays the accordion but he would never think of himself as a musician. He’s a carpenter and he and his wife own a corner shop. Ellen and Wes are focused on making a living. So is Audrey, even though music is one of the key ways she defines herself—but as audience, not as performer, because Audrey shares my misfortune of loving music but being unable to carry a tune. When her son Henry wants to become a musician, even though Audrey loves country singers and reveres the memory of Hank Williams (Senior), she doesn’t see music as a serious career option for her son. Henry does become a musician but he sings country and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s his daughter, Rachel, who explores Newfoundland folk music because she comes of age in an era when young Newfoundlanders are finally starting to sing and write and perform about their own culture—which by that time is largely the culture of their grandparents’ era.

MBH: The female main characters all do work that is undervalued yet important, and you honour that. Did this come from observing the women around you?

TJMC: I’m not really sure where it comes from, but I am very interested in women’s work and in the lives of women in earlier eras, the choices they had that were so much more limited than the choices I grew up with in the 1970s. This is the second novel I’ve written—By the Rivers of Brooklyn was the other—that follows multiple generations of the same family up to nearly the present day. And in both novels I was interested in how each successive generation of woman has choices—career choices, personal life choices—that their mothers lacked. I hope that will continue to be true in our daughters’ and granddaughters’ generation. I don’t think we can take that for granted.

MBH: How does this novel connect to your other work?

TJMC: I have always been interested in the untold stories of women. I had a previous career writing fiction about women of the Bible, these women whose stories are often condensed to a few verses because they aren’t the main characters like the men are. And I wrote a novel called The Violent Friendship of Esther Johnson, about a real woman in early 18th-century England whose existence we only know about because she was friends with a famous man—the writer Jonathan Swift. So about 10 years ago, when I turned to writing novels digging into our Newfoundland history, it was again women’s stories that fascinated me.

For By the Rivers of Brooklyn, I knew about the men who went to work on the high steel and in other industries, but what about women like my grandmother, who went to New York to clean other people’s houses? Where were their stories? With That Forgetful Shore, I was intrigued by the domestic work of women like my character Triffie, fishermen’s wives who were the backbone of outport communities, and women like her friend Kit–the teachers in one-room schoolhouses. With A Sudden Sun, I was drawn by the work of the women who fought not only for the right to vote but for so much social change, who spearheaded the temperance movement and the social-work movement, and who wanted the vote because they believed that with it they could make a better world.

So when I thought about writing a book that was rooted in the streets I grew up in–this Rabbittown neighbourhood in the centre of St. John’s where I still live, these very working-class streets that sprang up after the First World War—and imagined a corner store as the lens through which I’d explore all this, it was inevitable to me that I’d think about the women behind the counter. Women often ran these small businesses and had their fingers on the pulse of the neighbourhood.

In a lot of my writing, I feel like I’m trying to hear and to re-create for the reader, the voices of characters—largely, though not exclusively, women characters—who didn’t make it into the headlines of history. Theirs are the kinds of stories that fascinate me.

Filed Under: # 85 Winter 2017, Author to Author, Columns, Editions Tagged With: A Sudden Sun, By the Rivers of Brooklyn, feminism, fiction, Historical fiction, history, Michelle Butler Hallett, Most Anything You Please, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, novel, St. John's, That Forgetful Shore, The Violent Friendship of Esther Johnson, Trudy Morgan-Cole, women

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