I have no French or Acadian ancestors—as far as I know—yet the majority of my 21 books (history and fiction) explore different aspects of French colonial or Acadian history. Childhood visits to historic sites like the Port-Royal Habitation, Grand-Pré, Louisbourg and Fort Anne must have planted the seeds for the historian and writer I would become. Then again, working for years as an historian at the Fortress of Louisbourg definitely helped. France made me a chevalier of its Ordre des Palmes académiques for my body of work.
It comes as a surprise to many, but no Acadians were deported to Louisiana. It was a French colony in 1755, and those making the decisions about where the deportees were to go did not want to strengthen any French colony. They chose the Anglo-American colonies so there could be assimilation. The reason so many Acadians—renamed Cajuns—ended up in Louisiana was because of later migrations; voluntary migrations, not forced deportations. This book examines the growth, evolution, and political involvement of Louisiana's large Acadian community between the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and 1877, the end of Reconstruction in Louisiana. It’s a study that offers a good introduction to the Acadians (Cajuns) of that state.
This book is the first to examine comprehensively the demographic growth, cultural evolution, and political involvement of Louisiana's large Acadian community between the time of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), when the transplanted culture began to take on a decidedly Louisiana character, and 1877, the end of Reconstruction in Louisiana, when traditional distinctions between Acadians and neighboring groups had ceased to be valid.
Serving as a model for ethnohistories of other nonliterate peoples, Acadian to Cajun reveals how authentic cultural history can be derived from alternative historical resources when primary materials such as newspapers, correspondence, and diaries are not available. Here,…
I am a Canadian who enjoys travelling and reading historical fiction from around the world. Having had the privilege of living in a variety of areas in Canada from coast to coast since childhood, I can recall listening to the stories of past generations and exploring the locations where some of these events took place. With a passion for Canada’s beauty and the history of its people, I like to research, explore, and incorporate these passions into my own stories.
After the American Civil War, the British promised freedom and land to the slaves in the British Colonies in exchange for their loyalty. Sadly, their new home turned out to be anything but a place of refuge when they found just as much hate and cruelty on this side of the border. Can Sarah and her family persevere and truly find freedom against the odds? The book is an easy read and an interesting lesson on this part of Canadian history.
A story of the struggle of Black Loyalists and their arrival in Nova Scotia.
NEW: Teaching Guide Available Here
Shortlisted for The Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature.
The American Revolutionary War is being waged, and the fate of slaves in the colonies is on the line. Sarah Redmond, a slave on a South Carolina plantation, watches with a heavy heart as her father steals away in the dead of the night to join the British army, enticed by promises of freedom, land and provisions for his whole family. But before her father can return,…
Most motorcycle travellers spend months planning their trips but I took off on a whim having been lured by romance and tales of the open road. When my conventional life fell apart, I surprised even myself by flying to India and buying a brand new 500cc Enfield Bullet motorcycle and began my haphazard global wanderings learning to trust that the world I had been told was a dangerous place, wasn't at all (except for a couple of occasions at sea!) I liked the meandering life so much, it became a way of life.
What I like about this book is that Peggy writes as if riding a 125cc BSA Bantam through Canada, North America, and Mexico with an Airedale dog as pillion is quite the normal thing to do! In 1951, she left Liverpool for Nova Scotia. Arriving with only $60, she took various jobs to fund the two years she spent on the trip. I identified with this as I worked as a nurse in New Zealand during my own motorcycle travels. Her matter-of-fact attitude is smile-worthy, as she describes her wonderful experiences. “Oppy” the BSA proves perfect for the job. Matelot, the dog who travels on a metal box behind her, adjusts to his life on the road with similar alacrity.
This is a tale about an incredible trio: Oppy, the indomitable motorcycle, its 125-pound frame swaying under three times its weight; Matelot, the automotive Airedale, perched on his box, ears flying in the breeze; and the gasoline gypsy, Peggy Iris Thomas, who bumped her way over 14,000 miles of the United States, Mexico and Canada. There is a touch of the vagabond in all of us. But few have the determination and courage that started Peggy off from Liverpool in the spring of 1951 with 60 dollars in her pocket and the gleam of adventure in her eye. Her new…
I grew up on a farm on the Canadian prairies where my only entertainment was books. This was before TV and the internet. Reading about girls who overcame obstacles such as being orphaned, dealing with homelessness or a disability, helped me realize that girls can overcome anything with the right attitude and by being brave. These attitudes of fearlessness, positive thinking, and resourcefulness shaped my life and helped me realize many of my dreams, including being a published author. Books with strong female characters help girls realize their own dreams.
This story evokes many emotions. The world of Cammie Deveau, a young girl with more than her fair share of disadvantages, is described well. The story is set in rural Nova Scotia just after World War II. The author has created a memorable, spunky ten-year-old with limited vision who dreams of a better life against all odds. Other quirky characters are sprinkled throughout the story, some hilarious, others sad and pathetic. The descriptions of the time and place are so well done the reader is easily transported there. With the clever use of dialogue that is both timely and local, this is a most enjoyable read that will keep you turning the pages as you root for Cammie.
Cammie Deveau began life with a few strikes against her. She’s visually impaired, abandoned by her mother at birth, her father was a casualty of the Second World War—and if all that isn’t enough, she’s being raised by her bootlegging aunt. No wonder she dreams of starting a brand new life.
When Cammie learns about a school for blind and visually impaired children she becomes convinced a new life is waiting for her in Halifax, but how will she ever convince her aunt to let her go? With the help of her best friend, they devise a plan to blow…
I live in England but grew up in Canada, where my Grade 5 Social Studies teacher filled my head with stories of people and places, including the Vikings. In the early 1960s, I learned about the excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland featured in Canadian newspapers. My first job was in Denmark, and I subsequently travelled in the Nordic homelands and settlement areas, including the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, visiting museums and archaeological sites at every opportunity. Norse America is my 26th book, but it is both the one with the deepest roots in my own past and the one most engaged with contemporary concerns about race.
This book is an eye-opening account of how the history of Nova Scotia became distorted in the interest of attracting tourists. This manufactured history exalts whiteness and masculinity, and quietly excludes ethnic minorities and women. The Yarmouth runestone, which is adduced as evidence that the Norse landed in Yarmouth, is an important artefact in this ideological history, and the authors give an excellent account of its history and its place in tourist history.
Using archival sources, novels, government reports, and works on tourism and heritage, Ian McKay and Robin Bates look at how state planners, key politicians, and cultural figures such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, long-time premier Angus L. Macdonald, and novelist Thomas Raddall were all instrumental in forming "tourism/history." The authors argue that Longfellow's 1847 poem Evangeline - on the brutal British expulsion of Acadians from Nova Scotia - became a template a new kind of profit-making history that exalted whiteness and excluded ethnic minorities, women, and working class movements. A remarkable look at the intersection of politics, leisure, and the presentation…
I’ve always enjoyed books that introduce me to faraway places, cultural narratives, and the writers behind the stories. After retiring from college teaching, I decided to write one myself. I’m a Mark Twain scholar, so I followed Twain’s lecture tour through Australasia, India, and South Africa. One of my goals was to expose my research methods to my readers, and writing in the first person made that easy. What I hadn’t foreseen was how much the process would force me to confront my own past—exposing the radical differences between Mark Twain and Me.
I love what Young is doing—breaking out of her “college prof” shell and talking directly to us about her life with animals—dead and alive. She starts with her dog Frankie’s cancer diagnosis and wraps her own reactions to his treatments into her study of 19th-century fiction that focuses on animals—like the famous horse narrative Black Beautyand the equally-famous-but-now-forgotten dog narrative Beautiful Joe.Her travels take her through both physical and imaginative time and place—from Beautiful Joe’s origins in Nova Scotia to her meditations on the art of animal taxidermy. I learned a lot about the history of animal/human relations from this book, and I really enjoyed Young’s voice and puns. It’s a great addition to our goal to bring academic knowledge out into the public sphere.
In Pet Projects, Elizabeth Young joins an analysis of the representation of animals in nineteenth-century fiction, taxidermy, and the visual arts with a first-person reflection on her own scholarly journey. Centering on Margaret Marshall Saunders, a Canadian woman writer once famous for her animal novels, and incorporating Young's own experience of a beloved animal's illness, this study highlights the personal and intellectual stakes of a "pet project" of cultural criticism.
Young assembles a broad archive of materials, beginning with Saunders's novels and widening outward to include fiction, nonfiction, photography, and taxidermy. She coins the term "first-dog voice" to describe the…
I developed a love for James A. Michener’s sweeping novels as a young man, which coincided with an early stage of my career as a travel journalist. I was fortunate to find myself in places all over the globe that he had written about, and these countries were somehow made more vivid to me because of his words. It wasn’t until the onset of Covid-19 in 2020 that I switched from writing non-fiction to fiction. In doing so, I realized that the small part of the world in which I had been born and raised – Nova Scotia, Canada – was as fascinating and interesting as any place I had visited.
When Robert MacNeil’s debut novel Burden of Desire was published in 1992, it stood out to me because it offered a fresh take on the Halifax (Nova Scotia) Explosion of 1917 as a backdrop to his compelling love-triangle storyline.
The Explosion was the largest man-made disaster in the world prior to World War II, and every school child in Nova Scotia, including myself, traditionally learns of the Explosion by reading Barometer Rising, Hugh MacLennan’s iconic novel that was published in 1941.
But MacNeil’s novel proves that historical fiction can be spicy and entertaining as well as truthful to its time period and setting. He is well-remembered as a television journalist for his long-running PBS show, the MacNeil Lehrer Report. Mr. MacNeil is now 92 years young.
Set against a vived backdrop of a world at war, Burden of Desire opens with a cataclysmic explosions that provides the novel's extraordinary central metaphor. The blast and its aftermath, which devastates Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, rocks the lives of the three major characters, and ensures that the world as they know it will never be the same again.
Brilliantly blending suspense and eroticism with rich historical detail, Robert MacNeil sets the stage for one of the most provocative tales of desire and obsession to be found in recent fiction. Magnificent in scope, Burden of Desire is work of…
I developed a love for James A. Michener’s sweeping novels as a young man, which coincided with an early stage of my career as a travel journalist. I was fortunate to find myself in places all over the globe that he had written about, and these countries were somehow made more vivid to me because of his words. It wasn’t until the onset of Covid-19 in 2020 that I switched from writing non-fiction to fiction. In doing so, I realized that the small part of the world in which I had been born and raised – Nova Scotia, Canada – was as fascinating and interesting as any place I had visited.
This compelling family saga set on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia was published in 1996 and explores the lives of the complicated Piper family in the early 20th century.
My late mother was from Glace Bay, a mining town on Cape Breton, and I remember she was quite excited when she heard about Ms. MacDonald’s drama, and promptly bought a copy. She told me she couldn’t get beyond the first few chapters because it was far too filthy for her taste. Naturally, I then had to read the whole novel to find out just how controversial the book was!
Following the curves of the twentieth century, FALL ON YOUR KNEES takes us from haunted Cape Breton island in Nova Scotia through the battlefields of World War I into the emerging jazz scene in New York City, and immerses us in the lives of four unforgettable sisters. The children of a driven and ambitious father, the sisters -Kathleen, the oldest, a beautiful talent intent on a career as an opera diva; Frances, the drunken rogue and child prostitute; Lily, the pseudo-saint cripple; and Mercedes, the fervent Catholic and protector of the flock - are swept along by the tumult of…
I am a care aide (aka personal support worker) who has happily worked at an extended care facility for more than twenty years, and as such, I have been a compassionate listener to many a family member suffering from the tsunami of feelings involved when coping with aging parents or spouses, so I thought I would be well-positioned and emotionally prepared to cope when it was my turn to face my own mother's deterioration. How wrong I was! Thank goodness for the generous souls who write memoirs. Each of the books that I have chosen was an education and an affirmation to me as I tried to maintain my equilibrium while supporting my mother and my mother-in-law through their final years.
When I read memoirs about aging parents, loss is usually an important theme; Ilsley's memoir stands out because his regret is for a closeness that never was. "Only now, as my father enters his nineties . . . and my aspirations of eldercare become more interventionist, has our relationship had a chance to deepen.
"And by deepen, I mean really begin to annoy each other."
Ilsley's relationship with his father is challenging. There are good reasons why Ilsley chooses to live in Vancouver rather than "home" in Nova Scotia. But his father is still is his father, and Ilsley commits. His writing is clear, candid, thoughtful, and so warm and funny. I loved this book.
George K. Ilsley explores his complex relationship with his aging father in this candid memoir full of sharp emotion and disarming humor. George’s father is ninety-one years old, a widower, and fiercely independent; an avid gardener, he’s sweet and more than a little eccentric. But he’s also a hoarder who makes embarrassing comments and invitations to women, and he has made no plans whatsoever for what is inevitably coming over the horizon.
Decades after George has moved four time zones away, he begins to make regular trips home to help care for his cranky and uncooperative father, and to sift…
I developed a love for James A. Michener’s sweeping novels as a young man, which coincided with an early stage of my career as a travel journalist. I was fortunate to find myself in places all over the globe that he had written about, and these countries were somehow made more vivid to me because of his words. It wasn’t until the onset of Covid-19 in 2020 that I switched from writing non-fiction to fiction. In doing so, I realized that the small part of the world in which I had been born and raised – Nova Scotia, Canada – was as fascinating and interesting as any place I had visited.
I received this handsome hardcover book as a gift, and I’ve been entertained and educated every time I’ve opened it.
It contains over 1,000 entries and 300 visuals that not only depict notable Nova Scotians but also scandals, newsworthy events, and celebrations. I’ve been inspired by some of the daily entries to research them further, which has enhanced my three novels that are set in Nova Scotia.
400 Years in 365 Days gives readers a fun, trivia-filled record which reflects the communities and peoples of Nova Scotia spanning the past 400+ years. Leo Deveau has assembled over a thousand entries that reflect events in the lives and histories of virtually every settlement and group in the province, covering a range of interests from military history to arts and sports. Illustrating the entries are 300+ visuals including full colour paintings, drawings, photos, and archival objects. This informative, entertaining and illuminating volume is a great reference book and a great gift for anyone interested in Nova Scotia's colourful past…
