A collection of prose and poetry exploring the practical knowledge, life lessons and personal experiences of women of colour in North America and Ghana.

This book was born out of Abena’s curiosity about her late grandmother’s humble yet textured life as a wife, homemaker, and respected community member. After a missed opportunity to gather her grandmother’s personal reflections, Abena extended her reach to elders, peers, and other relatives to collect their experiences.

Lesley Choyce weaves the legacy of this unique coastal province, piecing together the stories written in the rocks, the wrecks, and the record books of human glory and error. In this sweeping true-life adventure, he provides a thoughtful down-to-earth journey through history.

Originally published in 1996, this new edition brings the story up to date and looks at the changes in politics, economy, and global climate that will challenge Nova Scotians in the years ahead.

Elspeth is not sure how to deal with her teenage daughter Cecelia’s post-secondary plan to become a nun. As Cecelia approaches graduation, the gap between mother and daughter seems to become more than merely an age thing.
Trying to understand her strange desire to become a nun, Cecelia befriends the aging Sister Madonna at the convent in Mabou. Cecelia is looking for hope in an increasingly fragile world but Madonna’s past, if she can face it, may challenge all of them.

A memoir of life in Halifax from an award-winning author, and one of Canada’s top nonfiction writers.

In 1971, Harry Bruce settled in Halifax—and he moved away. Several times, in fact. Yet he kept returning to Halifax and each time he found it had changed for the better, becoming a little more like the lively, welcoming, cosmopolitan town he hoped it would be.

Since Luc Desroches began working from his home office in 2016, he has been writing about how the move has allowed him to create a more harmonious life for both himself and his family. This book was mostly written pre-COVID-19, when working from home was more the exception than the rule.
Now is an opportunity for millions of people to make a more informed decision on whether they should continue working from home or return to their pre-COVID workplaces.

Since 1972, Joy Laking has lived and painted in Nova Scotia, capturing beauty in watercolours, oils, and acrylics in many locations. She sees beauty in both the usual and the unusual. Here, Joy has grouped some of her favourite paintings into forty regions, each with her personal commentary. In each of the regions, one of the images will have its GPS coordinates. You are encouraged to bring this book along in your travels. This collection lets the reader see Nova Scotia through an artist’s eyes.

Twelve short stories about love, loss, failure and acceptance by an award-winning author.

In sharp, insightful prose, "Boy With a Problem" taps into the heart of our deeply human fear of failing to truly connect with others. The fissures that erupt between us, how quickly they widen from cracks to chasms—this is the thread running through these wise, raw, and tender stories.

Eddie Carvery’s Africville protest reached its 50th year in 2020. He was just 23 when the City of Halifax bulldozed Africville under the guise of "urban renewal."

This updated edition includes an introduction from Eddie himself reflecting on 50 years of fighting racism and his vision for a Canada that embraces all its peoples.

100% of the royalties go to Eddie Carvery and his Africville protest.

This is a collection of fifteen true tales of crime and justice that spans more than 150 years of Nova Scotia’s history, from a triple murder in 1791 at a farm near Lunenburg to 1947, when Angus Walters, skipper of the racing schooner Bluenose, was attacked in the pages of an American magazine. A supporting cast includes a wise-cracking Cape Breton judge, legendary journalist-turned-politician Joseph Howe, circus showman P.T. Barnum, and future prime minister John Thompson.

Arthur Benjamin Lohnes was proprietor of a small country store known locally as The Shop in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, from 1919 through 1957. AB provided a welcoming haven to people eager to indulge in the venerable art of loafing and storytelling. The yarns were spun by some of the most colourful characters of the time, with the storytellers ranging from grizzled old blue water sea captains through ordinary seamen to shore fishermen, a preacher, store owner, and a part-time postmaster.

This is a travel memoir about a 40,000 nautical mile adventure that spans seventeen years. When Jennifer and her husband Nik begin to imagine a life outside the norm, they seize on the idea of long-distance sailing as the perfect way to journey down a road less travelled.
This is a story about the importance of starting and the acceptance of an imperfect plan. It is a tale of the triumph of conviction: if you believe that you'll figure it out when you get there, it's amazing how far you can go.

Following WWII, a new generation of politicians and planners across North America set out to reimagine their cities. They proposed that cities tear down great swaths of their aged and decaying homes in an effort they called "slum clearance." These "slums" were also populated by the most vulnerable members of the city, those who had little power to make their own decisions and determine their own fate.
Author Steven Laffoley set off in search of the city that existed before this "urban renewal."

This is Deborah Banks's debut book of poetry. Her poems take us out onto the land where experiences in the natural world are filtered through the internal landscape of longing, presence, gratitude, and attentiveness. From the lowly spider to the vast expanse of the Atlantic below her house, the poet invites us to consider who we are when everything in our bustling world is removed and we are left with the greatest expanse of all: the Now and how it can inform our every breath.

Odette Barr and her partner, YoAnne Beauchamp, spent nearly ten years completely immersed in Inuit culture in the decade prior to the official birth of Nunavut Territory. This is the account of their experiences as teachers and community members in Pangnirtung, Hall Beach, and Grise Fiord. Odette and YoAnne learned quickly that to be successful northern teachers, you must enter into the lives of your students and their rich culture in meaningful and significant ways.

The best memoirs are maps of the heart and mind, and Marjorie Simmins invites you to explore the map of your own life. Here are the probing questions and dynamic writing ideas, coupled with inspirational interviews with best-selling memoirists, to light your own imagination afire. This book is for any reader or writer who is fascinated by the renegade memoir form - personal life stories that demand to be read, refuse to be forgotten.

Allan Cooper's latest poetry collection includes some of his most personal poems, including revelations to him after the death of his mother and sharply etched emotional memories of childhood and grandparents.
Readers return to Cooper's poems to be reminded of the quiet power of nature and how it can shape our lives and provide sustenance, vision, and even salvation when necessary. Here are poems to be read slowly and cherished.

The latest short story collection by master storyteller Wayne Curtis. Here are illuminating stories of love, heartbreak, daydreams, and expectations – fulfilled and unfulfilled. Curtis charts the lives of small-town boys and girls, men and women who struggle with the challenges and limitations of poverty, isolation, and a kind of discrimination rarely documented in fiction.

Every patient tells a story. Drawing on a forty-year medical career, Dr. Larry Kramer has written about some of the people he has met along the way. The stories chronicle love and loss, tragedy and comedy, and empathetically observe patients who live and die, some with courage and some with fear. These accounts frame the story of one physician's life and how it was shaped, changed, and guided by those he encountered every day.

Many knew Dr. Savage as their physician. Others speak about his time as mayor of Dartmouth. Yet most remember him as Nova Scotia's twenty-third premier. From tackling the health and education systems to making turn-the-province-on-its head decisions while premier, John was determined to change the way things were done. Against the Grain chronicles how he fought the status quo with unwavering conviction to leave a lasting legacy that would change the province of Nova Scotia forever.

"Sculpting Towards the Light" is an intimate and insightful story of a sculptor and his work. It follows the paths of imagination and activity which gave birth to a very unique work of art. The paths are diverse and unexpected, twisting into personal history, racing forward into the future, and then resting in the euphoric moments when the mind and its thoughts no longer exist and the carving occurs as if of its own accord.

This is the story of the leading roles some Nova Scotians played in the North American door-to-door sales profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "The Peddlers" takes you on a door-to-door tour of the origins of household brands like Minard’s and Sloan’s Liniment, and also chronicles a century-old Hants County murder case involving two young peddlers — one the victim, the other the perpetrator.

"Colours in Winter" is a whimsical children's picture book. The child, with her two bird friends, wishes that the giant snowflakes were coloured. Everything is too white. She thinks of green frogs in the spring, enormous red strawberries in the summer, and yellow and brown leaves in the autumn. Her desire becomes true and the snowflakes are suddenly all different colours. When everything turns back to white, she makes a wonderful discovery: there is colour everywhere in the winter, too.

For fifty years, the pulp mill near Pictou in northern Nova Scotia has buoyed the local economy and found support from governments at all levels. But it has also pulped millions of acres of forests, spewed millions of tonnes of noxious emissions into the air, consumed quadrillions of litres of fresh water and then pumped them out again as toxic effluent into nearby Boat Harbour, and eventually into the Northumberland Strait. This is a story about hope and heartache, livelihood and loss.

This is the story of how a Cape Bretoner marshalled his accidental invention, a marijuana-induced, munchie-inspired Smeltdog, into the most successful fast food franchise in Canada. As president of his newly formed Good Karma Corporation, he tells the tale of how his business empire grows beyond his control, turning him into a billionaire.

A rickety surf rig on wheels. A guide named Don Quixote. No cellphone. Louisbourg or Bust is RC Shaw's spandex-free pilgrimage up a haunted coastline. Fuelled by Hungry Man Stew and blind optimism, Shaw battles potholed hills and remote waves en route to the Fortress of Louisbourg.

In 2008, Maureen and Mitch Cobb packed up two-year-old Leila and set out on a journey through Southeast Asia, a trip of courage, love, and, ultimately, redemption. They left their small town in the Maritimes to fill the silence of their grief with the noisy spice markets of Bali, the crashing waves of the Philippines, and the golden surrenders of Borneo's hot sun. Through twelve countries and nine months, this young family begins to find acceptance in the humanity that surrounds them.

This is a mother's vivid account of what it is like to lose her daughter, India, to a rare debilitating disease. The story is a bold description of what it means to deal with deep sorrow and still find balance and beauty in an age steeped in the denial of death. The narrative follows the six-year fight for answers from the medical community. One Strong Girl describes the intensity of loving a dying child and most importantly, the joy to be found, even amidst the sorrow.

In Nebooktook, Mike Parker pays homage to our wilderness heritage and those who, in days gone by, revelled in a life in the woods. In order to keep us grounded in the environmental riches we once possessed and where we should be heading, Parker reminds us of the beauty and power of the wilderness. He goes beyond mere documentation and offers a heartfelt call to see the wild places of Nova Scotia as more than a source for pillage and profit.

This is not a success story. It's a tale of ten years in the coffee industry, of what happens when you take the leap, seize the day, and follow your dreams—then discover you don't have any money, your landlord is an idiot, and the job you moved to another country for may not exist. This is the real story of coffee entrepreneurship, with all the grim, impossible, frustrating, and messy bits left in. Because they all seemed like a good idea at the time.

This book tells the extraordinary story of how one of Bob Marley's greatest songs was born in Nova Scotia. It opens with Marley's live acoustic performance of Redemption Song at the end of his life, and reveals that the core lyric comes from a speech Marcus Garvey delivered in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1937. The author explores why Marley so revered Garvey, and, in doing so, looks at the roots of Rastafarianism and ideas about race.

This book examines extraordinary events told to the author by more than 25 remarkable people. The men and women are police officers, firefighters, Canadian military personnel, Emergency Health Services attendants, grief counsellors, social workers and ordinary citizens. All have faced adversity. These are stories of hope and healing in the face of regret, challenge, and, in some cases, life and death.

Join Sandra Phinney as she embarks on 31-day summer odyssey that takes place within a 100 kilometre radius from her home in rural Nova Scotia. This memoir is a journey of self-discovery wherein the author experiences the adventure of a lifetime in her own backyard. Two powerful themes flow throughout the narrative: the importance of friendships and the richness of rural living.

Bear River photographer Ralph Nelson Harris captured the village’s waning days of sail and lumber through his camera lens in the early 1900s. Drawing upon hundreds of recently discovered Ralph Harris images, historian and author Mike Parker puts a newfound face to Bear River’s past while utilizing painstakingly researched excerpts from The Telephone, Bear River’s newspaper of the day, to add an informative and entertaining voice to the story. Includes 470 images.

Set in northeastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, this book paints vivid portraits of contemporary labourers whose harvests mark the rhythms of the seasonal year. In keeping with the genre of nature writing, Stewart's book offers a meticulous way of looking at the world as she blends first-hand observations of seasonal change with stories of the labourers. The Tides of Time offers a refuge from the rush of urban life.

Author and journalist Janice Landry returns to her roots, as she revisits high-profile Canadian police investigations she covered as a novice television reporter during the 1980s and 1990s. Landry also speaks with Canadians from five provinces, including first responders and front-line workers. These men and women bravely discuss how trauma, in and out of their work, has profoundly affected their lives, loved ones, and outlook.

It is December 1918. The old world, shaped by the values of Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens, is gone and the new world now wallows in post-war chaos and darkness. A veteran of the gas attacks and trenches, Michael Bell has returned home to a city traumatized by war and devastated by an explosion. Filled with a cast of compelling characters and vivid images, A Halifax Christmas Carol tells the story of a true age of darkness and the transformative power of hope.

As news broke about the Halifax Explosion, newspapers from Toronto to Hawaii and France to Australia scrambled to provide readers with updated information. These stories gave face to a disaster that, at the time, was a mix of ever-changing statistics, details, and questions about blame. Ingram traces these details and stories as she pieces together the different narratives from the week that followed December 6, 1917, many of which have long faded into the larger story of the explosion.

The first part of the book focuses on four generations who lived, suffered and thrived in old Acadie until 1755, when the Deportation began. The second section focuses on the next five generations who all lived on Isle Madame, Cape Breton. The last section narrates the life of Arthur Poirier, a veteran of WWI, who participated in the Antigonish Movement and lived through a time of great transition in the Acadian community. This book is part history, part biography, and part memoir.