http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/ en apma.admin@atlanticpublishers.ca Copyright 2011 2011-07-11T18:18:45+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/grow-organic/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/grow-organic/#When:19:40:15Z “A garden is a wonderful, humbling teacher,” writes Elizabeth Peirce in her new book, Grow Organic. Subtitled A Simple Guide to Nova Scotia Vegetable Gardening, this is just the book for those who want to grow a few vegetables in their yards but aren’t exactly sure where to start. Peirce describes herself as “an enthusiastic amateur gardener,” who draws on thirty years of growing vegetables in teaching readers about developing their own kitchen garden. She starts quite literally from the ground up, discussing site location, soil types and management, and encourages new gardeners to ask themselves a few probing questions. Vegetable gardening isn’t for everyone, and it does require time to plant, tend, harvest and preserve the harvest from a garden. Time, site, tastes and space are all considerations that have to be thought through before the neophyte puts spade to soil or orders enough needs to feed all of the neighbourhood. I love gardening books where the author talks frankly and encouragingly to the readers, like she might over a kitchen table cup of tea. Peirce is excellent in this regard. Instructions are easy to follow and entertaining, and she embraces an organic approach to all aspects of gardening. Although the book is aimed at those new to vegetable gardening, anyone with an interest in homegrown produce and gardening will enjoy and benefit from Grow Organic. Along with the dedicated sections on how to do the gardening, Peirce provides delightful sidebars of gardening trivia. These include anecdotes about types of vegetables, recipes—my personal favourite is Desperation Soup, for when there’s a plethora of zucchinis—quick practical tips, and quotations from other books. An unusual and welcome section of Peirce’s book is the chapter on Farmer Mentors. These are profiles of several Nova Scotian gardeners/farmers, included to help encourage budding vegetable gardeners who might be hesitant about their green thumb skills. The profiles include a professional urban gardener who slips vegetables in among the city plots he tends, a community gardening experience at Dalhousie University, and a teenager who started his own organic, heritage seed business in the Annapolis Valley. —Jodi DeLong Non-fiction 2010-05-27T19:40:15+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/iwk/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/iwk/#When:18:16:00Z When, just fifteen minutes into reading the book, I am in tears, then something’s got to be right. And I believe Stephen Kimber has done everything right in his captivating history of the extraordinary story of paediatric care that exists right here in Halifax and beyond. In fact the scope of the book is testimony to former chief Dr Richard Goldbloom’s desire to see the IWK expand beyond Nova Scotia, beyond the Maritimes, beyond Canada to ‘make women, children, and families everywhere the healthiest possible’.    By matching miracles with patients and their parents, persuasive and highly capable doctors and devotees, funders and fundraisers, volunteers and visionaries and, of course, nurses, he has given us more than a chronology of care. Kimber has given us a fully integrated account of what makes the IWK Health Centre what it is today, 100 years from the opening of the Halifax Children’s Hospital. He has given us 100 years of meaningful milestones and mergers with, for instance, the Salvation Army’s Grace Maternity Hospital, and made us know that the IWK will continue to adapt and flourish.   The book is about life—those saved, above all—and death, for naturally it must be about sadly-premature death. It’s about legends like those who had a dream at the turn of the last century, women such as Marion Morrow, or the Killams, Izaak Walton himself, ‘who was something of a tightwad’, and his widow Dorothy, who anted up her original promise of three million dollars into eight, the drive of men and women like Kathleen Rowan-Legg, and other cornerstones like Benge Atlee and Alex Gillis.    It’s about dedication shown by the doctor who met a new out-of-town patient at the bus stop, or the one who donated his own blood when exigency demanded. Or bending the rules to allow an under-the-age-of-two patient room with her over-the-age-of-two brother in what became known as the ‘Thompson suite’. This kind of concern has become a hallmark of the IWK’s policy of integration of family into the process. This has   itself translated into the fact that patients keep coming back just to make contact with those who once made such a difference to their lives.   Recollections and reminiscences from doctors, nurses, patients, families and a cross-section of almost every type of person who has been touched by the IWK bring a smile or a tear or simply a salute. Goldbloom, when being courted to head up the hospital, noting that naming the hospital after Killem would lead to its being called the “ I Kill-em hospital’, was neatly told: ‘Doc, eight million dollars you ain’t worth.’ So the name stayed and the doctor did, too.    Kimber, who has his own personal story about the care his children received at the IWK, has tracked people as far away as New Zealand to show how far the reaches of the health centre are. His brief was not to conceal the warts and so there are a couple that, along with stand-alone anecdotes and cameos which never interrupt the narrative, serve to enliven the story. Take the doctor who was fired for inappropriate conduct (fudging expenses and autopsy reports) and later found to have stockpiled organs in England, or the administrator who lied about his qualifications. These are few enough and the lesson learned is that when handled with honesty and openness such things need never be problem. Interspersing the time-line with case studies has made this book a superb read and, indeed, a collector’s item. —Shirley Gueller Non-fiction 2010-05-13T18:16:00+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/the-stu-reader/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/the-stu-reader/#When:18:12:22Z Remember when you would piece together all of your favourite songs for someone special on a mixed cassette or CD? Carefully chosen and woven into a rich sonic tapestry, the sum was often greater than its individual parts. Although styles and sounds could be all over the musical map, there were enough thematic threads there to create a cohesive experience for the lucky recipient. Like those little acts of love, The STU Reader is Goose Lane’s gift to readers. To celebrate St. Thomas University’s 100th anniversary, two of its most esteemed professors—Douglas Vipond and Russell A. Hunt—have compiled a collection of writing from some of the finest scribes to have ever walked the halls of the Fredericton-based institution. The end result is a feast for the hungry mind; a magnificent mélange of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that takes readers on a journey that is both regional and universal in scope and tone. Beginning like the bang of a hammer upon wooden gavel, Philip Lee’s Sold! opens the anthology with a terrific telling of a trip to the auctioneer. Sheree Fitch is next with several surprising stanzas depicting street life as seen through the eyes of a cop. Over the next 200+ pages, snippets by the likes of Sheldon Currie, David Adams Richards, Raymond Fraser and Al Pittman ground the collection in a familiar flavour, but it is the work of lesser-known names—Kathy Mac, Carla Gunn, Ian Brodie and Victoria Kretzschmar Eastman in particular—that give the literary soup its true seasoning and spice. Best savoured in small spoonfuls, The STU Reader is a tasty treat for those looking to satiate their pangs for ideas and emotions with a scrumptious snack in between bigger meals. Thankfully, there is a setting for everyone at the table. —Stephen Clare Anthology 2010-05-13T18:12:22+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/hard-ol-spot/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/hard-ol-spot/#When:18:07:20Z Certainly you don’t have to look far to find darkness and hardship in Atlantic Canadian fiction. But that’s not enough. As Kathleen Winter suggests in the forward for Hard Ol’ Spot, writers must also ask the darkness: “How long do you endure?”… “Is there redemption?” In the fourteen stories collected by Mike Heffernan, the majority of which are from Newfoundland, redemption and hope aren’t always easy to spot. These are broken people, trapped by circumstances, lineage and geographic lines. If there is hope, it’s fleeting, a deserved moment of relief. Gerard Collins sets the tone with “Break, Break, Break,” as a teenage girl deals with the tragedy of a broken heart on a stormy Valentine’s Day, while she waits for her father to return from the Ocean Ranger, safe thanks to the oil rig’s “protective shield” that she prays into existence. In Sarah Tilley’s “Her Adolescence,” thirteen-year-old overworked Eva fears that her wish—the death of her terminally ill mother—will actually come true, after it’s revealed in tea leaves by the local mystic.   Ghost-story writer Steve Vernon bares fists in “A Hole Full of Nothing,” as young men plan for an ultimate street fight, fuelled by anger, testosterone and a touch of stupidity, leading towards its inevitably tragic end. Gratefully, Elizabeth Blanchard provides cautious hope for a life changed in the parking lot of “Drive-Thru.” Heffernan chose these stories well, there isn’t a clunker among them. It’s also a treat to discover new writers in the region, all skilled in the short story craft. However, by the end of the collection, there’s a certain heart-heavy sameness to these stories that dulls their impact, with their rickety buildings, the lingering taste of blood and cheap alcohol. As tempting as it is, Hard Ol’ Spot isn’t a one-sit read. But Heffernan wisely ends with Ramona Dearing’s shocker, “An Apology,” told from the perspective of a priest, on trial for sexual abuse and facing his abusers. It’s a gutsy move, and Dearing’s monster of a man and his lack of redemption, leaves chills long after the last page is turned. —Sue Carter Flinn Anthology 2010-05-13T18:07:20+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/fish-for-dinner/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/fish-for-dinner/#When:18:03:24Z Fish for Dinner is a new Newfoundland classic. This wonderful collection of tales should grace every Newfoundlander’s book shelf. In the tradition of Aesop or the Brother’s Grimm, the stories are written in a lyrical tone that places the reader around a campfire or at a grandparent’s knee wrapped in tales from long ago.   With the tales so engrossing, and so convincingly set in rural Newfoundland, it was almost disappointing to learn they did not originate on the rock. The stories are instead are a collection of oral traditions from around the globe. Author Paul O’Neill has masterfully placed them, not only in Newfoundland and Labrador communities, but at the heart of the provinces unique culture and traditions.   Whether walking with a lonely Inuk woman in Northern Labrador, swimming with a young sea captain or drying cod with a local fisherman, O’Neill proves the oldest and best stories are truly universal. His skilful way of weaving the tale into the very fabric of the land leaves the reader ready for more. His yarns explain why the weasel turns brown in the spring and why the Northern Lights seem to dance and they give a universal charm to a unique part of Canada.   With tales like ‘How Finbar Beat Old Scratch’ and ‘The Good Merchant,’ Fish for Dinner is a rich read. Despite the imported and redesigned stories, these tales give the reader the flavour and feel of Newfoundland history. It is a must read for any Newfoundlander. —Megan Venner Anthology 2010-05-13T18:03:24+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/a-soldier-first/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/a-soldier-first/#When:15:13:21Z “We want to see less of you.” These words describe the relationship between the government and its top soldier. Hillier traces his career and his relatively meteoric rise to the highest military position in the country. He illustrates why he was prepared for the tasks that faced him—from the Manitoba flood of 1997 to the Eastern Ontario and Quebec ice storm of 1998. He served in the former Yugoslavia, was deputy commanding general of Third Corps in Fort Hood, Texas and ultimately served as Commander, International Security Augmentation Force in Afghanistan. Each posting had its own significant challenges. Hillier points out very explicitly the shortcomings of working with both NATO and the United Nations—shortcomings he says that were a result of bureaucratic meddling and indecision. The title itselfgives a clear indication of what the reader can expect from this book by Canada’s former Chief of the Defence Staff. Key quotes are: “ …it’s people who accomplish things, and they need to be inspired, informed, enabled and supported”; “ We are going to treat those fallen soldiers with respect. We’re going to return them with dignity and with the honour they have earned and we’re going to grieve with, and support, their families”; and, “I walked out of his office with no intention of changing the way I was doing things….The staffers wanted me to change the way I was doing the job of Chief of the Defence Staff and I was determined not to let that happen.” When Ottawa bureaucrats wanted command of Canadian Forces units on the ground to fall under civilian jurisdiction, “I essentially told them to get lost. I … was accountable … to the Minister of National Defence and the Prime Minister. The civil service had no say in the matter.” On the selection of a new Chief of the Defence Staff, Hillier says: “ Obviously, PCO wanted a selection process that would, if possible, deliver a tame bureaucrat …” Hillier’s style reflects the outgoing personality of a Newfoundlander who clearly understands people and one raised to reflect family values and the needs and concerns of individuals. Hillier writes the way he speaks, with folksy homilies and experiences that come straight from the heart. Unlike most military biographies, Hillier does not get bogged down in military jargon and military structures and policies. He does however attack the archaic institutions such as NATO and the UN which have become negative factors in the war on terrorism and world peace and security. This book is a must read for civilians and military readers alike. Fast-paced, often emotional, but told in a no-nonsense , honest, from- the-heart manner, A Soldier First is the right book at the right time, indeed as Hillier himself was the right Chief of the Defence Staff at the right time. As a first-time writer, he has nailed the subject succinctly and with conviction. —Don McLeod People 2010-05-11T15:13:21+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/canadas-forgotten-arctic-hero/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/canadas-forgotten-arctic-hero/#When:18:59:38Z Historian Jim Lotz has written an account of George Rice, a Canadian photographer who traveled and died on the Greely expedition formally known as the Lady Franklin Bay expedition. Most of the text is comprised of direct quotations for Rice’s journal.   Noting Rice is unknown in his Cape Breton hometown, Lotz emphasizes Rice as a Canadian who should be known across the country. Perhaps Rice should be known, and Lotz’s writing interspersed with Rice’s is readable and interesting. But it could be argued that Rice was more American than Canadian: he studied at Columbia; chose a girlfriend, Helen Bishop from Washington, D.C., rather than Maud Dunlop of the telegraph house in Baddeck who also had an infatuation for him, among five other women; Rice was the only Canadian on the trip as Greely’s men travelled across the Arctic naming mountains and valleys after America and Americans and indeed, seeing calm water among some icebergs early on in the trip, Rice noted it seemed “as placid as the waters of Central Park.”   As a tale of a Canadian of American background then, the story is fascinating. The men travel up a waterway in search of something they cannot get at a la Heart of Darkness, but even more like the manipulative and intelligent water planet in Stanislaw Lems’s Solyaris: “George described the ice as if it were a living presence which ‘appears determined to drive us to a more southerly position.’” As time goes on and the group is left deserted in the Arctic, Rice becomes more Canadian, noting May 24th —his last one alive as it happened—along with American Thanksgiving, and thinking back to his home in Cape Breton along with the green grass of Washington.   This book is released among two other recent books on the Canadian Arctic from Brian Payton and Glyn William, and the March 2010 and last issue of The Beaver as named also has a special Arctic feature, supporting the point that the Canadian Arctic is becoming an ever stronger genre for writing and collecting. —Michael Goodfellow   People 2010-05-10T18:59:38+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/discovering-cape-breton-folklore/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/discovering-cape-breton-folklore/#When:17:45:40Z Many people associate folklore with dusty old songs and ghost stories that all sound suspiciously the same. Richard MacKinnon takes a slightly broader view with a book devoted to Cape Breton’s other traditions—stuff like nicknames and cockfighting. MacKinnon is the Canada Research Chair at Cape Breton University and the Editor-In-Chief of The Material Culture Review. He has spent most of his academic life researching various aspects of Cape Breton and Newfoundland folklore.   The book is broken into eight sections, each exploring a different aspect of Cape Breton culture. Some of the work has been previously published and some is newly researched. Yes, there is a chapter devoted to folksongs but there is another that examines the less known world of protest songs. Cape Breton may be known for its fiddlers but MacKinnon prefers to explore the Cape Breton-style piano tradition. There are three chapters devoted to housing—log architecture, company houses and cooperative housing. Nicknames and cockfighting round out the volume.   Each chapter leaves the reader wanting more on each topic; in fact, every chapter could easily be the foundation for an entire book. The book scratches the surface of Cape Breton’s culture but it is all part of MacKinnon’s plan to inspire others to go much further.   In his introduction, MacKinnon says he hopes the book will influence others “to become engaged in this complex, fascinating area of human study.” It just may do that. Although just published, Discovering Cape Breton Folklore is already in use as a textbook for an introductory folklore class at Cape Breton University; other universities are also interested in using it as part of their folklore programs. —Elizabeth Patterson   History 2010-05-10T17:45:40+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/age-of-heroes-a-boy-a-prince-and-the-1797-wreck-of-la-tribune/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/age-of-heroes-a-boy-a-prince-and-the-1797-wreck-of-la-tribune/#When:17:34:29Z In the forward for Age of Heroes, John R. Dickie describes how the French Revolution of 1789, the ensuing French Republic “swallowed Europe and the world’s oceans in the first truly global conflict.”   With so many far flung colonies fueling their economies, and warring ideologies spicing a sense of peril, the stakes had never before seemed so high for the European powers. It was during this tempestuous era that La Tribune, a French warship, was captured by the British off the coast of Ireland only to meet its demise the following year, wrecked with the loss of 240 lives in Halifax Harbour.   Dickie’s brief is to set into the full context of politics and history the thrilling history of La Tribune, complete with insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the comparative navies for which she sailed. The author notes, for instance, that while the French navy remained strong in terms of ships and equipment, the Revolution and the guillotine had depleted France of her most experienced officers who were traditionally drawn from the aristocracy.   The Tribune’s brief story spans the world and hones in great detail upon Dickie’s account of the agonizing chase and ensuing battle in June 1796 which saw La Tribune captured by the British Unicorn.   An impressive command of the language of sail and cannon enables the author to create a robustly physical poetry throughout these scenes, and he delves tellingly into the sights, sounds and smells of battle. The reader feels the horror of when Dickie describes the bar or chain shot which “spun toward their target like a circular saw.” He is equally unflinching when it comes to the battle’s aftermath. “Scattered limbs without owners lay amidst the sheared-off rope, bent and broken metal pieces, blood splatters, loose muskets . . . shot-holed sails and frayed rope ends hung across the decks.”   Despite a dearth of surviving first hand accounts, Dickie’s descriptions are highly convincing recreations derived from ships’ logs, and other documents, as well as first hand accounts from the Battle of Trafalgar. Using techniques employed in fiction—moving, for instance, from the reflections of an officer on deck to his memory of the recent past before scooping back again to the present—he quite effectively marries history to living narrative.   A note of poignancy is planted early with a description of an elderly Joe Cracker, shabbily dressed and careworn, overlooking Halifax Harbour. As a young lad he had been deservedly hailed for bravery for saving eight men from the foundering Tribune. Although the narrative might seem a little dense in patches, Dickie has elected to plunge deep into the likely experience of each player in this drama, and the result for the reader is rich and rewarding. —Paul Butler History 2010-05-10T17:34:29+00:00 http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/buried-in-the-woods/ http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/buried-in-the-woods/#When:17:17:24Z Mike Parker has a passion for the history of his native province. Buried in the Woods: Sawmill Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia is his thirteenth book and another fine example of his devoted quest to rescue the easily overlooked and nearly forgotten records of day-to-day life in Nova Scotia’s past.     In 1606 the first shipyard in North America was established in Port Royal and six years later the first sawmill. Over the ensuing centuries Nova Scotia became a major center for lumber and shipbuilding as well as the manufacture and export of every kind of wooden product from barrels and coffins to tables and bedroom furniture. The mid-nineteenth century saw a thousand sawmills in operation and by the time of Confederation Nova Scotia was the richest province.     The coastal waters were teeming with ships, the woods resounded with the sound of axes and inland towns sprang up around sawmills. Yet, just a century later, this booming economy had ended and virtually no trace remained of the once thriving sawmill towns.    Today, towns like Shulie, Eatonville and Roxbury have only the tumbled remains of a wall or a well left to mark their place. Even the busy hub of New France—known to the locals as Electric City because it had electricity thirty-one years before its nearest neighbour, Weymouth—would be forgotten now if not for the work of historians like Parker. But it is not just these ghost towns that Parker brings back to life for us; it is the people who lived and worked there, and their way of life. The photographs alone would make this book a page turner with its wonderfully stern-faced portraits, clear maps and, best of all, the many amateur snapshots of workers and their families, along with photos of hunting parties, weddings and community celebrations. Very striking is the placement of old photographs next to modern shots of the same place showing no evidence of the former towns.   Parker reminds us that human life is fragile—individually and collectively—and our memories too easily lost unless we place value on our history and heritage. —Ralph Higgins History 2010-05-10T17:17:24+00:00