Pottersfield Press

Righting the Wrongs: Gus Wedderburn's Quest for Social Justice in Nova Scotia

2011-11-10T06:28:00.000-04:00

Righting the Wrongs: Gus Wedderburn's Quest for Social Justice in Nova Scotia

Marie Riley

Nonfiction: Biography, Nova Scotia, Black History
$17.95
96 pages
6" x 9" Paperback (includes photographs)
ISBN 978-1-897426-28-9

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9) or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

This is the story of H.A.J. (Gus) Wedderburn. During his 50 years in Nova Scotia, Gus brought his determination and energy to any situation where an injustice needed to be addressed. Growing up in Jamaica, he learned the tenets of respect, fairness and social responsibility from his dynamic family who taught him that giving one's time in the service of others was what life was all about. After studies at McGill University and Mount Allison University, he came to Nova Scotia in 1957 where he took a position as principal at Partridge River School in East Preston, one of the province's oldest Black communities. Here he set out to impress upon students and their families how important education was for them and started a tutoring program that enabled many students to graduate from high school, a first for the community. Years later, former students remember how he encouraged them, recognized their potential and boosted their self-confidence. His was an attitude often not held by teachers towards minority students in those days.

Gus moved on to teach at Bloomfield and Ardmore schools in Halifax, and in 1970, at the age of 41, he changed careers. Three years later he graduated from Dalhousie University's Law School, and practised law until his retirement. Described as "a lawyer with the soul of a social worker," he often worked pro bono and remained a mentor to many young people. A driving force for many years in the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, he was a founder of the Black Educators Association, the Black United Front, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, and the Black Cultural Centre. He was a vocal crusader for the rights of the disadvantaged at a time when discrimination in education, employment and housing was the status quo.

When he died in 2007, Gus could have taken comfort in the diversity of races, religions and political persuasions represented at his funeral—people who came to pay their respects to a gentle, genial man who made a profound impact on his adopted home.

Marie Riley was born and brought up in Nova Scotia. After graduating from Mount Saint Vincent and Carleton Universities she worked as a journalist for the Calgary Herald and for the Canadian Press news agency in Ottawa. In 1970 she went to West Africa with CUSO where she taught at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and the University of Ghana. Following graduate work at Simon Fraser University, she taught in the public relations program at the Mount until her retirement in 2008.

The Mi'kmaq Anthology, Volume Two In Celebration of the Life of Rita Joe

2011-11-07T06:23:00.000-04:00

The Mi'kmaq Anthology, Volume Two

In Celebration of the Life of Rita Joe

Edited by Theresa Meuse, Lesley Choyce and Julia Swan

Autobiography, Poetry, Traditional Stories, Essays
$21.95
224 pages
6" x 9" trade paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-29-6
(Available in October 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9) or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

It has been 14 years since the landmark publication of the first volume of The Mi'kmaq Anthology, a project initiated by Rita Joe. Mi'kmaq culture continues to thrive in Atlantic Canada and this new volume brings together many new as well as familiar writers from the Mi'kmaq community. Included are essays on culture, history, and spirituality, as well as autobiography, traditional stories and poetry in this unique volume.

Contributors include Daniel N. Paul, Patricia Doyle-Bedwell, Lindsay Marshall, Catherine Martin, Mary Louise Martin, Robert Bernard, Laura Johnson, Clayton Paul, Denise Larocque, Shalan Joudrey, Peter C. Julien, Marie Battiste, Sunset Rose Morris, Theresa Meuse, Jean Augustine-McIsaac, Alice Azure, John Sylliboy, Denise Larocque, Eva Apukjij, David Marshall, and Charles Doucette. Also included are poems from Rita Joe.

The collection is informative, varied and spirited. It includes a variety of powerful voices on many subjects and is intended to be a celebration of the life of poet, Rita Joe, who encouraged many people from her extended community to write and bring forward their poetry and stories. Rita Joe was born in Whycocomagh in 1932 and received the Order of Canada for her writing and contribution to Canadian culture. Before her death in 2007, she published several important books of poetry and inspired many younger Mi'kmaq authors.

Theresa Meuse is the former chief of Bear River First Nation and has worked in various jobs with Mi'kmaq organizations. She is an educator and advisor and author of a children's book titled The Sharing Circle. Lesley Choyce is the publisher of Pottersfield Press, an English instructor in Dalhousie University's Transition Year Program and the author of a number of books. Julia Swan is an editor with Pottersfield Press and teaches at Dalhousie University.

Cold Clear Morning New Revised Edition

2011-11-03T06:08:00.000-04:00

Cold Clear Morning

New Revised Edition

Lesley Choyce

A Novel
300 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" trade paperback
$22.95
ISBN 978-1-897426-32-6
Includes an Afterword and Interview with the Author
Currently in Development as a Feature Film

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9) or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Now available as an ebook for your ereading pleasure:

Kindle | Kobo | Smashwords |

"I just love this book. The scenes are evocative and meld into the action seamlessly, never seeming to interrupt or delay its movement, yet are so richly detailed. I give special praise to the deeper and much more difficult challenge of creating a believable fictional musician." —Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist of Rush.

Taylor Colby grew up in the tiny Nova Scotia fishing village of Nickerson Harbour, but his guitar-playing skill led him to become a much sought-after studio musician in Los Angeles. Along with him went Laura, his childhood sweetheart and soulmate. In L.A., Laura becomes enamoured with the dark side of rock and roll life, leaving Taylor lost, distraught and deeply damaged. It is then that Taylor realizes he has to go back home to Nickerson Harbour, to confront Lauraâ€™s parents, to reunite with his father and confront the truth of his own dysfunctional family.

Back in Nova Scotia, Taylor learns that his mother, who had abandoned him as a child to move to Ontario and remarry, wants to come home to reconcile with her own past. Taylor is haunted by his loss and grief but must also come to terms with some hidden truths about Laura. As he begins to make sense of his past, he befriends a feminist professor from Philadelphia who has run away from a miserable marriage to start anew in Canada with her troubled twelve-year-old son.

Cold Clear Morning is a novel about dreams realized and dreams shattered. It is about love and loss, hurting and healing, grief and forgiving. Taylor Colby speaks his story of love and loss and what it takes to pick up the remains of a shattered life and find renewed purpose and hope. It is the story of going back to the home that you thought you could never go back to. In his odyssey from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and back home to Nova Scotia, he attempts to find real meaning to his life of adventure and despair.

"Cold Clear Morning is an evocative read. Watching Taylor Colby, his mother, and his father work through their memories and their pain, toiling towards peace, evokes powerful emotions. And then there is the sea—it speaks through the pages and mesmerizes the soul." —Kimberley Blevins, Regina Leader-Post

Lesley Choyce is also the author of over fifty books, including, for Pottersfield Press: the poetry collection The Coastline of Forgetting, children's books Far Enough Island and Famous At Last, and non-fiction books Driving Minnie's Piano: Memoirs of a Surfing Life in Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia: Shaped By The Sea, and Peggy's Cove: The Amazing History of a Coastal Village. He has also edited for Pottersfield Press: Ark of Ice: Canadian Futurefictions, The Mi'kmaq Anthology, The Mi'kmaq Anthology, Volume Two (with Rita Joe), Nova Scotia: Visions of the Future, Nova Scotia: A Traveller's Companion, and Pottersfield Nation: East of Canada.

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

2011-10-31T18:05:00.001-04:00

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Steven Laffoley

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia, History, Crime, Ships
$19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-27-2

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Madness arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, silent and wet, at the bottom of a ship's dory, in the rough folds of a thick, grey canvas—a shapeless, nameless dream, radiating shadows and darkness.

Investigating murder is grim business. This is particularly true if the murder happened more than a hundred years ago in the cramped cabin of an old schooner later torpedoed and sunk. Think about it. Everybody involved in the case is dead. And the important clues to the mystery are buried somewhere beneath ocean sand.

Still, on a cold afternoon in late February, I found myself standing at the edge of an old Halifax wharf investigating another cold-case murder mystery. The case was just too damned good.

In the summer of 1896, an old schooner sailed from Boston to Argentina with twelve people on board. A few days into the journey, the captain, his wife, and the second mate were all murdered—with an axe. And no one on board saw it happen.

The surviving crew members were a rogues' gallery of gruff, seafaring brutes, each offering the weary, cold-case investigator multiple names, wild accusations, and fast-changing testimony. Also on board was a passenger, a young student from Harvard University. Perfect.

Like I said, I had to take the case. It was just too damned good.

And so begins another cold-case murder investigation by writer Steven Laffoley, as he travels the tough streets of Halifax to the courtrooms of Boston in search of a killer. Along the way, he explores the world of 1896 and discovers that nothing in this case is what it first seems. In turns fascinating, frightening, and funny, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is an intriguing true tale of murder, mystery, and madness.

Steven Laffoley has been a writer, teacher, and dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He is the author of Mr. Bush, Angus and Me, the award-nominated Hunting Halifax, and Death Ship of Halifax Harbour.

The Social Worker by Michael Ungar, PhD

2011-06-27T09:04:00.001-04:00

The Social Worker

Michael Ungar, PhD

$21.95
240 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-26-5
(Available in March 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

$12.95 ebook on Smashwords
(suitable for Kobo, Kindle, Sony, Stanza, iBooks ereaders)

Joey is not your typical social worker. He burns down houses to solve bureaucratic deadlocks, steals to get his clients bigger welfare cheques, and lies if it will help prevent his supervisor from intruding in the lives of his young clients.

Joey knows all too well what it feels like to be a client. In and out of foster homes, his father dead, his mother an abusive emotional wreck, Joey puts his talents as a juvenile delinquent to good use, even when he's locked up in a secure detention centre. Fortunately for Joey, there's one youth worker, a former boxer with his own secrets to hide, who inspires Joey to finish his education.

Still the delinquent at heart, Joey sets out to get revenge on the system that he believes failed him and his family. Joey's plan for revenge may have worked, except buried in old agency files he learns that his family has many secrets yet untold and that the lives of social workers are more complicated than they seem to the children in their care.

The Social Worker is a controversial and provocative story of what it means to reach out to the most vulnerable, set amid the hidden world of those whose motivations to help can be as difficult to understand as the systems for which they work.

Michael Ungar, PhD is a prize-winning fiction writer and among the most influential social work authors and speakers on parenting issues in North America. His nine non-fiction books include The We Generation and Too Safe for Their Own Good. The Social Worker is his first novel. His work has been the subject of cover stories in magazines and he is a regular contributor to radio and television. His blog can be read on Psychology Today's website. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Canadian Association of Social Workers Distinguished Service Award for Nova Scotia.

Currently, he is a Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University in Halifax where he directs the Resilience Research Centre. His website is www.michaelungar.com.

Michael Ungar is also the author of Playing at Being Bad: The Hidden Resilience of Troubled Teens.

The Mi'kmaq Anthology Edited by Rita Joe and Lesley Choyce

2011-06-27T08:43:00.000-04:00

The Mi'kmaq Anthology
Now back in print!
Edited by Rita Joe and Lesley Choyce
Autobiography, Poetry, Traditional stories, Essays
286 pages
6" x 9" trade paperback
$21.95
ISBN-10 1-895900-04-2
ISBN-13 978-1-895900-04-0
Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

This is the most comprehensive single volume of Mi'kmaq writing available. Included are essays on history, culture, spirituality as well as autobiography, traditional stories and poetry in this spirited and varied collection.

First published in 1997, the book is a valuable landmark of an ancient culture that speaks directly to those intrigued by Aboriginal history and culture. The writers in this volume express both pain and joy, outrage and celebration. There is wisdom here to be shared as the contributors document Mi'kmaq life both ancient and modern. Sacred ceremonies and beliefs are explored and personal histories revealed. Included also, however, are writers documenting some of the harshest realities of Nova Scotia history, including Cornwallis's scalping proclamation of 1749 and the travesties of the residential schools of the twentieth century.

Contributors include Don Julien, Lindsay Marshall, Murdena Marshall, Mary Louise Martin, Elsie Charles Basque, Shirley Kiju Kawi, Noel Knockwood, Helen Sylliboy, Marie Battiste, Theresa Meuse, Isabelle Knockwood, Katherine Sorbey, Daniel N. Paul, Harold Gloade and Rita Joe.

Rita Joe states in the introduction, "When it comes to Mi'kmaq history, there are many unanswered questions for all of us. Poets pose some of those questions. Mi'kmaq historians attempt to reveal truths that have long been hidden. Many writers in this volume tell us stories from their own lives to reveal experience, tradition, knowledge and spiritual understanding. Ancient stories handed down provide insight into a way of looking at the world that differs greatly from the messages we receive on TV, in the newspapers and from our political leaders."

Rita Joe was born in Whycocomagh in 1932 and received the Order of Canada for her writing and contribution to Canadian culture. Before her death in 2007, she published several important books of poetry and inspired many younger Mi'kmaq authors.

Lesley Choyce is the publisher of Pottersfield Press, teaches English in Dalhousie University's Transition Year Program and is the author of a number of books.

In the fall of 2011, Pottersfield will publish The Mi'kmaq Anthology, Volume 2, a book celebrating the life of Rita Joe.

The image of my people is uppermost in my mind, the beauty told, one thought inspiring another. Nenwite'ten ke'luk weji tu'ap. (Remember I found the good.) Jika'winen we'jitutqsip kutoy ninen. (Look at us and you too will find the good.) Being a stranger in your own land is a sad story. The turnaround may be the schools. Let us have our say or none at all. Iknmulek na! (We give! Let us.)

- Rita Joe

Diligent River Daughter by Bruce Graham

2011-06-27T08:42:00.003-04:00

Diligent River Daughter

Bruce Graham

Novel
$19.95
224 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-23-4
(Available in March 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

In 1914 when Canada is swept into the Great War, Charlene Durant is already a veteran of loneliness and heartbreak, yet her indomitable spirit and belief in her own intelligence keep her from sinking into despair.

There is nothing normal about her life. A mother's death is not unusual in the time of widespread epidemics and neither is the quarantine imposed on the shattered remnants of her family. But becoming her father's assistant as a young girl and travelling the dusty roads of Nova Scotia as he sells tombstones to the recently bereaved is an unorthodox education. After almost going mad with grief at his wife's death, her father has become an aging Lothario, unpredictable and miserable when the army repeatedly refuses to enlist him. But finally, by 1916 with thousands dead on the battlefields, he becomes a soldier and goes to Europe to fight.

Hurt and angry over her father's decision to desert her, Charlene takes her unstable Aunt Matilda and leaves for Boston, where she lies about her age to get a job in a newspaper. She falls in love with a youthful crime reporter and befriends an old Irish sea dog who takes her into the midst of a kidnapping and murder.

Charlene brushes against the great events of her time: the Titanic sinking, the Halifax Explosion, the suffragette movement, and the struggle of a young woman to be accepted into the man's world of newspaper work. Overshadowing all is the war that changes the world and everyone in it. Diligent River Daughter is the story of how a brave and strong-willed young woman from the Parrsboro Shore fights for her independence and identity in a most troubled time.

Bruce Graham is a Nova Scotia writer and former broadcaster, who for many years was the face of the evening TV news in Maritime homes. Bruce and his wife Helen live in their hometown of Parrsboro. Diligent River Daughter is his fifth book. The Ship's Company Theatre adapted two of his previous novels—The Parrsboro Boxing Club and Ivor Johnson's Neighbours, both published by Pottersfield—for the stage.

Bruce Graham is also the author of: Anchorman, Parrsboro Boxing Club, Dream of the Dove, and Ivor Johnson's Neighbours.

Otto Strasser in Paradise: A Nazi in Nova Scotia by H. Millard Wright

2011-06-27T08:37:00.004-04:00

Otto Strasser in Paradise: A Nazi in Nova Scotia

H. Millard Wright

Nonfiction: History, World War II, 1950s, Nova Scotia, Politics
$16.95
160 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
Includes photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-25-8
(Available in April 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Otto Strasser along with other top Nazis such as his brother, Gregor Strasser, Goebbels, Goering, Hess and a few others, laid plans to take over Europe and then the world. But Otto eventually disagreed with Adolph Hitler on various issues in the National Socialist Party and was ejected from its ranks and formed the Black Front, a breakaway Nazi movement. Gregor Strasser was murdered by Hitler, who feared his influence in the Nazi Party. And Otto, who could well have been the leader of the German government but for some dramatic twists of fate, ran through Europe with Hitler's hitmen hot on his heels. So how did he end up living in bucolic, rural Nova Scotia for 13 years, from 1942 to 1955?

Strasser continued to criticize Hitler from outside Germany. Britain whisked him out of harm's way and sent him to Canada where he remained from 1941 to 1955, literally a prisoner. The Canadian government prohibited him from publishing articles; his mail was censored and the RCMP kept him under surveillance. By the time he was allowed to return to Germany, he was largely forgotten. He died in 1974, a dispirited and disheartened man.

Much has been written about Otto Strasser, but little about his years in Bridgetown, Clarence and Paradise, Nova Scotia. It is this period of his life that this narrative explores.

H. Millard Wright was born and grew up in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. He had a successful business career, becoming a vice-president and board member of L.E. Shaw Ltd. and president of Clayton Developments. He is a past president of the Halifax Board of Trade, a past director of the Maritime Chamber of Commerce, past director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and past director of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council. He formed his own company, Colonial Scientific Ltd., in 1971 and retired in 1992. He has published eight books.

Angels and the Afterlife by Laverne Stewart

2011-06-27T08:35:00.000-04:00

Angels and the Afterlife

Laverne Stewart

Nonfiction: Angels, The Maritimes, Spirituality
$19.95
176 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-24-1
(Available in April 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Available as an ebook:

Smashwords

The inspiration for this book began on June 12, 2009. Laverne Stewart was at a women's retreat. At 5 a.m. she was alone in her room thinking about her frustration over various works of fiction which she hadn't been able to complete. She suddenly heard a voice say, "You have not been called to write fiction. You have been called to write the truth." She knew that there was no one else with her. It was then she realized she was supposed to write a book about angels and the afterlife.

As a journalist, with over 24 years of experience, she decided to do some research. Did she really hear what she thought she'd heard? She contacted two intuitive mediums who told her they had seen this book being written six months before she'd contacted them. Stewart didn't know anything about angels or the afterlife. The mediums told her not to worry about it because the angels had everything under control. They did. In the nine months that followed she was overwhelmed by the number of people who came to her to share their stories.

"I have met and interviewed dozens of people who have shared their angelic encounters as well as their experiences with the spirits of the deceased. I have interviewed spiritual mediums and people, like me, who don't claim to have any intuitive abilities but who have had encounters with the other side and with angels. I have spoken to people who received healing and encouragement from angelic encounters, those who say the spirits of their deceased children come to them as well as the adult children of elderly parents who said they heard, saw and felt angels in the minutes before their parents crossed over to the other side."

Angels and the Afterlife contains the many stories of people whose lives were saved by beings that others could not see. There are heartfelt stories from people whose lives have been changed forever by their encounters.

Laverne Stewart spent 11 years with CTV in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before making the leap to print media in 1999. She currently writes for The Daily Gleaner in Fredericton. This is her first book.

Under the Electric Sky: The Legacy of the Bill Lynch Shows

2010-09-27T05:02:00.000-04:00

Under the Electric Sky: The Legacy of the Bill Lynch Shows

Christopher A. Walsh

Nonfiction: The Maritimes, Carnivals, Entertainment
$19.95
160 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
Includes photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-17-3
Available in September 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

"Bill Lynch and his carnival boys and girls will be back again. No need to introduce him, for his aggregation of tents, rides, and booths is known from one end of the Maritime provinces to the other." - The Halifax Mail, August 25, 1934.

Under the Electric Sky takes readers on a thrilling ride through the strange and fabled history of the Bill Lynch Shows, from its modest beginnings on McNab's Island in Halifax Harbour to the successful, tumultuous years criss-crossing the countryside to its current incarnation struggling along dark Maritime highways today.

This is one of the most curious stories of this region's past, one never completely understood and, until now, never told in its entirety. The Bill Lynch Shows would breeze into small Maritime towns after dark, packed with enough electricity and magic to illuminate the imaginations of anyone who stepped foot on the midway for the brief while it played their town. For many, its return after a long winter made summer official. The shows became entrenched in the collective psyche, at once the centre of earthly thrills and some of the greatest acts of charity ever witnessed in the region. Clarence "Soggy" Reid continued the enterprise in the same manner, until the death of a man on the carnival lot in Port Hawkesbury threatened to destroy the dream forever.

Walsh chronicles the true story of the Maritime carnival with unflinching detail, weaving flashes of the carnival's captivating past with a first-hand account of life on the carnival lot today. This is the definitive tale of the owners and hustlers who shaped the course of the business, attractions like the Turtle Woman and the Man with Two Faces who headlined the sideshow tents over the years, and the family of carnies who, for different reasons, called "the Show" home. At the core of the rough-and-tumble carnival world is a heart-rending story of sometimes misunderstood outsiders and their desperate estrangement from, and deep commitment to, the people of the Maritimes.

Christopher A. Walsh is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Calgary, Alberta. His work has appeared in the Edmonton Journal and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald and on CBC Radio in Nova Scotia. A native of Halifax, he has covered major political stories across the country and spent a few feverish weeks running with the Maritime carnival in towns throughout the region. This is his first book.

Radio Talk: Four Decades Covering the News in Atlantic Canada

2010-09-25T05:45:00.000-04:00

Radio Talk: Four Decades Covering the News in Atlantic Canada

Rick Howe

Nonfiction: Autobiography, The Maritimes, Newsmakers

$19.95

208 pages

6" x 9" Trade Paperback

ISBN 978-1-897426-19-7

Available in August 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Now entering his fifth decade as a radio journalist in Atlantic Canada, Rick Howe has been an eyewitness to some of the region's biggest news stories. From the 1977 Saint John police lock-up fire to Pictou County's Westray Mine disaster, from the 13th Tribe motorcycle gang's hijacking of the Princess of Acadia ferry to the RCMP's investigation into a prominent Nova Scotia politician, Howe has literally been there and seen it. Radio Talk will take you inside the news, and share with you little-known details about many of the stories familiar to residents of Canada's East Coast.

As a reporter and a commentator, Howe has had unfettered access to the newsmakers. He has been up close and personal with the famous, such as Princess Diana on board the royal yacht Britannia, and the infamous, like John Edward Kenny, a man convicted in the deaths of twenty-one men. The author also provides an insider's view of those who report the news, how they cope with the pressures of the job and how decisions are made on what stories are covered. Journalists take their jobs quite seriously, but mistakes and bloopers are also part of life on live radio. In this tell-all book, Howe reveals some of the more hilarious moments in Atlantic radio history.

Over the past four decades, the media has undergone some significant changes, some of it for the better, some of it not. Howe pulls no punches in telling readers where things have been done right and where they have gone wrong. Many of the subjects and personalities in this book are very familiar to Atlantic Canadians. Radio Talk looks behind the headlines at details that will shock and surprise readers. It will provoke discussion and generate controversy. Above all, it will certainly entertain.

Rick Howe has been a reporter, a newscaster, a news director, a commentator and a talk-show host. For several years he also wrote a column for the Halifax Daily News, and he has made numerous appearances on CTV and CBC television as a political analyst. With family roots in New Brunswick, Howe has worked in radio in Campbellton, Newcastle, Saint John and over thirty years in Halifax. Currently living in Fall River, Nova Scotia, Howe is married to former ATV/ASN television journalist Yvonne Colbert.

Women Who Care: Women's Stories of Health Care and Caring

2010-09-23T00:01:00.008-04:00

Edited by Nili Kaplan-Myrth, MD, PhD,

Lori Hanson, PhD and

Patricia Thille, SC(PT), MA

Foreword by Dr Barbara Lent
Afterword by Dr Carolyn Bennett
Nonfiction: Health, Medicine, Womenâ€™s Studies
$19.95
178 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-22-7
Available in September 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

In her third year of medical training - discouraged by how little focus there was on caring - a young woman was faced with a decision: she could throw her hands up and quit or she could risk speaking up and work toward change. She decided to send out a call asking women to share their experiences of health care and caring. Her e-mail inbox immediately overflowed with stories from women across Canada. Together, this amazing group of women wrote Women Who Care.

Most women have stories to tell about their experiences of health care. They care for themselves through personal health and illness; they seek care from others; they become caregivers to their children, partners, aging parents and extended families. Some work as health care professionals - physicians, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, social workers, psychologists. Others work in community centres and shelters, or as health administrators, health policy-makers, women's health researchers, and as feminist leaders and activists in women's health.

Women Who Care is a collection of womenâ€™s stories about caring. Through prose and poetry, this book captures the personal and professional values and expectations of women caregivers at each stage in their lives and careers. It examines women's experiences as the providers and recipients of health care.

Nili Kaplan-Myrth, MD, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and physician. She has expertise in determinants of health, women's health, disability studies and Indigenous self-determination in health, with a strong commitment to action-based qualitative research, feminism and social justice. Her three wonderful children, her friends and family haven't let her quit medicine yet.

Lori Hanson, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan with interests in community activism, gender and development, health equity, sexual and reproductive health, health promotion, and transformative education. In her spare time, she raises her two sets of twins and works with a great group of community and university women involved in the Saskatoon Women's Community Coalition.

Patricia Thille, Sc(PT), MA, is a former physical therapist and health services researcher. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Calgary and balances her academic work with community outreach as a healthy sexuality educator with Venus Envy.

Long Ago and Far Away: A Miramichi Family Memoir

2010-09-21T00:01:00.001-04:00

Long Ago and Far Away: A Miramichi Family Memoir

Wayne Curtis

Nonfiction: Autobiography, New Brunswick, The Miramichi
$19.95
240 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-20-3
Available in September 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

A memoir set in the Miramichi, Long Ago and Far Away reflects how a family lived and prospered through the late 1880s, when Wayne Curtis's grandfather was a young man. The story follows the lives of Wayne and his father, chronicling Wayne's youth and adult years in rural New Brunswick. He brings back to life an extraordinary time and place and reflects upon the changes that have all but erased those days gone by. But the book is also a reminder of what it was like growing up in the backwoods of New Brunswick with all its joys and hardships.

The memoir tells the story of the rough and rowdy Miramichi of the past when the hunting and killing of wild animals was the norm and people struggled to survive off the land. Not natural hunters, both Wayne and his father wrestled with the idea of killing anything, but had to hunt to feed the family. In the old days of the Miramichi, guns were everywhere. But as Wayne matured into manhood, he grew away from hunting and would not kill anything bigger than a mosquito.

Long Ago and Far Away is a poetic yet honest look at growing up in very difficult times. It charts the growing pains involved in fighting the peer pressure from fellow countrymen who carried on with the old way of life. The story is a vivid and touching family history written by a skilled literary master willing to share the story of how he was shaped by the land, the community and the family that raised him.

Wayne Curtis was born and raised in the rural Miramichi community of Keenan. A high school dropout, he has worked at many jobs in the woods and in factories, including six years with General Motors. He has also been a storekeeper and a river guide. Returning to school during his adult years, he took night courses to get his high school diploma, followed by three years of university, eventually earning an honorary doctorate from St. Thomas University. Wayne has written for The Globe and Mailand The National Post and is the author of three novels, four books of short stories, and a screenplay for the CBC. Long Ago and Far Away is his thirteenth book.

The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery

2010-09-20T00:01:00.003-04:00

The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery

Jon Tattrie

Nonfiction: Biography, Nova Scotia, History, Black Culture
$19.95
208 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
Includes photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-18-0
Available in July 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Eddie Carvery was born in Africville, Nova Scotia, when the African-Nova Scotian seaside village was midway through its third century. As a teenager, he watched his world torn down as his friends and family were compelled to leave. After Africville was bulldozed in the 1960s under the guise of "urban renewal," Eddie Carvery returned to the site of his former hometown and pitched a tent in protest.

After forays into careers as a community organizer, sheet-metal worker and fisherman, Eddie returned to the ruins of Africville in 1970 to start his protest for the reclamation of his people's land and history. Forty years, three families, seven heart attacks and numerous attempts on his life later, he remains living on the land where he was born. He's been shot at, had his residence set on fire and been run off his land countless times. His struggles with his demons of addiction and violence have cost him his families and his entire adult life. He's tried to leave, but always he returned to Africville.

Sometimes accompanied by his brother, Victor, and sometimes by his friend and bodyguard, a dog called Spike, Eddie has lived as a virtual hermit in a small trailer across from the results of the urban renewal: a dog park called Seaview. All traces of his childhood community are gone, except for him - the last resident of Africville. There, through the solitude and frozen winters, he's walked the long walk to healing, rooted in the land of his ancestors. Dismissed as a squatter, he stayed in Africville. Searching through the ruins of his community and his battered mind, he's rebuilt himself and come to the conclusion that he's failed at everything, except one thing: Africville. In this riveting account, Jon Tattrie captures the story of Eddie Carvery and his struggle for survival and, ultimately, justice.

Ghosts of Nova Scotia: Tenth Anniversary Edition

2010-09-19T12:35:00.000-04:00

Ghosts of Nova Scotia: Tenth Anniversary Edition

Darryll Walsh

$19.95
176 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
Includes Photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-21-0
Available in July 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Explore Nova Scotia's colourful legacy of spooks and spectres in this definitive collection of traditional and contemporary tales from Canada's Ocean Playground. For this tenth anniversary edition, Ghosts of Nova Scotia has been comprehensively updated and expanded to include stories of ghosts, banshees, phantom ships, fairies, forerunners, buried treasure, cursed places and much more. Parapsychologist Darryll Walsh has gathered more than 275 haunting stories from every corner of the province and dares you to read them during a stormy night.

From the original Mi'kmaq to the later European colonizations, Nova Scotia has been a melting pot of rich cultural folklore and mysterious events. The extraordinary tales from the past have been handed down from generation to generation with new stories being added over the years, making this province one of the most haunted places on earth.

Discover the phantom admiral who prowls the shores of Bedford Basin; search for hidden gold along the South Shore, if you can avoid the headless ghosts which protect it; explore Nova Scotia's own triangle of terror; prowl the Cape Breton Highlands for Sasquatch, and listen to the horrifying screams echoing through Dagger Woods. Almost every community has its share of terrifying tales and many of them you will find here for the first time. You'll learn of Captain Walter Tygart's unfortunate encounters with Fort Lawrence Ridge's resident witch, Nelly Edwards, in the 1780s and why a headless ghost haunts Minudie. The story of the feu follets, or jack o'lantern, from St. Joseph du Moine, Inverness County, includes advice on how to get rid of this fiery ball of light, while the tale from Malignant Cove reveals how this Antigonish County locale got its name. Whether it's a frightening story of a Grey Lady or the vengeful Gaelic bochdan, these eerie stories present a unique profile of Nova Scotia that will add to our rich history of folklore and mythology.

A print flyer Pottersfield Press is sponsoring

2010-06-24T11:44:00.002-04:00

Dancing on the shore: a celebration of life at Annapolis Basin (NEW EDITION)

2010-06-19T18:14:00.000-04:00

Harold Horwood

with a foreword by Farley Mowat
and an introduction by Lesley Choyce
Nonfiction: Nova Scotia, Nature, Autobiography
$19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-16-6

Winner of the Evelyn Richardson Award for Nonfiction.

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

"The tides sweep over the clam flats in a great flood twice daily. The migrants sweep through the sky in great flocks twice a year. These vast rhythms, so visible in such a small place, seem very like the heartbeat and the breathing of a living planet..."

Harold Horwood moved his family to the Annapolis Basin for "the beauty of the land, the fruitfulness of the soil, the gentleness of the climate, the variety of plant and animal life, the closeness of great forests and clear waters, the presence of the sea without its storms." He soon realized that they "had come to live in one of the truly magical places on earth."

Dancing on the Shore is a detailed look at nature in Nova Scotia but also a story of one man's intimate relationship to that world. It is deep and broad, weaving science and philosophy with a passionate yearning to preserve life on this planet. Considered by many to be his greatest work, this new edition of the classic book will keep alive Harold's ideas and his spirit and inspire new generations of readers.

Harold writes, "Here, in mid-July, when the air is scented with wild roses, and meadowsweet blooms in the ditches, when the light falls dim and cool through two months' growth of young vines, you could well believe that man and world grew up together, perfectly suited and matched." With a voice of poetic power and intellectual insight, the author takes the reader on a meditative yet mentally stimulating journey that can change the way you look at yourself and the world.

"Great ideas, great visions, great musical themes," the author states, "all have this inexpressible spiritual quality that places them beyond analysis, beyond the reach of the critics, beyond any explanation that we can offer."

"I believe that this book Harold Horwood has written has built a bridge that will endure. I invite you to cross it." - Farley Mowat from the Foreword

Harold Horwood was born in Newfoundland in 1923 and died in Nova Scotia in 2006. He lived an extraordinary life as a union organizer, member of the Newfoundland House of Assembly, newspaper editor, co-founder of The Writers' Union of Canada, novelist, poet and nature writer. He published more than twenty books and was a powerful influence on many Canadian writers.

Island year: finding Nova Scotia

2010-06-19T18:09:00.001-04:00

Greg Brown

Nonfiction: Autobiography, Nova Scotia, Nature
$19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-897426-13-5

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

As they neared retirement, Greg Brown and his wife Anne gave up their life in the U.S. to settle on a windswept Nova Scotia island inhabited by wild sheep and deer, where harbour seals sing in the fog and an old lighthouse still keeps watch over the North Atlantic. Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia tells the story of the surprises, challenges and discoveries of their first year alone on an island as they restored an old fisherman's house, explored the island, and began to learn how to live a Nova Scotia way of life.

This is a story for anyone who dreams of exchanging a fastpaced, high-tech life for something slower and just maybe more meaningful. This is a story about the night sky and the dawn chorus, lobsters and wild raspberries, a famous pirate, the kindness of others, and getting in touch with yourself again. Funny and inspiring, this book redefines what a rich life can mean.

Greg Brown was born and raised in California before moving to Rhode Island. After two years in West Berlin, Germany, he settled in Washington, DC and became an ordained United Methodist Minister. After his twenty-year career in pastoral ministry, he moved into the field of counselling. Later, he began a coaching practice with clergy and small business executives, and developed an interest in the restoration of historic houses. This interest, together with his love of the sea and his Nova Scotian roots (his grandfather was born and raised in Pugwash), prompted a life-changing departure from the United States to McNuttâ€™s Island in southwestern Nova Scotia where he lives with his wife.

Wrecked and ruined: true sea disasters from the eastern edge

2010-06-19T18:07:00.000-04:00

Robert C. Parsons

Nonfiction: Atlantic Canada, History, The Sea, Shipwrecks
$19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
Includes illustrations and photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-15-9

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Fishermen and mariners exist in a self-contained fragile world dominated by the whims of ruthless natural forces. The sea can be a harsh dictator that determines if a ship and the men aboard survive or die. As a result, disasters abound and the sea offers up mysteries aplenty. In November 1886, for example, the New Brunswick ship Blanco was sailing mid-Atlantic when its crew saw a man adrift on a crude catamaran. The captain put his ship about, drew near and prepared to take the nearly exhausted man aboard. There seemed to be no reason why he wouldn't want to be picked up. But the castaway was reluctant to climb aboard. Why? The author explores this and many other curious tales of the sea.

What really happened to the rum-runner John Dwight? In September 1923 the vessel was supposedly intentionally scuttled, but then bodies of its crew along with whiskey and ale barrels washed ashore. The bodies were strangely slashed and mutilated. And what about several other renowned smugglers who came to mysterious ends during the Prohibition era?

When the passenger-mail steamer Limari went up on the rocks, all hands - including Scott Hayes, the son of an American president - had to be rescued. Not long after that the rescue ship Montaro itself slowly sank in the storm. Aboard the vessel was a menagerie of wild animals. Many, including halfcrazed lions and tigers, broke from their deck cages. The fate of all aboard Montaro seemed worse than death by drowning.

And then there are the mysterious messages in bottles from sailors, many belonging to Canada's eastern seaboard, who disappeared with their ships. These are just a few of the many curious and strange stories recounted in this intriguing book. Wrecked and Ruined contains 57 stories of mischief, murder, mayhem, mystery, disappearance, destruction, as well as survival, struggle, rescue and reward.

Robert C. Parsons was born in Grand Bank, one of the great Newfoundland seaports for sailing schooners in the salt fish, hook and line era. He attended an all-grade school in his community and later graduated from Memorial University with a master's degree in Language. Wrecked and Ruined is Robert's twenty-third book. He frequently contributes sea stories to magazines, journals and newspapers and has appeared on the TV series Disasters of the Century.

Also by the author: Shipwrecks of New Brunswick, Ocean of Storms, Sea of Disaster, In Peril on the Sea and The Edge of Yesterday: Sea Disasters of Nova Scotia.

Buried in the woods: sawmill ghost towns of Nova Scotia

2010-06-19T18:04:00.000-04:00

Mike Parker

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia, History, Industry

$22.95

208 pages

6 3/4" x 9 3/4" paperback

Includes 208 photographs

ISBN 978-1-897426-14-2

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Buried in the Woods: Sawmill Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia resurrects the story of abandoned settlements hacked from the primal forest by timber barons. Nova Scotia's ghost towns are not the stereotypical version portrayed in the Old West with tumbleweeds blowing down deserted streets lined with derelict, weathered buildings and creaking doors swinging in the breeze. True to the book's title, most of Nova Scotia's deserted lumber towns are literally buried in the woods and forgotten, but Shulie Eatonville, Minudie, Lake Jolly, Electric City, Crossburn-Hastings, Roxbury, Mount Hanley, Conquerall, Irish Town, Canal Camp, Coote Cove, Markland, Raymond-Ville, River Denys Mountain, and Skye Mountain live again in the pages of this book.

Pictures are windows to the past. Mike Parker has painstakingly scoured archival and private photographic collections in his quest to breathe life into many of these lost communities. The result is a mosaic of 208 images, supported by Mike's trademark relaxed writing style, that is sure to entertain a diverse audience from adventurous sleuths looking for on-site discoveries to armchair heritage buffs and historians in search of an informative read.

Lumbering and shipbuilding in Nova Scotia date back more than four hundred years to when North America's first shipyard was established in 1606 at Port Royal. At the time of Canada's confederation in 1867, Nova Scotia was the wealthiest of the four provinces that initially made up the fledgling nation, its prosperity based largely on possessing one of the world's most extensive sea-going merchant fleets. Wood was king in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with thousands of Nova Scotians employed in lumber camps, sawmills, shipyards and factories that manufactured wooden products. In just one year during the 1870s, more than 1,000 Nova Scotia sawmills turned out enough lumber to build 3,000 vessels. Those halcyon days faded long ago into oblivion as have many resource-based communities that disappeared with the demise of tall trees and wooden ships.

Born and raised in Bear River, Nova Scotia, Mike Parker has been called Nova Scotia's Storyteller, a reference to the diversity of themes covered in his 13 books of popular history. The best-selling author has been researching and writing about his native province for more than twenty years. Mike is affiliated with the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary's University as a research associate.

Also by the author: Gold Rush Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now: The Clarity that Comes With Cancer and Age

2010-01-14T15:57:00.002-04:00

If I Knew Then What I Know Now: The Clarity that Comes With Cancer and Age

Carol Ann Cole

Nonfiction: Autobiography, Cancer, Medicine
$19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-897426-12-8

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[from Pottersfield Press] [from Amazon] [from Chapters]

Carol Ann Cole writes of her incredible journey, the path she has walked from ages 16 to 60. She writes of the clarity that comes with age and, in her case, a recurrence of breast cancer 16 years after her initial diagnosis. In 1992, Carol Ann and her mother both battled cancer at the same time. In 2008, Carol Ann continued to learn from her mother as she faced this killer disease without her mother by her side.

In intimate and sometimes heartbreaking detail, Carol Ann provides insight into a woman's emotions and fears following a routine mammogram and ultimately a clean bill of health. Not taking herself too seriously, she shares the lighter side of her breast cancer recurrence and finds a way to lift your heart as you read her story. You will never view a mammography machine or an operating room the same way again.

The author speaks of her Comfort Heart Initiative fundraiser that is alive and well many years after being launched in 1998. There are more than 228,000 Comfort Hearts in the hands of people in Canada and around the world, and some of their stories are collected here. Carol Ann also includes stories from others who have opened their hearts to share their challenges of retirement, cancer and mental illness. The author writes of her own battle with depression and how she reached out for help.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now includes Carol Ann's passion for family, honesty, helping others, the bond of friendship, battling and beating cancer one more time and much more. If you are looking for that special book that will give you hope and courage, this is the book for you.

Carol Ann Cole is an author (Lessons Learned Upside the Head: From Boardroom to Bedroom - Career to Cancer and Beyond), a professional speaker and the founder of the Comfort Heart Initiative. She is a member of the Order of Canada and has received numerous additional awards including the Golden Jubilee Medal, the elite Maclean's Honour Roll and the Terry Fox Citation of Honour, to name a few. Carol Ann's website is www.carolanncole.com.

Age of Heroes: A Boy, a Prince and the 1797 Wreck of La Tribune

2010-01-14T15:00:00.004-04:00

Age of Heroes: A Boy, a Prince and the 1797 Wreck of La Tribune

John Dickie

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia History, Sailing Ships, War
$19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-897426-11-1

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Age of Heroes documents one of Nova Scotia's greatest sea tales. It comes from the golden age of fighting sail, the so-called "age of heroes," which has long drawn audiences to books like Master and Commander and the Horatio Hornblower genre of nautical fiction.

France's La Tribune frigate fell to Britain's HMS Unicorn after a moonlit sea battle fought off Ireland's coast. The humbled warship was added to the Royal Navy lists when admirals like John Jervis and Horatio Nelson were defending England's shores from invasion and her sea lanes from attack by revolutionary France. Tribune was ushered into British service during the turmoil of the Spithead and Nore mutinies, her crew a collection of young English, Irish and Scots eager to fight for King and Country, as well as for their own glory.

Unfortunately, HMS Tribune was mistakenly run aground by her sailing master while entering Halifax harbour on November 23, 1797. During the attempt to escape from her rocky prison, Tribune was caught in a horrendous storm and ultimately sank at night with the loss of more than 240 souls. Only a 13-year-old orphan fisher boy from nearby Herring Cove dared to row his tiny skiff into the jaws of the tempest to save British sailors stranded on the wreck. Impressed by his selfless act, Prince Edward, the future father of Queen Victoria who was residing in Halifax at the time, rewarded the young boy for his brave deed. In this true tale of valour, the legend of the hero fisher boy lives on more than two centuries after his part in one of Canada's most compelling sea stories.

John Dickie holds MSc and MBA degrees in geology and international business development. Exploration work led him from the mountains of the Yukon and Alaska, through the deserts of Mexico and jungles of Vanuatu, to offshore Nova Scotia. A senior management role continues to take him to such places as Venezuela, Brazil, Spain, France, Scotland, Mexico, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, though his love for the North Atlantic and his passion for underwater exploration keeps him in his native Nova Scotia. John resides in Halifax with his two young children.

Skipper: The Sea Yarns of Captain Matthew Mitchell

2010-01-14T14:58:00.002-04:00

Skipper: The Sea Yarns of Captain Matthew Mitchell

Frances Jewel Dickson

Nonfiction: The Sea, Oral History
$15.95
112 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-897426-10-4

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Skipper Matthew Mitchell was born on the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland in 1917. Now a lively 92-year-old, he looks back on his lifelong relationship with the sea, from wooden dories to steel trawlers, to shore captain at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The author has gathered his many stories into this exuberant volume.

Captain Mitchell's keen memory spares no details of his exceptional life and his recollections vibrate with his colourful native Newfoundland vernacular. We follow him from a boy of 12 watching his native village of Port au Bras devastated by the earthquake and tidal waves of 1929 to learning the secrets of salt fishing and preserving from his father and uncles. Later he is recruited on numerous schooners beginning at the age of 14, eventually taking command of fishing trawlers based in historic Lunenburg. He began his life at sea fishing in two-man dories, braving the rigours of the North Atlantic. Nova Scotia-based schooners took him to Lunenburg during the Great Depression, where he lived in boarding houses until he married and started a family in his adopted town. He fished through World War II, facing new dangers with submarines lurking off the East Coast. He would take command of his first fishing trawler when the captain of the Cape North retired.

When the sea agreed to let him go after 45 years, he was hired as shore captain at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, where he would remain for another 30 years. As shore skipper he entertained thousands of visitors from all over the world with stories of the bygone days of sailing fishing vessels, when he and thousands of other fishermen risked their lives repeatedly to earn a modest living. Captain Matthew Mitchell's captivating memoirs stand as a monument to the era of wooden ships and iron men.

Frances Jewel Dickson, a native of Quebec, has lived on Nova Scotia's South Shore since 1987. She has held management positions in human resources administration, written personnel policy for the Speaker of the House of Commons and led audit teams in evaluating the performance of government departments across Canada. Her first book, The DEW Line Years: Voices from the Coldest Cold War, was published in 2007 by Pottersfield Press.

Death Ship of Halifax Harbour

2010-01-14T14:56:00.003-04:00

Death Ship of Halifax Harbour

Steven Edwin Laffoley

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia History, Medicine $19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-897426-09-8.

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"On an uncomfortably muggy morning in early autumn, I found myself standing at the far end of a wide, battered wharf in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, looking for a man in knee-high, white rubber boots answering to the name of Captain Red Beard.

"I'd come in search of a death ship, or at least the historical whispers of a death ship - an elegant old steamer that limped into Halifax harbour during the early hours of April 9, 1866, with more than a thousand Irish and German emigrants squeezed into its cramped, creaking holds. And I'd come in search of what travelled with them and, in fact, inside many of them: Asiatic cholera. And, finally, I'd come in search of the intertwining tales of those lives inexorably changed by history's worst cholera epidemic, which killed tens of thousands from Mecca to Manhattan to McNab's Island in the mouth of Halifax harbour."

So begins another strange and surprising adventure of writer Steven Laffoley as he explores historic McNab's Island in search of Halifax during its time of cholera.

As he investigates the rich history of the island and searches for clues to the many dark cholera-ship tales, Steven confronts the nature of fear and the fear of nature, including fetid marshes, abandoned buildings, a berry-mad bear, a love-starved beaver, a gaggle of naked maidens, and two drunken revolutionaries just looking for some fun. Death Ship of Halifax Harbour is a fascinating and engaging tale of fate, fear and hope.

Steven Laffoley has been a curriculum writer, a university professor, a school principal, and a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. A freelance writer, columnist and broadcaster, he is the author of Mr. Bush, Angus and Me and the award-nominated Hunting Halifax: In Search of History, Mystery and Murder, in which he investigates a 150-year-old murder. He lives with his wife and daughter in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Canadian Angels By Your Side

2010-01-14T14:52:00.001-04:00

Canadian Angels By Your Side

Karen Forrest

Nonfiction: Angels, Spirituality
$15.95
112 pages
ISBN: 978-1-897426-08-1
6" x 9" Paperback

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Do you believe in angels? Canadian Angels By Your Side is a collection of heartwarming angel stories from people across Canada. These are personal stories about events ranging from everyday encounters to profound moments of healing. These Canadian angel encounters will make you laugh, make you cry, but above all inspire you. Did you ever wonder how to personally make contact with your angels? Following each story is relevant, angelic information to assist you in connecting with your angels.

Read about loving angel messages, heartfelt prayers and meaningful angel tips. Learn how you can summon angels in your daily life and how to ask for and recognize their divine guidance. The book is written in a conversational, down-to-earth way by Karen Forrest, author and internationally recognized Angel Therapy Practitioner. Through her practice, Karen progressed from just simply believing in angels to experiencing angels in her daily life. Learn how to invoke Archangel Raphael, how angels visually appear to you and how to send angels to other people. Read comforting messages from your angels reassuring you your deceased loved ones are at peace. Learn how to free yourself of your fearful thoughts and enjoy safe travel.

Focusing on inspiration and faith, Canadian Angels By Your Side encourages you to make contact with the angelic/divine realms to lovingly guide and heal you in all aspects of your life. Transcending various religious and spiritual beliefs, the book focuses on personal connections to angels and God. Read the stories, follow the offered insights and begin leading a life of peace, love and purpose.

Karen Forrest, BN, CD, Angel Therapy Practitioner (certified by Doreen Virtue), is the author of Angels of the Maritimes By Your Side. She is a motivational speaker and radio co-host and has received extensive spiritual training. A retired mental health nursing officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, Karen works from a diverse background. With a vision of assisting people to personally connect with their angels and God in honouring their life purpose, Karen offers private angel/medium readings and workshops through her practice, Words of Wisdom Counselling. She counsels and heals with a heart of compassion. Karen's website is www.karenforrest.com.

Nova Scotia: Visions of the Future

2009-07-25T09:14:00.002-04:00

Edited by Lesley Choyce

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia, Energy, Politics, the Future

192 pages, $19.95, 6" x 9" Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-07-4

Available in May 2009

Pottersfield Press || Chapters || Amazon

In the spring of 2009, Pottersfield will launch this most insightful book that may set in motion some serious action that can help Nova Scotia live up to its full future potential. The writing is personal, reflective, proactive and thoroughly captivating by more than 30 contributors from many diverse fields of expertise.

In the summer of 2008, Pottersfield publisher Lesley Choyce sent a letter to a select and varied list of Nova Scotians asking them to contribute to a book about this province's future. He invited some of the best minds (and hearts) around the province to present their vision of this possible province of the future. Absolutely anything goes.

Two things prompted this grandiose plan. First, Choyce became a grandfather in May. His daughter Pamela had a boy - Aidan, whose arrival made Choyce think about the world he will inherit and what he will see and experience in his lifetime. Second, while Choyce was away in Yellowknife in June, a forest fire nearly took his house. The flames were not exactly licking the door, but it was headed its way with a strong north wind and a lot of fuel in the form of forests ravaged by Hurricane Juan and clear-cutting. When he got home, he went hiking up into the charred land several times. Once the sadness wore off, he started thinking about renewal... and about the future.

That's when he decided to pull this book together. He invited many Nova Scotians to write anything they wanted to, hoping contriutors would cover environment, technology, immigration, social aspects, urban life, rural life, energy, politics, government, family, economics, forests, the ocean and much more. The bolder the vision, the better. Stories and personal aspects were okay. Controversial ideas were fine. Which future? Anything beyond ten years and up to a thousand.

Some of the contributing writers include Marq deVilliers, Peggy Hope-Simpson, Richard Zurawski, Premier Rodney MacDonald, Budge Wilson, Alan Wilson, Dr. Richard Goldbloom, Carol Bruneau, Tom Gallant, Geoff Regan, Sunyata Choyce, Neal Livingston, Barb Stegemann, Bill Carr, Bob Howse, Ralph Martin, and Stephen Clare among others.

When You Look For Me

2009-07-25T09:10:00.002-04:00

By Kevin Bonang

Nonfiction: Biography, The Maritimes

160 pages, $17.95, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Paperback
(Includes photographs)

ISBN 978-1-897426-06-7

Available in April 2009

Pottersfield Press || Chapters || Amazon

Here is the true story of a parent's worst nightmare come true. Kevin Bonang's family learns that their oldest daughter, Tiffany Tanner, has suddenly gone missing while kayaking on an inner city canal in the northern industrial city of Hamm, Germany. Kevin and his wife Lisa immediately make the journey from Nova Scotia to Germany to help in the search. Once at the site, the true reality of their daughter's fate becomes obvious. No matter how optimistic local search officials try to be, Kevin and his wife fear the worst.

When You Look For Me takes the reader through 17 days of the massive search, including encounters with police, search dogs, an unkind media but much kinder everyday Germans who share their compassion for Tiffany's parents. After many grim conversations with search officials, the Bonangs begin to realize that they are not able to bring their daughter back home to Nova Scotia alive even though there had been some small glimmer of hope.

The book then chronicles the many different stages of having to eventually bring their deceased daughter home and, in their own way, learn how to say goodbye to her. The author writes in an open and honest way, of learning to cope with seeing his dead daughter and the anguish of visitations, funeral and burial -- and even what they truly believe have been Tiffany's visits home afterward. Kevin speaks eloquently of dealing with the emotions that stem from the grief of losing a child, from the numbness and disbelief to the pain of loss, to the healing that takes place to allow his family to move on. Kevin also describes a visit to his home by the spirit of his departed daughter and how that has helped to give this family comfort and hope.

Kevin Bonang lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, where he was born and raised near the many lakes and trails within the city's boundaries. He lives with his wife, Lisa, and two remaining children. A carpenter by trade, Kevin felt compelled to write this, his first book, in memory of his daughter and to remind other grieving parents that they are not alone. This book is a true story of a tragedy but one that ultimately offers a message of hope.

Gold Rush Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia

2009-07-25T09:03:00.004-04:00

By Mike Parker

Nonfiction: The Maritimes, History, Mining

176 pages, $21.95, 6 3/4" x 9 3/4" Paperback
(Includes 164 photographs)

ISBN: 978-1-897426-04-3

Available in April 2009

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Gold Rush Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia tells the fascinating stories of abandoned communities, not haunted buildings and paranormal encounters, although the occasional resident spirit does make an appearance.

The story of gold mining in Nova Scotia is one of Canada's oldest, yet it is the province's best kept heritage secret. More gold was mined worldwide in the 1800s than during the previous 5,000 years. Since Canada was one of the world's largest gold producers, auriferous tales and legends abound from that era of motherlodes found and fortunes lost. Nova Scotia heralded the first of its three gold rushes 37 years before men braved the Yukon's Chilkoot Pass heading to the Klondike. Adventurers from the world over were drawn to Nova Scotia's burgeoning nineteenth-century gold districts, as was a motley crew of day labourers, farmers, fishermen, ruined mechanics, drunkards and gamblers.

An air of mysticism shrouding ghost towns holds a fascination for historians, social scientists, treasure and relic hunters, geocachers and nostalgia buffs. Mike Parker tells the stories of characters and con men, industry and labour, prosperity and recession. Although abandoned gold mining settlements are the book's central theme, ghost towns built upon coal, iron ore and copper are featured as well. Scores of exhaustively researched images, supported by informative, entertaining text, tell the story of a great heritage that has been nearly erased from our history books.

Born and raised in Bear River, Nova Scotia, Mike Parker has been called Nova Scotia's Storyteller, a reference to the diversity of themes covered in his many books of popular history. The best-selling author has been researching and writing about his native province for more than 20 years. This is his twelfth book. Mike is affiliated with the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary's University as a research associate. He is a graduate of Acadia University and a long-time resident of Dartmouth.

Black Snow: A Story of Love and Destruction

2009-07-25T09:01:00.000-04:00

By Jon Tattrie

Fiction

192 pages, $19.95, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-05-0

ISBN-10: 1-897426-05-4

Available in April 2009

Pottersfield Press || Chapters || Amazon

The ship burns in the morning sun, floating lazily in the harbour. Hundreds crowd the dockside to watch. Flaming barrels shoot into the sky and burst like fireworks to cheers. Then the big ship thumps into the pier.

Tommy Joyce looks away. Just back in Halifax from the horrors of the war in Europe, he's lost his appetite for disaster. All he wants is his wife, Evie, and peace. He's worn out from lying, from poisonous jealousy. He knows his wife was unfaithful. He knows the bruises he left on her won't heal. He knows he has to forgive. He hopes he can be forgiven.

The ship blows. Two thousand people are dead and the city is burning. Tommy staggers to his feet, his broken mind scattered between the trenches and this new terror amid the screams of the dying. Thousands dig through the ruins for signs of life as a fierce blizzard smothers the devastated city. Tommy joins the rescue effort, searching hospitals and morgues for his wife, and redemption.

Black Snow is a love story set during the Halifax Explosion. The 1917 disaster was the largest man-made blast the world had ever known, and it cut Halifax off from the rest of the world for the darkest 36 hours in its history. Rich in fact and shocking images, the story sets a blistering pace following one man's search through a ruined city for the love of his life as he confronts the wreckage of his past.

Jon Tattrie is a journalist and writer based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He freelances for the Chronicle-Herald and Metro. Over several itinerant years, he worked in a shelter for homeless men in Ireland, as a shrine-cleaner in Buddhist monasteries in England and as a vegetarian cook on the Isle of Iona. His first journalistic job was on the Edinburgh Evening News, followed by a stint on Scotland's national newspaper, The Scotsman. His first published work of fiction was an adventure mystery called Midsummer Murder, which appeared in the Halifax Daily News.

The Life and Times of Joe Casey: From Fish to Politics

2008-08-26T18:00:00.004-04:00

Nonfiction: Biography, The Maritimes, Politics, World War II

192 pages, $19.95, 6"x9" Paperback (Includes photographs)

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-02-9

ISBN-10: 1-897426-02-X

Available in September 2008

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Joe Casey's life story mirrors the history of Nova Scotia in the twentieth century. It shows how that history shaped the man and how the man shaped that history - as harbour pilot, fisherman, fish plant owner, lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy, hotel owner, and Member and Deputy Speaker of the Nova Scotia Legislature.

His quick wit and indomitable spirit let him take risks in every job he ever undertook. Born in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia, in 1918 and still going strong, he will make you laugh your way through the many dramatic events of his active life. As a boy, he delivered his mother's loaves
of bread up and down the Victoria Beach Road and later in life he would break bread with the rich and famous. As a third generation harbour pilot, he faced many dangers piloting munitions-laden ships through Digby Gap during World War II and piloting ships of all kinds in the most severe weather.

Joe has pitted his storytelling skills against some of the best, including the American actor James Cagney. On a sailing trip down the East Coast, Joe's spirit of competition led him to
trade tales with Robert Ripley of Believe It or Not fame. In this volume, his rich stories bring the past alive.

The author, elected six times as a Liberal candidate, explains how his verbal skills, humour and dogged determination helped get things done in the stodgy Provincial Legislature. Premiers
Gerald Regan and John Buchanan both praised Joe for his ability to make friends on both sides of the aisle and they have written forewords for this book. Your excursion through Joe's life will make you laugh out loud at times and, at others, will make you reflect on some of the fundamental issues of our times.

Peggy's Cove: The Amazing History of a Coastal Village

2008-08-26T17:52:00.007-04:00

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia History, The Maritimes

146 pages, $15.95, 6"x9" Paperback (Includes photographs)

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-00-5

ISBN-10: 1-897426-00-3

Available in July 2008

Amazon || Chapters

Here is the complete history of the famous cove and the unique village that hosts thousands of visitors each year. The story begins with the formation of the rocks along these shores and the impact of the glaciers. The Mi'kmaq were the first to live here in the summers, harvesting the
riches of the sea. A land grant in 1811 brought the first hardy settlers, who built homes and wharves and discovered that the sea could provide bounty but was also a source of great danger.

The story includes the origin of the name, Peggy's Cove, and details about the everyday life of nineteenth-century families living here. A history of the famous lighthouse is included and there are excerpts from many of the famous and not-so-famous visitors who have written
about the Cove through two centuries.

The author explores the most damaging storms, the shipwrecks, the reports of sea monsters and other strange phenomena. Fishing was always a source of income, but it changed over the years. At times the fish prices were so low it was not worth the effort and, in recent years, dramatic changes to the ocean have seen the collapse of several important species of fish.

In the twentieth century, Peggy's Cove attracted artists, writers and ultimately thousands of tourists. Sculptor William de Garthe made his home here and created his monument to the coastal fishermen out of the sheer granite outcropping in his backyard. In 1998, Swissair Flight
111 crashed off the shores of Peggy's Cove and the community opened its doors to the world in an effort to provide support for the rescue workers and the families of the victims. From the earliest days to the present, the story of Peggy's Cove has been a tale of natural wonder and
human endurance.

Lesley Choyce lives at Lawrencetown Beach and is the author of 65 books including
Nova Scotia: Shaped By The Sea and The Coasts of Canada, a history of the country's shorelines. He has also edited Nova Scotia: A Traveller's Companion.

Giants of Nova Scotia: The Lives of Anna Swan and Angus McAskill

2008-08-26T17:41:00.004-04:00

Nonfiction: Biography, The Maritimes

146 pages, $16.95, 6"x9" Paperback (Includes photographs)

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-01-2

ISBN-10: 1-897426-01-1

Available in September 2008

Amazon|| Chapters

This double biography depicts the lives of the famed Nova Scotia giantess Anna Swan (1846-1888) and the celebrated Cape Breton giant Angus McAskill (1825-1863). These two splendid and singular celebrities toured the world entertaining royalty and impressing audiences from town halls to palaces. Angus and Anna's Scottish influences were deeply embedded from childhood and although it was unlikely the two ever met, the similarities in their lives are uncanny. During their adventures, both worked with and met many unusual characters. Both met Queen Victoria. Anna married an American giant and the two toured as "The Tallest Married Couple in the World."

The book explores the causes of gigantism and how this rare condition shaped the lives and personalities of these two Nova Scotians. Anna and Angus were born to normal-sized, hard-working parents and grew up in rural surroundings but rose to great stardom on the world stage. Both were regarded for their kind hearts and compassion for others. They have left a meaningful message for readers that resonates more than a century after their deaths. Both are honoured at museums in Nova Scotia that house their artifacts. Thousands of people flock to these sites to learn about these great giants.

Shirley Vacon was born in Truro, Nova Scotia. Her career was with the Department of Youth Corrections in the capacity of a youth care worker with young offenders. While working in
St. John's, Newfoundland, Shirley attended Memorial University. She is the mother of three children and proud grandmother of seven. She got her start as a freelance writer in newspapers
and magazines. This is her first book. She now lives in British Columbia.

Anchorman: My Life in Broadcasting

2008-08-26T17:17:00.007-04:00

Nonfiction: Biography, The Maritimes, Politics

192 pages, $19.95, 6"x9" Paperback (Includes photographs)

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-03-6

ISBN-10: 1-897426-03-8

Available in September 2008

Amazon || Chapters

Bruce Graham started his television career working on Romper Room, with excitable five-year-olds and near-daily on-air disasters. Undaunted by that experience, he moved on to other forms of mayhem with excitable ambitious politicians. Police stories, pumpkin stories - he reported it all. Anchorman is filled with Bruce's experiences, observations, commentaries and occasional letters from viewers who took it upon themselves to correct, compliment or contradict him Through four decades there were many high points but absurd moments and disappointments as well.

As a student reporter, he found himself sharing the same streets as the Boston Strangler, mob hit men and Jack Kennedy. He encountered a labour leader so intoxicated he fell asleep on the news set before his interview. There were plenty of controversies in his career, some so explosive that they threatened the stability of a city. As a news director in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he was often at odds within his own profession. Bruce didn't believe that news should be tamed or timed for somebody's convenience. This led to battles over news embargoes and the campaign for television cameras in the Nova Scotia Legislature.

There are plenty of personal glimpses of people in this book, from Ralph Kline to Pierre Trudeau, as well as many other newsmakers of the day. And there are also the humorous moments: Cape Bretoners witnessing the Virgin Mary on the side of Tim Hortons and the man who tried to convince the anchorman that he was being destroyed by aliens. There are stories of injustice too, of people charged with arson, the murder of a young man in a Calgary convenience store and those people who just disappear off the face of the earth.

Bruce Graham has had a long and distinguished career in broadcasting. He has worked in Newcastle, Moncton, Winnipeg, Calgary and Halifax-Dartmouth. Bruce is the 2004 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Radio & Television News Directors Association. He and his radio newsroom won the Ohio State Award for journalistic excellence. Anchorman is his fourth book. He is also the author of three novels: The Parrsboro Boxing Club, Dream of the Dove, and Ivor Johnson's Neighbours.

A Mother's Road to Kandahar

2008-06-02T07:19:00.002-04:00

A Mother's Road to Kandahar
Andria Hill-Lehr
Nonfiction: Autobiography, The Military, War160 pages$15.956" x 9" PaperbackISBN-13: 978-1-895900-96-5ISBN-10: 1-895900-96-4
Order this book: [from Pottersfield Press] [from Amazon] [from Chapters]

As a mother and grandmother, Andria Hill-Lehr writes about her eldest son's decision to join Cadets, then Reserves, and then to be deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. From the time she learned of his decision, throughout his deployment and after his return home, whether speaking publicly or privately, Hill-Lehr has emphasised that unconditional love and support for her son is not synonymous with support for the political agenda behind Canada's presence in Afghanistan Ð an idea that is gaining momentum through an organization that Hill-Lehr co-chairs, called Military Communities Speak Out.
The author explains what inspired her to become a peace activist. She reflects on the influence of her mother, a writer who recalled with painful accuracy how she endured the London Blitz, and her father, who was a World War Two veteran and an inspector with Metropolitan Toronto Police. Both raised her to challenge authority Ð which presented some challenges of its own.
Her son's path inspired Hill-Lehr to scrutinize Canada's military culture and the influence of the American armed forces. She writes of her own experience with the military while the spouse of an Armed Forces officer. With clarity and insight, she examines the practices used by Canada's Armed Forces to cultivate children as young as twelve to become future recruitment prospects or loyal supporters of the military through schools, co-op education programs, military displays, advertising and marketing, and video games.
From Cadets to Reserves to Regular Forces, the Canadian government engages in endeavours that are, at times, questionable. The author hopes those who read this book will think critically about the proclaimed virtue of military programs for youth, and that Canadians will challenge the government of Canada's policies, particularly how they determine the deployment of Canadian troops abroad.
Andria Hill-Lehr is a mother, grandmother, writer and counsellor/therapist. She has been an increasingly vocal opponent of Canada's mission in Afghanistan, giving interviews on radio and television, and writing articles about it throughout her son's seven-month deployment to Kandahar. As a counsellor, she belongs to the Social Justice chapter of the Canadian Counselling Association. She is the Nova Scotia representative on the national board of the Voice of Women (VOW) for Peace.

From the Other Side of the Fence: Stories from Health Care Professionals

2008-06-02T07:16:00.001-04:00

From the Other Side of the Fence: Stories from Health Care Professionals
Edited by Dr. Jeff Nisker
Anthology196 pages$19.956" x 9" PaperbackISBN-13: 978-1-895900-98-9ISBN-10: 1-895900-98-0
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"It is only with the heart that one can see truly, for what is essential is invisible to the eye." So writes Antoine de Saint- Exupéry in The Little Prince. Stories can help all of us see with our hearts. Stories of health care can help the public to understand the full human dimension of both patients and health professionals, fostering a better understanding of what patients and health professionals feel and face.
Fences represent the confines within which patients and health professionals find themselves. The stories, plays and poems in this collection - written by nurses, physicians, physiotherapists, social workers, and occupational therapists - are representative of experiences in all Canadian hospitals.
This important volume portrays the desire in the hearts of Canadian health care providers to give compassionate care to those who need it. It also brings into focus the limitations on both sides of the "fence" for the medical professionals and their patients. The writings in this book, resonating with wisdom and honesty, will help validate your concerns with health issues and confirm your resolve to push for the need for compassionate care.
"The paramedics had Wally bound and masked on a stretcher on his way to my familiar territory, the hospital. I felt relieved that he was soon to be treated with the modern medical ways I knew so well. That relief was short-lived when I arrived and was told to sit in the waiting room not knowing what lay beyond that hospital "fence." Alone, I sat breathing deeply, praying for some news. I found the sterile antiseptic smell from this side of the doors seared my nostrils. Every beep, buzz, or whistle had me deciphering what it could mean in Wally's case... I had never actually been in this waiting room for more than a few moments. Is this what my patients' families feel like? I wondered." - Michele Ivanouski
Jeff Nisker is a Professor of Obstetrics-Gynaecology and Oncology and Coordinator of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario. Jeff uses narrative forms, particularly theatre, to bring to the surface health care issues for the general public, medical students, and clinicians of many disciplines. He has received many teaching awards. He was chosen by the CBC's Peter Gzowski as one of the 13 "Best Minds of Our Time." He also co-edited In Our Hands: On Becoming a Doctor for Pottersfield Press with Linda E. Clarke.

The Maritime Book of Climate Change

2008-06-02T07:14:00.000-04:00

The Maritime Book of Climate Change
Richard Zurawski
Nonfiction: The Maritimes, Weather, Climate Change192 pages$16.956" x 9" Paperback26 Illustrations/PhotographsISBN-13: 978-1-895900-97-2ISBN-10: 1-895900-97-2
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The global climate is changing. The world is getting warmer. The Arctic ice is melting faster than it has in 5,000 years, the oceans are warmer than they have been in 100,000, there are more and bigger storms all around the world and ocean levels are rising. And everyone wants to know what this means.
What would you do if Canada's Maritime Provinces were plunged into a mini ice age? What if the winter was eight months long? What if the Gulf Stream shut down and we were plunged into a 20-year winter? Can this really happen? These are a few of the possibilities that face us in the future.
Atlantic Canada has the dubious distinction of being "the global canary" of climate change. By a strange confluence of geography and meteorology, not only will we feel the effects of climate change first and most dramatically here, but also, paradoxically, we will experience a host of seemingly contradictory climate and weather effects. Global warming could actually lead to a cooling of the Maritimes, even a mini ice age spanning the North Atlantic, before the warming takes hold.
Almost certainly the oceans will rise. If so, how much and how fast? And it is quite possible that storms could get worse and more frequent. Can we expect more Hurricane Juans and White Juans? Richard Zurawski takes a hard look at our regional weather and then projects into the future to see what the Maritimes will look like in the coming years as the world's climate changes. And he discusses what we should be doing now. How we respond and how soon we respond to the coming changes will determine how easy or how difficult the transitions will be.
Richard Zurawski is a meteorologist, documentary filmmaker, and television and radio personality who has called Halifax, Nova Scotia, his home for almost two decades. He has been in the science and weather business for more than 25 years. He was the host, creator and producer of Wonder Why?, The Adventures of the AfterMath Crew and WiseWeatherWhys. His documentaries range from technology, to the weather, to philosophy. He can be heard daily on Rogers Radio in Halifax, Moncton and Saint John. His first book was Richard Zurawski's Book of Maritime Weather.

Angels of the Maritimes: By Your Side

2008-06-02T07:09:00.002-04:00

Angels of the Maritimes: By Your Side
Karen Forrest
Nonfiction: Angels, The Maritimes, Spirituality96 pages$14.956" x 9" PaperbackISBN-13: 978-1-895900-99-6ISBN-10: 1-895900-99-9
Order this book: [from Pottersfield Press] [from Amazon] [from Chapters]

Do you believe in angels? Angels of the Maritimes is an array of heart-warming accounts of angels from people across the Maritime Provinces. These are personal stories about events ranging from everyday encounters to profound moments that reshape lives. Ever wonder how to connect with your angels? Following each story is relevant, angelic information to assist you in connecting with your own angels.
Read about loving angel messages, simple prayers and meaningful angel tips. The book is written in a down-to-earth way by Karen Forrest, Angel Therapy Practitioner, who, from her own spiritual growth, went from just simply believing in angels to learning to connect with them to help her in her everyday life. Learn how to invoke Archangel Michael, call upon nature's angels (fairies) to heal your pets and how to ask your angels for even small things, like getting that perfect new outfit or finding a downtown parking spot. Included are prayers to protect your family and home, increase your faith and find your lost pet. The reader will be guided to receive loving messages directly from the angels on how to trust your intuition, keep yourself safe and draw on the angel's strength to assist you with what you need.
You will also discover how to recognize signs from your deceased loved ones and be reassured that they are by your side. The author gently guides the reader further on how to recognize angel messages that are there to help you. From the stories you will better understand the roles angels play in your life.
Focusing on inspiration and faith, Angels of the Maritimes encourages you to connect with the angelic/divine realms to lovingly and gently assist you in your daily life. After reading this book, you will no longer doubt that angels are constantly by your side, ready to help you as soon as you ask. Transcending various religious and spiritual beliefs, the book focusses on personal connections to angels and God. Read the stories and embark on your own angel journey today.
Karen Forrest, BN, ATPR, CD, Angel Therapy Practitioner (certified by world-renowned Doreen Virtue, Ph.D.), has received extensive spiritual training. With a vision of assisting people to personally connect with their angels and the divine in honouring their life purpose, Karen offers private angel/medium readings and workshops through her practice, Words of Wisdom Counselling. With a background as a retired Mental Health Nursing Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, Karen counsels and heals with a heart of compassion. Visit Karen's website: http://www.healingwordsofwisdom.com/.

Pottersfield Press Book Club on Face book

2007-10-24T13:41:00.000-04:00

Pottersfield Press is pleased to announce our new book club on Facebook.com
Be one of the first to know when new books are being released and other book related events.
Click here to join today.

A History of Hangings in Nova Scotia

2007-08-31T08:34:00.000-04:00

Deanna Foster

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia History, Crime
180 pages
$17.95
6 x 9 paperback
ISBN 978-1-895900-95-8
(Available September 2007)

Click on a link below to order this book:
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From the original gallows tree at the bottom of George Street in Halifax to jail hangings throughout the province, Nova Scotians were always attracted to a hanging. This book explores many of the Nova Scotian crimes that ended with the noose. Included are the Saladin pirates, one of the bloodiest cases ever brought before a court in Nova Scotia; the hanging of Peter Mailman, who murdered his wife but captivated a reporter; and the trial of William Robinson, who not only murdered his wife but desecrated her body and tried to burn the evidence; and many others.

Almost as soon as Halifax was settled by the British in 1749, it became a violent place to live. To curb this excess, public hangings and floggings were a common occurrence for close to 100 years and people were hanged for crimes that ranged from petty theft to gruesome murders.

Hangings may have been a grisly event, but they managed to captivate large crowds, and are a testament to the prevalent interest in the dark side of history. Issues of deterrence, public opinion, and effectiveness down through the years are explored by the author as she traces the crimes and punishment for murders that prevailed from the very first to the last hanging.

Deanna Foster grew up in Tantallon, Nova Scotia. She completed her BA at Dalhousie University and is now working towards her B.Ed. at Mount St. Vincent University. Although a history class prompted her interest in hangings, she had always had a unique fascination with things deemed morbid or gothic. This is her first book.

Pardon My Frenchy's

2007-08-31T08:30:00.001-04:00

By Pat Wilson and Kris Wood (The Frenchy's Ladies)

Nonfiction: The Maritimes, Popular Culture, Humour
160 pages
$16.95
6 x 9 paperback
ISBN 978-1-895900-92-7
(Available September 2007)

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Pardon My Frenchy's is a definitive relationship manual for shoppers who haunt Frenchy's, Value Village, The Sally Ann, and the hundreds of used clothing stores that are part of the Maritime mystique. Unlike a how-to book, Pardon My Frenchy's is a what-to-do compendium of ideas, quizzes, games and stories, all aimed at keeping the Frenchy's fires burning, the used clothing passion alive and the super bargain excitement as high as it was during that first root in the bins.

Pardon My Frenchy's is a dose of good old-fashioned relationship counselling, helping Frenchy's fans rekindle the romance with their favourite stores. It addresses burning questions such as: do you still feel that tingle of anticipation as your eyes sweep across the heaped bins? Does a super-bargain find still make your heart beat faster? And, the ultimate relationship question: do you find yourself casting a roving eye on Walmart or The Bay?

Readers can rely on a wealth of ideas such as Six Bring-Back-the-Thrill Techniques, Ten Surefire Ways to Pull Out all the Stops, Four Ideas to Put You in the Frenchy's Mood, Three Ways to Add Zest to the Experience, Three Tips for Initiating Virgin Frenchy's Shoppers, plus the Ultimate Definitive State-of-the-Art Frenchy's Self Quiz. There's even Frenchy's song lyrics that are perfect for a shopping crawl with the gang.

Pat Wilson and Kris Wood wrote the first Frenchy's book, The Frenchy's Connection - a how-to book on used clothing shopping. They collaborated on Extreme Sports of the Maritimes to highlight the Maritimers' pursuit of fun - at Firehall Bingo, Lobster Suppers and 10 other extreme activities. They are both members of the Ladies Killing Circle, a group of women from across the country who write for mystery anthologies, and are also the co-authors of a Maritime mystery novel, Lucky Strike, set on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia: Shaped By The Sea -- A Living History (New, Revised Edition)

2007-08-31T08:18:00.000-04:00

By Lesley Choyce

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia History
324 pages
$24.95
ISBN 978-1-895900-94-1
(Available September 2007)

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The history of Nova Scotia is an amazing story of a land and people shaped by the waves, the tides, the wind and the wonder of the North Atlantic. 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 true-life adventure, he provides a down-to-earth journey through the natural and man-made history that is both refreshing and revealing.

The story begins after the retreat of the glaciers when the first people arrived, and over thousands of years evolved the highly civilized Mi'kmaq culture. The arrival of the Europeans disrupted their life, unleashing tumultuous conflicts that would last centuries. Then came the power struggle between France and England, fought at sea and on land. As England emerged the victor, the Acadians were driven from the land they loved. Once the wars subsided, the pirates and privateers still plundered the seas, but the honest sailors and shipbuilders of Nova Scotia led the province into a flourishing world trade. During the First World War, Nova Scotia was again thrust into military action, resulting in one of the most devastating explosions ever to rip through a city. Decades later, Halifax was torn apart again, this time by military riots.

Here in the new century, it is clear that the way of life along this coast is changing. But while the wealth of the sea has been plundered by human greed, the dreams of life in harmony with the fierce, yet beautiful, North Atlantic live on, even as the restless surge of the waves continues to carve away the coastline.

Penguin Books published the first edition in 1996. Lesley Choyce lives at Lawrencetown Beach and is the author of 65 books including The Coasts of Canada, a history of the country's shorelines. He has edited a companion volume to Nova Scotia: Shaped by the Sea titled Nova Scotia: A Traveller's Companion, 300 Years of Travel Writing (also from Pottersfield Press).

Hunting Halifax: In Search of History, Mystery and Murder

2007-08-31T08:12:00.001-04:00

By Steven Edwin Laffoley

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia History, Mystery, Murder
192 pages
$19.95
6 x 9 paperback
ISBN 978-1-895900-93-4
(Available September 2007)

Click on a link below to order this book:
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"I was walking into an air-conditioned Halifax tavern on a hot summer afternoon... in search of a dark mystery... I was on the trail of a cold-case murder - a murder case 150 years cold. Clearly, I needed a beer."

So begins the strange and surprising adventure of Hunting Halifax, the true tale of writer Steven Edwin Laffoley as he investigates the mean streets and narrow alleys of historic Halifax, Nova Scotia, in search of clues to a murder, a mystery and a black hole in history.

In the early hours of September 8, 1853, in the shadow of Citadel Hill, the body of a sailor lies slumped against the staircase of a notorious tavern on Barrack Street. Something - or someone - has crushed his skull. The death is said to be an accident - a fall from a window - until two tavern prostitutes tell a very different story to Nova Scotia's famous son, Joseph Howe. They claim it was wilful murder.

As the investigation of murder and mystery unfolds, Steven discovers the ghosts of the past haunt the present in ways most unexpected. Prepared to do what it takes to find justice for the murdered sailor, he sleeps in old graveyards, drinks in rough taverns, converses in trendy coffee shops, pokes about staid Province House, ponders Victorian Age philosophy, and - somehow - just manages to avoid arrest. Humourous and engaging, Hunting Halifax is an entertaining tale of history, mystery and murder.

Born near Boston, Massachusetts, Steven Edwin Laffoley has worked as a bookstore manager, a curriculum writer, a university professor, a school principal, and a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters delivering beer in south Boston. A compulsive freelance writer, columnist, and broadcaster, Steven has written dozens of articles and essays for online magazines and newspapers, as well as for CBC Radio. His last book was Mr. Bush, Angus and Me: Notes of an American-Canadian in the Age of Unreason. He lives with his wife and daughter in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Finishing School: a novel

2007-04-19T18:29:00.001-04:00

By Helen Fogwill Porter

Fiction
214 pages
$19.95, 6"x9" Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-895900-88-0
ISBN-10: 1-895900-88-3
(Available in April 2007)

Click on a link below to order this book:
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Chapters

Forty-nine-year-old divorced hair stylist Eileen Novak has enrolled in a community college to complete her high school education. Her first English assignment is to keep a journal. Initially apprehensive about this exercise, Eileen soon discovers she enjoys writing and the opportunity to really let herself go.

Set in St. John's, Newfoundland, in the 1980s and resonating with a vivid sense of place, Finishing School chronicles Eileen's sometimes traumatic, sometimes funny but fully engaged life during the school months. "Always ready to try anything," Eileen says. She speaks frankly of the day-to-day events of her life that sometimes involve uncomfortable encounters, intimate moments and awkward revelations. She's free-speaking with her wisdom and opinions about the world in general and the people she has known through her life. Eileen is unpretentious and down-to-earth as she reveals her unique way of observing the world around her from her downtown working-class neighbourhood.

The cast of characters in Eileen's life include her three grown daughters, her stepfather Herb, her classmate Tom, her ex-husband Gary, her former boyfriend Bruce, her clients as well as her friends and enemies. Readers are sure to fall in love with this delightful and unlikely fictional heroine.

A native of St. John's, Newfoundland, where she still resides and where most of her work is set, Helen Fogwill Porter has been writing professionally for 35 years. Her material spans many genres, from fiction and poetry to drama and criticism. Published across Canada and internationally, Porter is particularly interested in regional speech and creating a vivid sense of place. Her previous books, published by Breakwater Books, include Below the Bridge, a memoir-history, and A Long and Lonely Ride, a short story collection. January, February, June and July, a novel, was short-listed for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1989 and won the Young Adult Canadian Book Award that year. Finishing School is her second novel.

Richard Zurawski's Book of Maritime Weather

2007-04-19T18:25:00.000-04:00

By Richard Zurawski

Nonfiction: The Maritimes, Weather, Popular Science
160 pages, Includes Photographs
$18.95, 6"x9" Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-895900-89-7
ISBN-10: 1-895900-89-1
(Available in May 2007)

Click on a link below to order this book:
Pottersfield Press
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Chapters
Richard Zurawski's Book of Maritime Weather is filled with fascinating weather facts, myths, climatological oddities, science, folklore, and observations of the diverse and often frustrating topic of weather in CanadaÕs Maritime Provinces. Whether you just like to watch the clouds go by or are a serious student of meteorology, there is plenty to entertain you in this book.

There's virtually everything here you'd like to know about the how and why of our regional weather. What makes our weather the way it is? What drives this ceaseless cycle of hot and cold, dry and wet? Zurawski brings the reader up to date on the modern science of forecasting but also includes historical perspectives about the weather before people made the study of weather into a science. Folklore, myths and anecdotes from days past are included with the modern facts and records of our climate. Weather sayings are not only presented, but scrutinized for their basis and value. Before the days of the super-computer and Environment Canada, the sea-bound skipper was the forecaster of his era and his innate and intimate knowledge of Maritime weather shifts could mean the difference between life and death.

Even with the aid of computers, satellites and ultramodern communications, forecasting the weather is still as much an art as it is a science. Richard Zurawski's Book of Maritime Weather taps the wisdom of the past and the present to give a holistic view of the fascinating and sometimes bizarre world of Maritime weather.

Richard Zurawski is a meteorologist, documentary filmmaker, and television and radio personality who has called Halifax, Nova Scotia, his home for almost two decades. He has been in the science and weather business for the past 25 years. He is the host, creator and producer of the TV series Wonder Why?, The Adventures of the AfterMath Crew and WiseWeatherWhys. His TV series and documentaries are enjoyed around the world. Richard is currently heard predicting the fickle Maritime weather on Rogers Radio in Halifax, Moncton and Saint John.

In Our Hands: On Becoming a Doctor

2007-04-19T18:22:00.000-04:00

Edited by Linda E. Clarke and Jeff Nisker

Nonfiction: Medicine, Hospitals, Health Care
192 pages
$19.95, 6"x9" Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-895900-86-6
ISBN-10: 1-895900-86-7
(Available in May 2007)

Click on the links below to order this book:
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Chapters

The experiences of medical training are some of the most profound and the most privileged a person can have. The tradition of physician writers is partly in response to this. Story is one way of helping us to make meaning of the deep events of our lives and to reflect that meaning back into the community. Those of us who welcome these stories do so, in part anyway, because we value the inside view that such voices and stories can provide us. For those of us "with ears to hear," such stories are an entry into very human experiences.

In Our Hands is an anthology written by medical students and residents from across Canada. The collection includes fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry to provide a taste of the wonder, the challenges and the graphic realities that are the experiences of those learning to care for us all. It is an emotionally charged and rich territory indeed, this place of "laying on of hands" that is medicine at its finest.

Our hands are unique maps of who we are, who we have been. For those who are learning the privilege of being a physician, studying the hand is done with extra care. In the anatomy lab, it is a profound and poetic initiation. They will continue on to learn that the art of medicine is one of connection and engagement.

The collection is edited by Linda E. Clarke, a writer and storyteller who has worked in health care and medical education for more than 15 years, and Dr. Jeff Nisker, of the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario.

Buddy MacMaster: The Judique Fiddler

2007-04-19T18:14:00.000-04:00

By Sheldon MacInnes

Nonfiction: Biography, Music, Cape Breton
180 pages, Includes Photographs
$18.95, 6"x9" Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-895900-90-3
ISBN-10: 1-895900-90-5
(Available in May 2007)

Click on the links below to order this book:
Pottersfield Press
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Chapters

Buddy MacMaster, the renowned Cape Breton fiddler, grew up in Judique, Inverness County. He was influenced by some of the giants in the music at that time like Bill Lamey, "Little" Jack MacDonald, Angus Chisholm and Mary MacDonald. In 1949, Buddy began performing at local square dances. By the mid-1960s, Buddy was making regular appearances at dances in Canada and the U.S. that contributed to sustaining the old-time music and the dance tradition. He developed a reputation as a master fiddler and made his first visit to Scotland to perform in 1970.

Through more than 70 years in music, he has travelled extensively to perform and record. His most recent recording was with his niece, the popular Natalie MacMaster. He has received numerous awards for his service to community and culture, including the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia as well as honorary degrees from St. Francis Xavier University and Cape Breton University.

Buddy's music adheres to the Gaelic fiddle tradition that he cherishes as much as life itself. The story highlights his devotion to family, faith and community, as well as to his music. He is seen at home, at school, on the farm, and at the CNR where he worked for 45 years. The book looks at his visits to Scotland, the land of his ancestors, as well his visits to American-style music camps and festivals. The legend of Buddy MacMaster is also presented in accounts from many friends, relatives and musicians.

Sheldon MacInnes teaches at Cape Breton University and works at the archives of the Beaton Institute. He is the author of A Journey in Celtic Music - Cape Breton Style.

The DEW Line Years: Voices from the Coldest Cold War

2007-04-19T18:10:00.000-04:00

By Frances Jewel Dickson

Nonfiction: The Arctic, Canadian History
214 pages, Includes Photographs
$19.95, 6"x9" Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-895900-87-3
ISBN-10: 1-895900-87-5
(Available in April 2007)

Click on the links below to order this book:
From Pottersfield Press
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Chapters

The Arctic seems an unlikely theatre of war. Yet in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, thousands of young men from various countries were recruited to build and operate a complex radar system across the Arctic Circle from Alaska across Canada to Greenland.

The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, as the mammoth radar fence was known, was spawned from American fear that Soviet bomber aircraft might penetrate Canadian Arctic airspace and drop nuclear weapons on American cities and military bases.

This books tells the stories of those DEW Liners who worked in the hostile, remote climate of the North. Survival was a daily preoccupation in a land where outdoor temperatures can dip to minus 50 degrees with winds exceeding one hundred miles an hour while blinding snowfall whiteouts make vision impossible.

The stories of the DEW Liners reveal real danger here - not from Soviet bombers but from close encounters with polar bears, job-related accidents and airplane crashes, such as the one that claimed the author's father. There are, however, also tales of fun, practical jokes, comradery and human kindness that boosted the morale of those stationed in the far north.

The veterans of this northern experience, whose narratives have been collected by the author, reveal all about their sentinel role in that tense time half a century ago when they dedicated their lives to helping to prevent nuclear war.

Frances Jewel Dickson, born in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, has worked for the federal government, writing human resources policy for the Speaker of the House of Commons. She has lived and worked in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax. She now lives in East LaHave, Nova Scotia, where she has been researching this, her first book.

Ordering Information

2007-01-25T10:30:00.000-04:00

Pottersfield Press is distributed in Canada and the United States by Nimbus Publishing.

Orders can be made direct to:
Nimbus Publishing
3731 MacKintosh Street
P.O. Box 9166
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 5M8

Phone: 902-455-4286
Fax (toll free): 888-253-3133

Phone toll free 1-800-NIMBUS9 (1-800-646-2879)

Email: mail@nimbus.ns.ca

Fall 2006 Releases

2007-01-01T17:33:00.000-04:00

Driving Minnie's Piano: Memoirs of a Surfing Life in Nova Scotia

Lesley Choyce

$19.95
ISBN 1-895900-85-9
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*Autographed copies are available by clicking here.

Novelist Lesley Choyce weaves together his real-life adventures living by the sea at Lawrencetown Beach on Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore. He writes of his love for the rugged coast and tells tales of the ordinary and the extraordinary. His story includes accounts of what it's like surfing in the Canadian North Atlantic through all four seasons including the frigid depths of winter.

Also threading its way through this narrative is the story of Minnie's piano. There is music here in word and spirit along with the lessons learned from the old and the young. Driving Minnie's Piano is an eloquent personal memoir about the precious and fateful moments that change our lives. It is an exploration of what makes us tick and prompts us to be both heroes and fools in the daily enterprise of living.

Not one to take himself too seriously, Choyce recounts the true story of how his life was forever altered when 16 skunks took up residence beneath his 200-year-old farm house. This calamitous event and the deed of evicting the skunks (with the care of a die-hard environmentalist) is a hilarious chapter that was the basis for the film, The Skunk Whisperer, which aired on three national networks. Also up for discussion are the subjects of fog, drumlins, lichen, fools, baseball, class reunions, hair, the origin of the SurfPoets and the nature of the "drowned coast" that is a stone's throw from the author's back door.

Lesley Choyce recently edited Nova Scotia: A Traveller's Companion. He is the author of The Republic of Nothing and numerous other novels. Choyce also hosts the literary TV show, Off the Page. His popular history, Nova Scotia: Shaped by the Sea is published by Penguin.

Shipwrecks of New Brunswick

Robert C. Parsons

$19.95
224 pages, includes index and photographs
ISBN 1-895900-82-4
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Shipwrecks of New Brunswick is about a time when one of Canada's most thriving provinces staked out a claim on that great element of nature forever pounding its shores. But the 2,250 kilometres of coastline along these shores have always held many dangers to shipping. The captains and the mariners sailing here have been prey to shifting ocean currents, dramatic tidal changes, high winds and impenetrable fog. The coastline itself is broken by many deep bays, inlets and estuaries, each with its own dangers of rocks, cliffs or sandbars.

Many areas of coastline lie in wait for ships: the Richibucto islands and bars, the Caraquet and Shippagan coast, Cape Tormentine, Miramichi Bay, Chaleur Bay and the ever-changing Bay of Fundy. In the era of sail, the number of ships traversing Fundy was enormous. Dangers in the great bay lurked at points like Partridge Island, Yellow and Murr Ledges, Grand Manan Island, the myriad rock, crags, islets and islands that ring Passamaquoddy Bay and the tricky approaches to the busy port of Saint John.

Countless ships and sailors came to grief in these New Brunswick waters in the days before long-range weather forecasting and reliable navigational instruments. Adverse winds and rocks claimed many a ship. But human error also lay at the root of marine disasters. Shipwrecks of New Brunswick preserves these stories in word and image.

In the past 20 years, Robert Parsons has become one of Atlantic Canada's most popular and prolific writers, specializing in the stories of shipwreck, rescue and survival. He devotes much of his time to researching, writing and promoting the sea-going history of Canada's eastern provinces, their ships and the people who sailed them. His books include Ocean of Storms, Sea of Disaster, In Peril on the Sea and The Edge of Yesterday: Sea Disasters of Nova Scotia.

Back Roads of Membertou County

Alfred Silver

$19.95
6 x 9 paperback
ISBN 1-895900-81-6
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Bonnie and Ben Marsden are back - Back Roads of Membertou County picks up where Clean Sweep left off.

Forty-something Bonnie Marsden didn't intend to become a professional charwoman or an amateur detective. Both Bonnie and Ben Marsden have lost their steady jobs but manage to get by with Bonnie working as a cleaning lady and Ben as an all-purpose pair of hands and strong back.

Ben's methods of employment sometimes involve dealing with people on the wrong side of the law. Ben barely knows Jack Burton, but knows him well enough to explain to Bonnie, "If you play around the edges of the law, you'll sometimes run across a guy who's smart and tough and crazy. All you can do with somebody like that is stay the hell away from him and hope he gets caught or shot before he runs over somebody you care about." But law enforcement will put the squeeze on anybody even remotely connected with Jack Burton, and now even Bonnie's friend, Corporal Kowalchuck at the local RCMP detachment, can't prevent Ben from going to jail.

The complex situation tests the Marsdens' marriage and it looks like they are both about to lose. Bonnie's amateur detecting helps resolve one crisis but lands them in another more dangerous predicament that puts their marriage and their lives in jeopardy.

Alfred Silver has published 10 novels, including Clean Sweep, Acadia, Three Hills Home, and The Haunting of Maddie Prue.

The New Brunswick Phrase Book: Old Sayings, Expressions & Odd Names of New Brunswick

Dan Soucoup

$13.95
ISBN 1-895900-84-0
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So let's all go dulsin' and winklin' down at the wangan, over at the shimshack and go breakin' the jam. And then we can set the dogs, find a twitching horse, go sparking, sacking with our Kennebecers, or wait for the May run as long as there are no gewgaws or swampers coming along. Or we may want to try fly beer or cockaninny with our hodge podge at the sit-down supper. What's the difference between the walking boss and the main man? Or between a Richibucto goose and a Shippegan turkey? And perhaps we can take a trip to Pull and Be Damned Narrows, Petit Large and Hole-in-the-Wall.

Each region of Canada has its own distinctive dialects and colourful language. New Brunswick is no exception. This handy book has captured the essence of the province, the words and phrases that are so often heard but not really understood or explained. This informative and funny book includes more than 1,000 sayings, phrases, descriptions, and curious names that are listed in alphabetical order and defined in plain English.

Dan Soucoup is the author of several books including Historic New Brunswick, The Maritime Book of Days and the best-selling Maritime Firsts.