In 1971, Harry Bruce, recognized as one of Canada’s top non-fiction writers, lost his mind—according to his peers—when he left bustling, lucrative Toronto and moved his family to the tough little seaport of Halifax. Harry was already acquainted with Halifax; at eighteen, he lived at HMCS Stadacona as an officer-cadet in the Royal Canadian Navy. He joined the navy chiefly to lose his virginity.…
Jon Tattrie paints a bleak picture of the destruction of Africville through the eyes of a lifelong protestor, Eddie Carvery. Carvery grew up in Africville, a black community in the northern section of Halifax. In the 1960s he watched the city force residents from their homes and raze the properties, often without permission or knowledge of the homeowners. Many left their home with only what they could carry.…
Eli Cooper, a confirmed bachelor in his mid-fifties, a stick-in-the-mud type who dislikes change and disruption, has lived an unexciting, emotionally unfulfilled life. For several years he has been caring for his father—a dementia sufferer—at home, against the advice of doctors and his sister Sarah, who believes their father belongs in a care facility. In February 2008, Eli’s thirty-year career as an editor at the Halifax Tribune comes to an end when the parent company shuts down the newspaper.…
Spending two weeks in the “isolation room.” Standing inside a closet as punishment. Being tied into bed at night. These are some of the memories shared by former residents of the Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home in award-winning journalist Lois Legge’s Wounded Hearts: Memories of the Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home.
In addition to inserting snippets of sociological context, Legge provides the reader with basic facts about the Home and its inception.…
Jaime Burnet’s novel tells an urgent, socially relevant story firmly rooted in time and place. Crocuses Hatch From Snow is first and foremost a novel of Halifax, Nova Scotia, one that addresses the good, the bad and the ugly from the city’s, and the province’s, long history and recent past.
The novel opens in October 2007 with three women watching as their house in the city’s south end—a structure that was home for three generations of the family—is being demolished to make room for a new development.…
Near the end of Under the Bridge (2019, Roseway Publishing)*, Lucy, the narrator and central figure of the story, stops walking near the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge and reflects:
“I can see the bridge from the corner of Devonshire and Barrington, lights arching off into the dusk, reflected in the inky black water below. The Dartmouth end is hidden by the bulk of the shipyard.…
6, 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. Due to this, may books have been written to commemorate, revisit or try to understand how the Explosion shaped the lives of thousands. The books, past and present have appeared in both fiction and non-fiction genres.
Naomi MacKinnon of Consumed by Ink has undertaken a project to gather and read as many books as she can about the Halifax Explosion, and you can see her list here (including links to her reviews):
https://consumedbyink.ca/halifax-explosion-reading-list/…
-winning author Jon Tattrie, whose most recent book, Redemption Songs (2016, Potterfield Press) was about the history of Black Africans in North America, has turned his attention to one of the most prominent First Nations personages, Daniel N. Paul, Mi’kmaw Elder.
Mr Paul is himself an author of several books, in particular the popular We Were Not the Savages (2006, Fernwood Publishing) now in it’s third printing.…
Bruneau is the Halifax-based award-winning author of several excellent novels, most recently Glass Voices (2007) and These Good Hands (2015). Nimbus/Vagrant Press will soon release (September 2017) A Bird On Every Tree, a collection of her short stories that I thoroughly enjoyed. As busy as she is promoting her new book, writing and enjoying summer, she graciously took some time to answer some questions about her background, favourite books and what we can look forward to seeing from her in the near future.…
6, 2017, signals the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, Canada’s worst Maritime tragedy to date. In mere seconds, a large portion of Halifax’s North End and waterfront were obliterated when the damaged munitions ship Mont Blanc exploded, killing 2,000 people and injuring thousands more. Many were left homeless as the force of the blast levelled the poorly-constructed houses, and fires consumed the wooden debris and trapped bodies. …
Lunenburg (2015, Vagrant Press) is a Canadian reprint of a UK novel previously released in 2000. It is a detective/mystery novel which originally begins in 1970 outside Lunenburg, but ends in Halifax in the year 2000. Keith Baker is a UK novelist and has written three other thrillers published by Headline in the UK. I recently reviewed another thriller What Kills Good Men by David Hood.…
