poverty

Homeless Memorial by John La Greca

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first twenty years of my life I lived in Vernon, BC. I had a home. Which I usually took for granted. It was where I returned most nights, save for sleepovers and one night in a jail cell, futilely scrubbing fingerprint ink like Lady Macbeth. But that’s a separate story.

I went back for a writer’s residency at Vernon’s Caetani House in grey November pre-snow where I spent a great deal of time not writing, instead strolling the gardens and my hometown, the home of once homeless poet John La Greca.…

Under the Bridge by Anne Bishop

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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.…

A Wholesome Horror: Poorhouses in Nova Scotia by Brenda Thompson

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Update 03/09/19: A Wholesome Horror has won the 2019 “The Very Best!” Book Award for Non-Fiction!

When I first saw the cover of this book, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: poor houses existed in Canada? While I grew up in a household that used the warning of “being put in the poor house” I didn’t know that it was a real house (by the time I was born, federal unemployment insurance measures were in place).…