National Network for Equitable Library Service

Originally published in 1973 and now a Nimbus Classic, Woman of Labrador is Elizabeth Goudie’s enduring and candid story of her pioneering life as a trapper’s wife in the early 1900s. She was left alone much of the year to rear eight children while her husband worked the traplines, providing furs for their meager income. Independent and resourceful, Elizabeth fulfilled multiple roles as homemaker , doctor, cook, hunter, shoemaker, and seamstress for her growing family, who provided companionship during long winters of isolation and her husband’s absence.

From a small-town law office in Nova Scotia to the pressure-cooker boardrooms of London, England, where he was Margaret Thatcher's "privatization ace," lawyer and businessman Sir Graham Day has earned an international reputation as a tough-minded but charming negotiator.After a rocky educational start in Halifax, Day found his motivation at Dalhousie Law School and established the contacts and experiences that would guide him through the world of global business.

His was a life worth living, a story worth telling. So Jim Spatz describes the story of his father, Simon Spatz, in the introduction to this fascinating biography of the high-profile Jewish Nova Scotian businessman (1913–2007). In Simon Spatz, former journalism professor Michael Cobdon tells the remarkable story of a man who not only survived but thrived against all odds.

Pat Connolly spent more than sixty years talking of, writing about, and analyzing sports in radio, television, and print media in Nova Scotia and central Canada. His clear, sharp voice was known to thousands as the consummate sportscaster and play-by-play man. Pat’s eclectic life encompassed journalism, politics, community work, and an abiding dedication to family. Told with characteristic wit and honesty, Play by Play is Pat’s memoir of a life well-lived. Includes 30 photographs.

A miserly miller with a stash of gold, an island with an ever-changing list alias, some sly smugglers who nevertheless remember to send a thank you note, a stern schoolmaster who couldn’t tell time, and a thief with two left feet are just some of the shady individuals who grace the pages of Scamps and Scoundrels. Riotous, and witty, Bob Kroll writes these tales of infamy in a delightfully folksy style, bringing to life snippets of the Maritimes’ somewhat less glorious history.

Regularly described as New Brunswick’s greatest scholar, William Francis Ganong (1864–1941) wrote more than many people have ever read. His range of interests is reflected in his vast body of work: botany, zoology, physiography, cartography, and native languages were all within his reach. But his greatest interest, subsuming all others, was New Brunswick. Ganong endeavoured to write even his most scholarly papers for the general reader, and that is what historian Ronald Rees had done with New Brunswick Was His Country.

Allan Donaldson grew up in Woodstock, N.B.. As a child, he became well acquainted with the street life of the town. In his teens, he worked summers wheeling cement, tamping ties and laying steel on the railway, working on a rock crusher and an asphalt plant, and operating a jackhammer. On scholarships, he studied English literature at the University of New Brunswick and the University of London, and he spent a teaching career in the English Department at UNB. He is the author of a book of short stories, Paradise Siding.

Born in tiny Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, Hank Snow enjoyed a musical career that spanned five decades and sales of more than 80 million albums. In I’m Movin’ On, journalist Vernon Oickle chronicles Snow’s hardscrabble life, from his destitute childhood in Queens County to international fame. Leaving no stone unturned in his richly detailed profile of The Singing Ranger, Oickle exposes the highs and lows of Snow’s career, and his journey (“Everywhere, man,”) from small East Coast radio stations to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

On Cindy Day’s grandmother’s farm, the weather wasn’t predicted with a computer or official forecast, but by accumulated wisdom and careful observation. Cindy’s grandma was a constant prognosticator, making predictions about the weather that more often than not, proved correct! Grandma Says is a collection of 80 weather-related sayings that Cindy recalls from her grandmother. Now CTV Atlantic’s meteorologist, Cindy explains the science behind this traditional weather lore, and over 40 accent illustrations complement the text. New softcover edition.

Imagine living your life perched on a tiny island, without electricity, exposed to the fury of the sea, and always at the service of the mariner. This is how lightkeepers and their families spent their lives, even up until the 1960s. We are very close to losing the last of the people who lived this isolated life and experienced the heyday of lightkeeping in Canada. Lighthouse Legacies lets us share in the memories of those who kept the lights.