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In the early 1900s, Charles Noble Lewis and his family were prominent members of St. John’s high society. A chief engineer who worked for Bowring Brothers, Charles fraternized with many of the key players who shaped Newfoundland and Labrador history as we know it today. The living room of the Lewis house served as a meeting place for many of the principals of the Newfoundland sealing industry, including William Coaker, Captain Abram Kean and his sons, Joseph and Westbury Kean, John Munn, and crew members and sealers from many ships. In 1914, Charles’s daughter Jessie was eight years old.

Peter Cashin was at the centre—the stormy centre—of Newfoundland’s political and public life for more than thirty years. Known to many as “the fighting Major,” in a tribute to his wartime service with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, he played a decisive role at every major stage in the political drama that transformed Newfoundland from a British Dominion to a Canadian Province. Peter Cashin wrote a memoir soon after he retired from public life in 1953.

A History of the Church Lads’ Brigade (CLB) The year 2017 marks 125 years of service in Newfoundland for the Church Lads’ Brigade. Today, it is the oldest and largest Anglican youth organization in Canada. The CLB is also one of the most recognizable civic organizations in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, known nationally for its regimental band. Since 1892 there have been more than 20,000 members in Newfoundland, with about 12,000 still living. Approximately 600 members in eighteen active companies are still listed on strength.

Inspired by True Events In 1934, North America lay stripped of its riches by a great depression. When the land refused to yield its bounty and the sea grew stingy, everyone in the Western World found it harder to survive, especially those in the isolated outports of Newfoundland. The Last Farewell tells the true story of a crew of logger-sailors who left their home port of Hare Bay aboard a two-masted schooner in early June of that year. Along her route to St. John’s, the crew of the Ethel Collett tell each other stories of life and death on the sea.

The Ryan's Commander capsized off Spillars Cove, near Bonavista, on September 19, 2004. In the tragic wreck, two brothers were lost: Dave and Joe “June” Ryan. A federal report concluded that vessel design was one of the factors causing the capsizing. The family of the Ryan brothers recently filed suit against the federal government and the makers of the vessel, arguing its design was unsafe and untrustworthy. This book is Johanna Ryan Guy's tribute, both to her brothers and to the family that still mourns their loss.

Rumrunners is a history of the smuggling trade between the French Island colonies of St. Pierre and Miquelon and the United States, the Bahamas, and Newfoundland. The distribution of contraband alcohol has always been an element of the culture of Newfoundland and Labrador. However, with the advent of the American Prohibition era (1919–1933), the French Islands’ illegal practice took on worldwide proportions.

In this final instalment of Robert Hunt’s memoirs, we return to the alleys and street corners of St. John’s in the 1950s and 1960s. Baby boomers coming of age in this growing city often faced difficult and sometimes frightening challenges, including daily threats from bullies and attending school under the oppressive yoke of the Irish Christian Brothers. But life in downtown St. John’s wasn’t all bad. Together with his childhood friends, Robert Hunt explored the city and came to know first-hand some of its historical riches.

From the “Newfie Bullet” to the SS Kyle to Amelia Earhart, Getting Around the Rock is a fascinating history of the transportation sector, largely in pre-Confederation Newfoundland and Labrador. These recollections were passed on to the author by his father, Raymond Lahey, and his uncle, Bill Lahey, who spent their working lives as telegraph operators in the changing times of transportation in the province.

Townies is the sequel to Robert Hunt’s memoir Corner Boys and takes us back to the mean streets – and schools – of St. John’s in the 1950s and 1960s. This is a coming-of-age story about the friendships between young Robert and his fellow students of Holy Cross School, who often lived in fear of punishment from the Irish Christian Brothers who taught them. Poverty and iron-fisted authority ruled supreme in the lives of the boys from Brazil Street, and the pleasures they knew were simple and fleeting.

“It’s tempting Providence, it is!” he kept saying. “Sail this here ship on Friday the thirteenth? With all them blinkin’ mines still loose in the sea? It’s only askin’ for trouble, that’s all!” This was the warning given to Nurse Myra Grimsley in 1921 prior to her departure from England to her new assignment in Newfoundland. In May of that year, she arrived in the small fishing hamlet of Daniel’s Harbour, which remained her home for the rest of her life. Here she became the only medical help along 200 miles of storm-swept coast and an invaluable member of this spread-out community.