National Network for Equitable Library Service

It's Christmas Eve in the fair town of Amherst, Nova Scotia, and sparkling snowflakes crown the pointed roofs of houses as stately as Victorian ladies.

Covering the most significant events in the storied history of the city, A Short History of Halifax is a fascinating, accessible record. In a readable, narrative style, author Dan Soucoup offers up a to-the-point history, taking readers from the geography of the harbour and the settlement of the city, through years of conflict between its various inhabitants—Mi’kmaq, British, Acadian.

Sitting along the scenic St. John River and tucked into the surrounding wilderness, Fredericton bristles with history as New Brunswick’s capital. With Maliseet, French, and British origins, this colonial garrison town quickly became the political centre for the area as it grew with the efforts of Loyalist settlers and others in the 1780s. In an engaging narrative style, author Dan Soucoup traces Fredericton’s development through the contributions of leading citizens and the significant events that saw commercial growth and the first Canadian literary movement.

Inspired by her desire to stay connected to the food of her home province, culinary writer Liz Feltham goes back to her roots to bring fresh and modern twists to favourite Newfoundland meals. A Real Newfoundland Scoff provides recipes using traditional ingredients from the sea, land, air, bakeshop, and bar to create non-traditional dishes.

On October 8, 2013, Nova Scotia’s NDP government went down to a devastating election defeat. Premier Darrell Dexter lost his own seat, and the party held the dubious distinction of being the first one-term majority government in over 100 years.  In this new memoir, former NDP finance minister and MLA Graham Steele tries to make sense of the election result and shares what he’s learned from a fifteen-year career in provincial politics. In his trademark candid style, Steele pulls no punches in assessing what’s right—and what’s often wrong—with our current political system.

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.

A contemporary account of tracking a historical explorer across Labrador. In the mode of Leonidas Hubbard and William Cabot, Hesketh Prichard set out with a group of adventurers in the early 1900s, determined to cross Labrador. Disregarding local advice, his expedition headed up a box canyon and climbed five-hundred-metre cliffs all with a canoe in tow- a gruesome portage. The canoe was later abandoned. The Lost Canoe is the account of the contemporary search for Prichard's lost canoe.

In 1921, prominent lawyer and Nova Scotia Black leader James R. Johnston’s vision of a place welcoming of Black children came to reality. In an era of segregation and overt racism that saw most orphanages refuse to take in Black children, the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children fulfilled an important role. But despite its good intentions, today the Home is mostly known for a troubling past. Former residents launched a class action lawsuit alleging sexual and physical abuse suffered at the Home over a period of several decades.

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.

The Nova Scotia Black Experience Through the Centuries is a comprehensive account of the African Nova Scotian struggle to build a vital community in the face of racial discrimination. Originally published in two volumes as Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land, this illustrated edition has been extensively updated and includes a new chapter tracing the experiences of Nova Scotia's black community into the twenty-first century.