One of the real pleasures of visiting grandchildren is the opportunity to read bedtime stories. Reading to Quinn brings back memories of Birmingham University in the 1960’s: Manfred Mann and ‘The Mighty Quinn’, and the Spencer Davis Group. Quinn the Eskimo, or was it Anthony Quinn, in Zorba the Greek.
Recent books include Halifax ABC, Stephen Hawking Little People, Big Dreams, and Stories for Boys Who Dare to be Different.
The Halifax ABC was picked up at Woozles in Halifax. It has excellent artwork. Stories for Boys who dare to be different, provides one-page biographies, from Patch Adams to Benjamin Zephaniah and includes such luminaries as Stephen Hawking and Nelson Mandela. For each person, Quinn always asks ‘what age were they when they died ?’ The Stephen Hawking book gives more details on his life.
For those interested in walking, my brother sent me a review in the Guardian of a new book by a Norwegian author, Walking: one step at a time
As I prepared to leave Iqaluit, I stopped for one last time at Arctic Ventures. I picked up Nick Newbery’s autobiography Never a Dull Moment. It describes his forty years in Education in Canada’s North. He lived in , Taloyoak and Iqaluit.
Today, we expected to watch the dog sled races. However, this may be delayed by a search and rescue mission. Reflecting, both the uncertainty of the North, as well as the level of community support and spirit.
From Newbery, p190.
”The North isn’t just a place, it’s a lifestyle, the small-town lifestyle that is the glue to Nunavut’s character personified by Inuit and their culture, a people different from qallunaat but not that different any more, just different enough to get one to think about one’s own culture and priorities and perhaps do some adjusting”
Postscript
Neil Christopher. 2015. On the Shoulder of a Giant. An Inuit folktale. Inhabit Media.
Acknowledgements
To Quinn and Isla Rose for sharing ‘story time’. To the authors who share their experiences of the Arctic. To Peter for the links to the Guardian. Edward for his graphics skills.
References
Ben Brooks. 2018. Stories for Boys who dare to be different. RP Kids, Philadelphia.
Isabel Vergara. Stephen Hawking. Little People, Big Dreams. Frances Lincoln Children’s Books.
Nick Newbery. 2019. Never a Dull Moment. Nortext Publishing Corp.
Yolanda Poplawska. 2009. A Halifax ABC. Published by Nimbus.
Erling Kagge. 2019. Walking: one step at a time. Penguin Books.
Ernest Blair Experiment 