This weekend, we found ourselves in Kentville. I picked up a card giving directions to the new location of Tides Art Gallery between Brad’s Decor and the Half Acre Cafe.
At this art cooperative, I found Ron MacInnis’s book, Note in a Bottle.
This was an uplifting memoir, describing life in Nova Scotia leading to the Oceanstone Seaside Resort on the South Shore. Part of the pleasure was the scattering of quotations throughout the book; each in a sense being ‘a note in a bottle’.
Given the state of the world, it was refreshing to read a personal journey, with an emphasis on joy, love and beauty.
Sunday morning, after checking out Cottage Cove on the Bay of Fundy, we arrived at the Clarence Country Christmas Market. We were pleased to bump into a number of old friends and colleagues. Again, I was attracted to a book stand. I picked up a free copy of Trap Street (Issue #1, November 2023). It included a short story, Making Believe by Bob Bent. He is the local author of Spy on Ice and Ida Red.
On the stand, I picked up Daniel Lillford, Ghost Breezes, a series of short stories. From the foreword by G.B Ween
”Both in my personal world and in my professional life, do I think about small places, often with long histories, that are unique but also recognizably and often painfully entangled in large world phenomena. Some of these places appear similar in Norway, England, Canada, Australia.” G.B.Ween, University of Oslo.
Both of these books by local authors take me away from the relentless news of the times.
Acknowledgements
Heather and I appreciate the sterling efforts by local authors. I was happy to see Trap Street #1.
”In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of ‘trapping’ potential plagiarists of the map”.
References
Daniel Lillford, 2022, Ghost Breezes, Short stories, Illustrations by Jesse Lillford-Brighton, Moose House Publications.
Ron MacInnis, 2014, Note in a Bottle, Balboa Press.
Ernest Blair Experiment 
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