One of the darkest events in Canadian history, Le grand derangement, is replete with the drama of war, politics and untold human suffering. Award-winning author Dean Jobb has written a dramatic and compelling account. The year 2005 marks the 250th anniversary of the expulsion. This book is a bridge across the centuries for the descendants of a founding people of this nation, whose courage and resourcefulness still resonate in modern-day Acadie.

Please join us for a reading and book signing on Wednesday, July 13th at 7:00 p.m. at St. Paul’s Anglican Church Hall, 125 Main St., Sackville.

Our thanks to the Tantramar Heritage Trust for co-sponsoring this event.

Everyone is welcome. Admission is free.

Tidewater Books proudly presents Krista Johansen, reading from her new book “Torrie and the Pirate-Queen” on April 14, 6:30 p.m. at the Sackville Public Library.

Krista will also be presented with the International Board on Books for Young People Frances E. Russell Award at this event.

Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome. Please come out and meet our exceptional local author.

Seventh Book from NB Children’s Author-
The latest book by NB children’s author K.V. Johansen, Torrie and the Pirate-Queen, has been published by Annick Press. A fantasy novel for children aged 7-13, Torrie and the Pirate-Queen tells the story of Anna, a young sea captain on a quest to rescue her father from Nevilla the Pirate-Queen. She has a dozen retired pirates to crew her ship, the Shrike, and a secret weapon: Torrie, oldest of the Old Things of the Wild Forest. Pirates, magical treasure, a sea-serpent, a marooned prince, and a kingdom under a terrible curse … it turns out to be far from a simple rescue mission for Torrie and Anna.
Torrie and the Pirate-Queen is the much-anticipated sequel to Johansen’s first book, Torrie and the Dragon. Johansen is also the author of the Pippin and Mabel picture book series, a young adult fantasy short story collection, The Serpent Bride, and an e-book essay collection on children’s fantasy, as well as short stories and numerous magazine articles. Ms. Johansen lives in Sackville, NB, where she is currently editing volume IX of the late Donald Jack’s award-winning Bandy Papers series, Stalin vs. Me, and working on the next book in the Torrie series, as well as a history of and guide to children’s fantasy literature, which will be coming out this fall. Her website address is: www.pippin.ca

Tidewater Books is thrilled to partner with Mount Allison University to present renouned Canadian author George Elliott Clarke at the Ownes Art Gallery, February 10 at 7 p.m. He will be reading from his new novel “George and Rue”. Copies will be available for purchase and signing. There is no admission, and all are welcome.

George and Rue by George Elliott Clarke

IT WAS, BY ALL ACCOUNTS, a ‘slug-ugly” crime. Brothers George and Rufus Hamilton, in a robbery gone wrong, drunkenly bludgeoned a taxi driver to death with a hammer. It was 1949, and the two siblings, part Mi’kmaq and part African, were both hanged in Fredericton for the killing.
Those facts are also skeletons in George Elliott Clarke’s family closet. Both repelled and intrigued by his ancestral cousins’ deeds, Clarke set out to discover just what kind of forces would reduce men to crime, violence and, ultimately, murder. His findings took shape in the 2001 Governor General’s Award-winning Execution Poems and culminates brilliantly in George & Rue. The novel shifts seamlessly back into the killers’ pasts, recounting a bleak and sometimes comic tale of victims of violence who became killers, a black community too poor and too shamed to assist its downtrodden members, and a white community bent on condemning all blacks as dangerous outsiders.
George & Rue is a book about a death that brims with fierce vitality and dark humour. Infused with the sensual, rhythmic beauty that so often defines Clarke’s writing, here is a literary debut that will be marked by celebration-and controversy.

Tidewater Books is thrilled to present local author Peter Manchester reading from his newest publication, “Fabulous Fabrications from Busted Hockey Gear”, Wednesday, December 1, 2004 at 7:30 pm at Tidewater Books. All are welcome.

In his breakaway bestseller “50 Things to Make with a Broken Hockey Stick”, Peter Manchester transformed the agony of defeated sticks into the thrill of a new creation, with a slap of good humour that kept readers chuckling all the way through the book. Now, with the publication of “Fabulous Fabrications from Busted Hockey Gear”, the hockey stick handyman has turned his creative talents to the rest of the equipment left to fester in the basement – helmets, pads, gloves, skates, and even cast-off hockey uniforms.

In this oh-so-Canadian book of how-to humour, a wonderland of ‘construct-o-rama experiences” awaits devotees of rink junk. Who would have thought of an electric guitar for only $15 or a drum set made entirely of cast-off helmets? A leather skate becomes a bird or a ball cap; a dismantled helmet becomes a mask; a pair of pants becomes an amazing sling chair. Basement artistes can build a lap steel guitar from sticks, fashion a guiro from a bit of stick and a plastic knee protector, mount a row of helmets into a set of timbales, and presto! a garage band like no other. A tent, a crouching dog, a mechanical cheerleader – with Manchester’s step-by-step instructions and clear, humorous illustrations, all these things and more can rise like, well, like a squawking bird, if not a phoenix, from a mound of hockey detritus.

Hockey and art may seem like an unlikely mix but don’t tell that to artist/illustrator Peter Manchester. A long-time practitioner of eco-art, he has been turning trash into treasures for over a decade. Transforming hockey sticks into works of useful art was a natural transition for someone with his unique sense of humour and vision.

The son of a Methodist missionary, Manchester spent his childhood in the US, Europe, and Africa. He moved to New Mexico in the 1970s to attend university and stayed for 25 years. In the late 1990s, he followed his wife and children to Sackville, New Brunswick, where he ‘discovered” hockey. He has been huge fan ever since. When he isn’t dreaming up new uses for hockey sticks or goalie masks, Peter Manchester is a busy illustrator and painter. His paintings have been exhibited at galleries such as the Albuquerque Museum, the Tamarind Institute, the Owens Art Gallery, and the Confederation Centre of the Arts Gallery, and can be found in numerous private and public collections.

The departments of Political Science, International Relations and Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University are pleased to host a lecture by historian and journalist Gwynne Dyer as part of the Bell Speaker’s Fund series.
Gwynne Dyer holds a Ph.D. in military history from the University of London, and was a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal military Academy Sandhurst. He writes a twice-weekly newspaper column on international affairs that is published in 175 newspapers in 40 countries. Born in Newfoundland, he now lives in London.
Gwynne Dyer will be reading from his new book “War: the New Edition”. Copies will be available for signing and sale, as will copies of his last book “Future Tense: The Coming World Order” which has just been published in trade paperback. The reading will take place at Brunton Auditorium on Thursday, Oct. 28 at 7:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome.

Tidewater Books and the Department of Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University are pleased to host a lecture by Katherine Barber, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd edition. Speaking on the topic of Canadian English as a seperate entity, Barber will speak at the Owens Art Gallery on Wednesday, Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m. The Canadian Oxford Dictioanry will be available for sale. All are welcome.

Tidewater Books is thrilled to partner with the English Department at Mount Allison University to present Arthur Motyer reading from his new novel, “What’s Remembered”, Tuesday, October 5, 2004 at 7:30 pm at The Windsor Theatre on campus. A reception will follow and all are welcome.

Peter Lindley, now forty-nine years old and the gay son of an Anglican clergyman who has lost his faith, tells a younger man he has just met of his life-long search for authentic love. Haunted by a story he once heard about the poet Shelley, who demanded that a baby who hadn’t learned to talk should tell all it knew about the eternal beyond, Peter also feels there has to be an answer somewhere, even when it remains just out of his reach. Starting at a time when being gay in Canada was a criminal offense, and ending in 1981, unaware of what tragedies lie ahead, Peter’s search takes him from the new world to the old and back again.

Now Professor Emeritus of English, Mount Allison University, Arthur Motyer held a number of positions there and, earlier, at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec. Born in Bermuda, he was educated at Mount Allison University and Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He lives in Sackville, New Brunswick. This is his first novel.

Fog Forest Gallery will host a new exhibition entitled Dragon Boats, Kisses and Fishes- Recent Illustrations by Peter Manchester with an opening reception on Friday, September 24, 2004 at 8 p.m. This exhibition will feature illustrations which were created to accompnay various publications. Tidewater Books is pleased to have these publications on hand for signing and sale: Something Completely Different authored by Vivian Medley-Mark; Kisses, Kisses, Kisses authored by Darlene Ryan; and Fishes in the Sea authored by Shirley Downey. This event is open to all, and is part of the Sackville Fall Fair Celebrations.

Tidewater Books and the Tantramar Heritage Trust are thrilled to launch “At the Crossroads: A History of Sackville, New Brunswick” by renowned local historian William B. Hamilton. A reading and signing will take place Friday, Sept. 24, 2004 at 7 pm at St. Paul’s Anglican Hall, West Main St., Sackville. A reception will follow.

At the Crossroads is a history of settlement on the Isthmus of Chignecto and the place that would become the town of Sackville, New Brunswick. William B. Hamilton takes us from the earliest Mi’kmaq activity 4000 years ago through to the town’s centennial celebrations in 2003. Along the way, we are introduced to life in the Acadian communities of the eighteenth century, later waves of settlement, agricultural pursuits, the foundries, the establishment of the Mount Allison University facilities, the town’s shipbuilding era, issues of governance and incorporation, the wars, the local building boom of the 1960s and the increasing focus on tourism, heritage and arts that characterize the most recent decades. Throughout the centuries, Hamilton draws our attention to the town’s continuous reliance on its position as a crossroads.

At the Crossroads is the result of Hamilton’s keen and conscientious fascination with how people understand and engage with the past. His method, which he calls “working backward into history” incorporates varied perspectives and sources of information, and operates from a local experience, first and foremost. Throughout the book Hamilton provides a colourful and active picture of Sackville’s history and its position in regional, national and international affairs.

This is a community and a history filled with newspaper wars, fires, political fervor, ambitious building projects, undying volunteer efforts, dedication to learning, radio waves, business savvy and more. This is a book not only for those who know and love Sackville, but for anyone seeking a local perspective on Maritime and Canadian history, and a new and engaging approach to the past.

Tidewater Books is please to present Rigel Crockett reading from “Fair Wind and Plenty of It: A Modern-Day Tall Ship Adventure”. The reading will take place on Friday, June 11, 2004 at 7 p.m. at the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University. Rigel is a graduate of Mt. Allison and a former native of Lunenberg, N.S. Everyone is welcome.
For those who are interested, visit Rigel’s website at www.TallShipAdventure.com