Alistair MacLeod
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Alistair MacLeod
Alistair MacLeod, (July 20, 1936 – April 20, 2014) was a Canadian novelist, short story writer and academic. His powerful and moving stories vividly evoke the beauty of Cape Breton Island's rugged landscape and the resilient character of many of its inhabitants, the descendants of Scottish immigrants, who are haunted by ancestral memories and who struggle to reconcile the past and the present. MacLeod has been praised for his verbal precision, his lyric intensity and his use of simple, direct language that seems rooted in an oral tradition. Although he is known as a master of the short story, MacLeod's 1999 novel ''No Great Mischief'' was voted Atlantic Canada's greatest book of all time. The novel also won several literary prizes including the 2001 International Dublin Literary Award. In 2000, MacLeod's two books of short stories, '' The Lost Salt Gift of Blood'' (1976) and ''As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories'' (1986), were re-published in the volume '' Islan ...
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As Birds Bring Forth The Sun And Other Stories
''As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories'' is a collection of short stories by Canadian author Alistair MacLeod set predominantly in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland. It was originally published in 1986. All of its stories were later republished in ''Island''. Macleod explores how family stories and myths, even though they are fictitious, fold into the present to provide comfort in times of emotional distress. The narrator retells the family history of an ancestor who saves and nurtures back to health an injured puppy on the brink of death, only to be violently killed by the dog's offspring a few years later. The dog, known in the stories as the "grey dog of death", consistently appears at times (in dreams or in visions) in the family's history as an omen of imminent death for a relative. The narrator is reminded of the story as he and his siblings sit in a Toronto hospital at the bedside of their ill father. While none of them mention the story to each ...
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Alastair McLeod
Alastair McLeod is a Northern Ireland-Australian celebrity chef He is a regular guest on Ready Steady Cook, ''Queensland Weekender'' and ABC Radio. Alastair also hosts his own food show ″Off the Eaten Track″ that has screened in Australia, Asia, and New Zealand. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is the son of Australian singer Candy Devine. He credits his love of cooking and food to his multicultural background of Torres Strait Islander, Sri Lankan, Danish, Filipino and Spanish ancestry. Alastair worked in several Michelin listed restaurants in Europe, including the Roscoff in Belfast (working for Paul Rankin), and Da Giovanni restaurant in Torino Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. T ..., Italy, as well as other venues in Scotland and France. He is the for ...
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Creative Writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature stories to be considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism, because the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character development. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwriting—are ...
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Mercoal, Alberta
Mercoal, a former coal mining town, is located in the Yellowhead County of western Alberta, Canada. It was one of several communities along the historic Coal Branch segment of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (now part of the Canadian National Railway), which included Embarras, Robb, Coalspur, Coal Valley, Cadomin, Luscar, and Mountain Park. At its peak in the late 1940s and early 1950s the town had over 800 residents. Mercoal declined after the mines closed in 1959, and it is now essentially a ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ... with only a small number of summer residences remaining. It is situated on Highway 40, 70 km southwest of Edson, 8 km (5 mi) west of Coalspur. History Mercoal's name was an acronym for the McLeod River ...
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Edmonton
Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city anchors the north end of what Statistics Canada defines as the " Calgary–Edmonton Corridor". As of 2021, Edmonton had a city population of 1,010,899 and a metropolitan population of 1,418,118, making it the fifth-largest city and sixth-largest metropolitan area (CMA) in Canada. Edmonton is North America's northernmost large city and metropolitan area comprising over one million people each. A resident of Edmonton is known as an ''Edmontonian''. Edmonton's historic growth has been facilitated through the absorption of five adjacent urban municipalities ( Strathcona, North Edmonton, West Edmonton, Beverly and Jasper Place) hus Edmonton is said to be a combination of two cities, two towns and two villages./ref> in addition to a series ...
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Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion began around September and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24 (Black Thursday). It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. Devastating effects were seen in both rich and poor countries with falling personal income, prices, tax revenues, and profits. International trade fell by more than 50%, unemployment in the U.S. rose to 23% and ...
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Homesteading
Homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craft work for household use or sale. Pursued in different ways around the world—and in different historical eras—homesteading is generally differentiated from rural village or commune living by isolation (either socially or physically) of the homestead. Use of the term in the United States dates back to the Homestead Act (1862) and before. In sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in nations formerly controlled by the British Empire, a homestead is the household compound for a single extended family. In the UK the terms ''smallholder'' and ''croft'' are rough synonyms of ''homesteader''. Modern homesteaders often use renewable energy options including solar and wind power. Many also choose to plant and grow heirloom vegetables and to raise heritage livestock. Homesteading is not ...
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Canadian Gaelic
Canadian Gaelic or Cape Breton Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig Chanada, or ), often known in Canadian English simply as Gaelic, is a collective term for the dialects of Scottish Gaelic spoken in Atlantic Canada. Scottish Gaels were settled in Nova Scotia from 1773, with the arrival of the ship ''Hector (ship), Hector''. and continuing until the 1850s. Gaelic has been spoken since then in Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island and on the northeastern mainland of the province. Scottish Gaelic is a member of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages and the Canadian dialectics have their origins in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The parent language developed out of Middle Irish and is closely related to modern Irish. The Canadian branch is a close cousin of the Irish language in Newfoundland. At its peak in the mid-19th century, there were as many as 200,000 speakers of Scottish Gaelic and Newfoundland Irish together, making it the third-most-spoken European languag ...
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Inverness County, Nova Scotia
Inverness County is an historical county and census division of Nova Scotia, Canada. Local government is provided by the Municipality of the County of Inverness, the town of Port Hawkesbury and the Whycocomagh 2 Waycobah First Nation reserve. History Established as the County of Juste au Corps in 1835, Inverness County was given its present name in 1837. It was named after Sir Cameron Inverness of Scotland, the land from which many of the early settlers came. Agriculture and fishing dominated the economy with exports of butter and cattle to Newfoundland and Halifax for most of the nineteenth century. The construction of the Inverness and Richmond Railway in 1901, and the subsequent opening of coal mines at Port Hood, Mabou, and Inverness, created the "only home market" local farmers had ever had. The boundaries of Inverness County had been previously defined when Cape Breton Island was divided by statute into three districts in 1823. In 1996, the county was amalgamated into a ...
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Bay Of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy (french: Baie de Fundy) is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its extremely high tidal range is the highest in the world. The name is likely a corruption of the French word , meaning 'split'. Hydrology Tides The tidal range in the Bay of Fundy is about ; the average tidal range worldwide is only . Some tides are higher than others, depending on the position of the moon, the sun, and atmospheric conditions. Tides are semidiurnal, meaning they have two highs and two lows each day, with about six hours and 13 minutes between each high and low tide. Because of tidal resonance in the funnel-shaped bay, the tides that flow through the channel are very powerful. In one 12-hour tidal cycle, about 100 billion tons (110 billion short tons) of water flows in and out of the bay, which is twice as much as the combined total flow of all the rive ...
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Cape D'Or
Cape d'Or is a headland located near Advocate, Cumberland County, on the Bay of Fundy coast of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. The cape marks the north point of the entrance to the Minas Basin. Cape d'Or is a continuation of the North Mountain tholeiitic basalt formation, and is marked by dramatic cliffs on its western side and cliffs on its southern side overlooking treacherous tidal currents in the Minas Channel. A basalt reef extends from the Cape into the Bay of Fundy where it intersects the violent waters of the Dory Rips, a rip tide created by the collision of three strong tidal currents. History Cape d'Or was called L'mu'juiktuk by the Mi'kmaq, the native people of Nova Scotia. The cape was a centre of tool production and trade for the Mi'kmaq because of veins of hard dense rock such as chert which could be shaped to form sharp edges for tools and weapons. The Mi'kmaq also obtained copper from deposits in the basalt. An archaeological excavation near the lighthous ...
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Eigg
Eigg (; gd, Eige; sco, Eigg) is one of the Small Isles in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. It lies to the south of the Isle of Skye and to the north of the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Eigg is long from north to south, and east to west. With an area of , it is the second-largest of the Small Isles after Rùm. Eigg generates virtually all of its electricity using renewable energy. Eigg has been owned by the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust since 1997, as a community ownership; another stakeholder, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, manages the island as a nature reserve. In April 2019, National Geographic discussed the island in an online article, estimating the population at 107 and the average number of annual visitors at 10,000. Geology The larger part of the island is formed from olivine-phyric basalt flows erupted during the Palaeocene epoch. Together with flows of hawaiite and mugearite, these form the Eigg Lava Formation. The Sgùrr is formed from porphyritic rhyolitic pitchstone e ...
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