Black Bird (Basilières Novel)
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Black Bird (Basilières Novel)
''Black Bird'' is a 2003 novel by Michel Basilières first published by Knopf Canada. Set in Montreal during a time that resembles the October Crisis, the novel centres on the Desouche household, where both English and French members live together in squalor. It was a ''Globe and Mail'' Best Book of the Year, and gained praise with critics across Canada. Plot summary Grandfather Desouche, a pessimistic old French Montrealer, makes a living by digging bodies out of their graves and selling the embalmed corpses to a doctor who uses them for medical experiments. When the winter comes, the frozen ground forces Grandfather and Uncle to retire for the season. Grandfather, after his wife's death, has taken to hating his neighbors and indulging in food and drink. Grandfather decides to marry Aline Souris, a spinster who cares for her widower father. She becomes the woman of the house, caring for the house and for Grandfather. Aline realizes that Grandfather tricked her into marrying hi ...
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Michel Basilières
Michel Basilières (born 1960 in Montreal) is a Canadian writer, best known for his 2003 debut novel '' Black Bird''."An ambition fulfilled". ''Montreal Gazette'', April 12, 2003. Background Basilières, the son of a Québécois father and an English Canadian mother, grew up as an anglophone despite his French surname. He studied creative writing at Concordia University, but dropped out before graduating, and spent much of his adult life working in bookstores in both Montreal and Toronto. Career ''Black Bird'' was published in 2003 as part of Knopf Canada's New Faces of Fiction series of works by emerging writers."The October Crisis you've never seen". ''Ottawa Citizen'', March 27, 2003. A comic, magic realist take on the October Crisis of 1970, the novel won the Books in Canada First Novel Award for 2004,"First Novel prize goes to October Crisis story". ''Kingston Whig-Standard'', October 14, 2004. and was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and the Co ...
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Alfred A
Alfred may refer to: Arts and entertainment *''Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series * ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne * ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák *"Alfred (Interlude)" and "Alfred (Outro)", songs by Eminem from the 2020 album ''Music to Be Murdered By'' Business and organisations * Alfred, a radio station in Shaftesbury, England *Alfred Music, an American music publisher *Alfred University, New York, U.S. *The Alfred Hospital, a hospital in Melbourne, Australia People * Alfred (name) includes a list of people and fictional characters called Alfred * Alfred the Great (848/49 – 899), or Alfred I, a king of the West Saxons and of the Anglo-Saxons Places Antarctica * Mount Alfred (Antarctica) Australia * Alfredtown, New South Wales * County of Alfred, South Australia Canada * Alfred and Plantagenet, Ontario * Alfred Island, Nunavut * Mount Alfred, British Columbia United States * Alfred, Maine ...
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Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as ''Fort Ville-Marie, Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill around which the early city of Ville-Marie is built. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal, which obtained its name from the same origin as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. The city is east of the national capital Ottawa, and southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City. As of 2021, the city had a population of 1,762,949, and a Census Metropolitan Area#Census metropolitan areas, metropolitan population of 4,291,732, making it the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest city, and List of cen ...
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October Crisis
The October Crisis (french: Crise d'Octobre) refers to a chain of events that started in October 1970 when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross from his Montreal residence. These events saw the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoking the ''War Measures Act'' for the first time in Canadian history during peacetime. The Premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, and the Mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, supported Trudeau's invocation of the ''War Measures Act'', which limited civil liberties and granted the police far-reaching powers, allowing them to arrest and detain 497 people. The Government of Quebec also requested military aid to support the civil authorities, with Canadian Forces being deployed throughout Quebec. Although negotiations led to Cross's release, Laporte was murdered by the kidnappers. The crisis affected the province of Quebec, Canada, especially the metropolitan ...
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The Globe And Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it falls slightly behind the ''Toronto Star'' in overall weekly circulation because the ''Star'' publishes a Sunday edition, whereas the ''Globe'' does not. ''The Globe and Mail'' is regarded by some as Canada's " newspaper of record". ''The Globe and Mail''s predecessors, '' The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' were both established in the 19th century. The former was established in 1844, while the latter was established in 1895 through a merger of ''The Toronto Mail'' and the ''Toronto Empire''. In 1936, ''The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' merged to form ''The Globe and Mail''. The newspaper was acquired by FP Publications in 1965, who later sold the paper to the Thomson Corporation in 1980. In 2001, the paper merged with broadcast ...
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Front De Libération Du Québec
The (FLQ) was a Marxist–Leninist and Quebec separatist guerrilla group. Founded in the early 1960s with the aim of establishing an independent and socialist Quebec through violent means, the FLQ was considered a terrorist group by the Canadian government. It conducted a number of attacks between 1963 and 1970,Reich, Walter. ''Origins of Terrorism''. 1998, page 88 which totaled over 160 violent incidents and killed eight people and injured many more. These attacks culminated with the Montreal Stock Exchange bombing in 1969 and the October Crisis in 1970, the latter beginning with the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross. In the subsequent negotiations, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ. Public outcry and a federal crackdown subsequently ended the crisis and resulted in a drastic loss of support for the FLQ, with a small number of FLQ members being granted refuge in Cuba. FLQ members practiced propaganda of th ...
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Paraiah
Paraiyar, or Parayar or Maraiyar (formerly anglicised as Pariah and Paree), is a caste group found in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and Sri Lanka. Etymology Robert Caldwell, a nineteenth-century missionary and grammarian who worked in South India, was in agreement with some Indian writers of the same period who considered the name to derive from the Tamil word ''parai'' (''drum''). According to this hypothesis, the Paraiyars were originally a community of drummers who performed at auspicious events like weddings and funerals. M. Srinivasa Aiyangar, writing a little later, found this etymology unsatisfactory, arguing that beating of drums could not have been an occupation of so many people. Some other writers, such as Gustav Solomon Oppert, have derived the name from the Tamil word ''poraian'', the name of a regional subdivision mentioned by ancient Tamil grammarians, or the Sanskrit ''pahariya'', meaning "hill man". More recently, George L. Hart's textual anal ...
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2003 Canadian Novels
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societies. Evolution of the Arabic digit The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use. That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically. However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line. The Nāgarī script rotated the lines clockwise, so they appeared horizontally, and ended each line with a short downward stroke on the right. In cursive script, the three strokes were eventually connected to form a glyph resembling a with an additional stroke at the bottom: ३. The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th ...
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Novels Set In Montreal
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ...
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Fiction Set In 1970
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying character (arts), individuals, events, or setting (narrative), places that are imagination, imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to literature, written narratives in prose often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short story, short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any Media (communication), medium, including not just writings but also drama, live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games. Definition Typically, the fictionality of a work is publicly marketed and so the audience expects the work to deviate in some ways from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or character (arts), characters who ar ...
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2003 Debut Novels
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societies. Evolution of the Arabic digit The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use. That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically. However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line. The Nāgarī script rotated the lines clockwise, so they appeared horizontally, and ended each line with a short downward stroke on the right. In cursive script, the three strokes were eventually connected to form a glyph resembling a with an additional stroke at the bottom: ३. The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th ...
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