Volkswagen Blues
''Volkswagen Blues'' is a French-language novel by French-Canadian writer Jacques Poulin, his sixth, which was originally published by QuĂ©bec-AmĂ©rique in 1984 and was re-issued by Babel in 1998. ''Volkswagen Blues'' was translated into English by Sheila Fischman and published by McClelland & Stewart in 1988 and subsequently re-issued by Cormorant Books in 2002. ''Volkswagen Blues'' was nominated for the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 1984 Governor General's Awards and was one of the selected novels in the 2005 edition of '' Canada Reads'', where it was championed by author and former National Librarian of Canada, Roch Carrier. Plot ''Volkswagen Blues'' is a road novel, in the tradition of Jack Kerouac, about a middle-aged, formerly successful writer who has adopted the pen-name Jack Waterman (a metonymy playing on Waterman pens) and, as the novel begins, is experiencing a bout of writer's block. Discovering an old postcard, the protagonist emb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jacques Poulin
Jacques Poulin (born 23 September 1937 in Saint-GĂ©dĂ©on, Quebec) is a Canadian novelist with a quiet and intimate style of writing. Poulin studied psychology and arts at the UniversitĂ© Laval in Quebec City; he started his career as commercial translator and later became a college guidance counselor. Only after the success of his second novel, ''Jimmy'' (1969), was he able to devote himself completely to his writing. Poulin has written fourteen novels, many of which have been translated into English by Sheila Fischman, and published by Cormorant Books. Poulin lived in Paris for 15 years, but now lives in Quebec City. Poulin's ''Volkswagen Blues'' was selected as a candidate in the CBC's 2005 edition of ''Canada Reads'', where it was championed by Roch Carrier, author and former National Librarian of Canada. Awards and recognition *Winner of the Governor General's Award in 1978 for ''Les grandes marĂ©es''. *Nominated for the Governor General's Award in 1984 for ''Volkswagen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Waterman Pens
The Waterman Pen Company is a major manufacturing company of luxury fountain pens and inks, based in Paris, France. The firm was established in 1884 in New York City by Lewis Waterman, being one of the few remaining first-generation fountain pen companies, as "Waterman S.A." Since 2000 Waterman has been owned by the American group Newell Brands, through its subsidiary, Sanford L.P. History Lewis Waterman, an insurance salesman in New York City, invented the first truly functional fountain pen in the early 1880s. A typical pen of the day leaked all over a contract he had prepared for a large policy, and by the time Waterman returned with a new document, his client had signed with someone else. Later, Waterman was working as a pen salesman in New York for a new company founded in the spring of 1883 by a volatile inventor named Frank Holland. Holland abandoned his company after only six weeks; Waterman stepped in and took over, fitting the pens with a simplified feed of his own desi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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French Colonization Of The Americas
France began colonizing the Americas in the 16th century and continued into the following centuries as it established a colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. France established colonies in much of eastern North America, on several Caribbean islands, and in South America. Most colonies were developed to export products such as fish, rice, sugar, and furs. The first French colonial empire stretched to over at its peak in 1710, which was the second largest colonial empire in the world, after the Spanish Empire. As they colonized the New World, the French established forts and settlements that would become such cities as Quebec, Trois-RiviĂšres and Montreal in Canada; Detroit, Green Bay, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Mobile, Biloxi, Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the United States; and Port-au-Prince, Cap-HaĂŻtien (founded as ''Cap-Français'') in Haiti, Cayenne in French Guiana and SĂŁo LuĂs (founded as ''Saint-Louis de Maragnan'') in Brazil. North America Background The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Allegory
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-)hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts. Etymology First attested in English in 1382, the word ''allegory'' comes from Latin ''allegoria'', the latinisation of the Greek áŒÎ»Î»Î·ÎłÎżÏία (''allegorĂa''), "veiled language, figurative", which in turn comes from both áŒÎ»Î»ÎżÏ (''allos''), "another, different" ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was a eastâwest, large-wheeled wagon route and Westward Expansion Trails, emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the current states of Idaho and Oregon. The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and trappers from about 1811 to 1840 and was only passable on foot or on horseback. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared increasingly farther west and eventually reached all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, at which point what came to be called the Oregon Trail was complete, even as almost annual improvements were made in the form of bridges, cutoffs, ferries, and roads, which made the t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are, but many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions, the Indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and gold smithing. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by Indigenous peoples; some countries have ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Western United States
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the West'' changed. Before about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. The frontier moved westward and eventually the lands west of the Mississippi River were considered the West. The U.S. Census Bureau's definition of the 13 westernmost states includes the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin to the Pacific Coast, and the mid-Pacific islands state, Hawaii. To the east of the Western United States is the Midwestern United States and the Southern United States, with Canada to the north, and Mexico to the south. The West contains several major biomes, including arid and semi-arid plateaus and plains, particularly in the American Southwest; forested mountains, including three major ranges, the Sierra Neva ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayorâcouncil , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , area_tot ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United StatesâCanada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 27th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and the 14th-largest in the United States. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background. ''Time'' named Detroit as one of the fifty World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore. Detroit is a major port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest regional economy in t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, located on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later designat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gaspé, Quebec
GaspĂ© is a city at the tip of the GaspĂ© Peninsula in the GaspĂ©sieâĂles-de-la-Madeleine region of eastern Quebec in Canada. GaspĂ© is located about northeast of Quebec City, and east of Rimouski. As of the 2021 Canadian Census, the city had a total population of 15,063. GaspĂ© is where Jacques Cartier took possession of New France (now part of Canada) in the name of François I of France on July 24, 1534. Etymology The most common assumption is that "GaspĂ©" may come from the Miêkmaq word ''Gespeg'' which means "Land's end". However, other theories hold that the name may be a mutation of the Basque word ''geizpe'' or ''kerizpe'' which means "shelter" or "place of refuge". Another theory is that it is named after Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real, who explored the Labrador in 1500. In 1600, Englishman Richard Hakluyt used the name ''Gaspay'' in his translation of ''Cosmosgraphie'' by Jean Alfonse, which became the common spelling in the early 17th century. Thereafte ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |