Antonine Maillet

In this Canadian classic, a washerwoman fills the stage with the voice of poverty and of pride.

A veritable artist, Maillet becomes a “creator of sounds, of colours, of forms and words.” As she speaks, she paints a vast landscape of mountains and oceans, history and story, using the tools on her palette: blending the colours of myths and those of contemporary issues, creating an epic poem in a profoundly personal voice. This country she portrays is both young and old, speaks two languages, has a rich subconscious, and aspirations. She ends her lecture by re-telling a story originally written by Rabelais— which, incidentally, was penned the same year as the discovery of America. The grande dame of storytelling uses her art to make an appeal for solidarity, in favour of the protection of cultures and the preservation of languages. Will her country, she asks, the one made “of many faces” and paradoxes, “be able to give nations of diverse origins their rightful place?” Renowned, notably, for her iconic play La Sagouine, Antonine Maillet received the prestigious Prix Goncourt for her novel Pélagie-la-Charette, thereby becoming the first non-European laureate of the most prestigious award in France. Since then, she has published over twenty novels and many plays, and also translated several celebrated authors such as Shakespeare. She is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Governor General Literary Award, the Royal Society of Canada’s Lorne Pierce Medal, and the Prix Goncourt. This book is bilingual.

Winner of the 1979 Governor General's Award for fiction, Antonine Maillet's virtuoso creation, The Tale of Don L'Orignal, is now back in print. Maillet's tale begins one day, not so very long ago but back in the youth of the world, when a hay-covered island materialized off shore, an island populated by fleas who soon took human form. The leader of this uncouth crew of have-nots, Don l'Orignal, wore a moose-antler crown as his badge of office. At his right hand were his brave lieutenants: his son, Noume, and his general, Michel-Archange. The general's wife, the doughty charwoman, spy, and rabble-rouser La Sagouine, had one finger in every pie and one raised to her neighbour, La Sainte. The Flea Islanders were constantly at odds with the almost as clever but far more civilized upper crust of the mainland village: the mayoress, the schoolteacher, the merchant, the banker. When they invaded and tried to steal a keg of molasses, the outcome of the mock-heroic battle was unclear, except that La Sainte's son, the hapless young Citrouille, and Adeline, the merchant's lovely daughter, had fallen in love. With the insider's accumulation of oral history, gossip, and shrewd hindsight, Antonine Maillet has conjured up a fictional Acadia that her ancestors would relish. Perhaps those who could read it would have even understood it: she wrote Don l'Orignal in a version of 16th-century domestic French that she adapted for modern readers. In this far-fetched, but always entertaining fable, Maillet holds up a mirror to Acadian history and to an all too fallible human nature.

In 1979, the legendary Acadian novelist Antonine Maillet won France's most coveted literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for the original version of this novel, Pélagie-la-Charette. In her acceptance speech, she said, "I have avenged my ancestors." Goose Lane Editions is proud to re-issue this classic of Acadian literature to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Acadie and the début of the novel's musical adaptation, Pélagie: An Acadian Odyssey. Directed by Michael Shamata, the musical brings together the words and lyrics of Vincent de Tourdonnet and music by Allen Cole. It will be presented at the Atlantic Theatre Festival in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, from July 27 to August 22, following successful runs at CanStage's Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto and The National Arts Centre in Ottawa. This funny, lyrical account of a daring Acadian widow's journey home from exile is the Mother Courage of Acadian literature. At thirty-five, Pélagie is a survivor of the Great Disruption of 1755, when British soldiers deported Acadians who had farmed along the Bay of Fundy for generations. Splitting up families, the soldiers tossed men, women, and children pell-mell into ships and dispatched them to ports all along the eastern seaboard of the US and to Louisiana. When it was heard years later that the British would tolerate their return to Acadie, thousands loaded possessions and children onto handcarts and set out on foot. After fifteen years of working as a slave in the cotton fields of Georgia, Pélagie, too, has had enough. Drawn home as if by a magnet, inspired by her love of her family and of Beausoleil, a heroic sea captain, and determined to outrace the "Wagon of Death," Pélagie sets off to take her people on a 3,000-mile trek back to their homeland. Her single cart, pulled by six oxen, soon attracts scattered Cormiers and LeBlancs, Landrys and Poiriers, Maillets and Légers. Together, this caravan of colourful Acadians undertakes a ten-year journey up the Atlantic coast to their childhood homes.

An Introduction to Stellar Astrophysics aspires to provide the reader with an intermediate knowledge on stars whilst focusing mostly on the explanation of the functioning of stars by using basic physical concepts and observational results. The book is divided into seven chapters, featuring both core and optional content: Basic concepts Stellar Formation Radiative Transfer in Stars Stellar Atmospheres Stellar Interiors Nucleosynthesis and Stellar Evolution and Chemically Peculiar Stars and Diffusion. Student-friendly features include: Detailed examples to help the reader better grasp the most important concepts A list of exercises is given at the end of each chapter and answers to a selection of these are presented. Brief recalls of the most important physical concepts needed to properly understand stars. A summary for each chapter Optional and advanced sections are included which may be skipped without interfering with the flow of the core content. This book is designed to cover the most important aspects of stellar astrophysics inside a one semester (or half-year) course and as such is relevant for advanced undergraduate students following a first course on stellar astrophysics, in physics or astronomy programs. It will also serve as a basic reference for a full-year course as well as for researchers working in related fields.

At the age of 80, Evangeline is uprooted from her beloved Acadia and sent to Montreal to live with her son and daughter-in-law. One day, in a city park, she encounters three other 'exiles'. Confessions, revelations and personal entanglements ensue in a play that passionately affirms the human dignity and right to self-determination of the elderly and the dispossessed.

Just Fine traces the mishaps and misadventures of a conflicted agoraphobe: a woman psychologically restricted to a life indoors but spiritually inclined to wander the meadows, roads, and community beyond the house and river of her youth. Her struggle assumes historic proportions when her neighbours dream of their own escapes from the insular, predictable cadences of life in Acadia: Camil changes his name; Terry embarks on a voyage of discovery; Carmen studies exotic river deltas; Elizabeth searches for a transcendent love; and the agoraphobe, dreams of travelling to Paris and telling her story to a French television star. The course of their endeavours, like the river that dominates their town, twists and turns. In its brilliant collage of river lore, art history, astrology, and mythology France Daigle's rich and witty novel journeys beyond the cultural, psychological, and literary bounds within which its characters live and leads us to where history, fantasy, and memory collide. This is the initial work in the trilogy which also includes A Fine Passage and Life's Little Difficulties.

Inspired by history, "Story of a Nation is a beautifully illustrated collection of original stories from some of Canada's most celebrated and best-loved authors. Twelve of the country's finest writers, including Margaret Atwood, Roch Carrier, Timothy Findley, Antonine Maillet, Alberto Manguel and Michael Turner, when presented with the question, What are the great events in Canadian history? responded by travelling into the past to discover the moments, both familiar and unexpected, that shaped our nation. Drawing on their skills as master storytellers, the contributors to this collection offer wonderfully imaginative accounts of what it's like to make history. Margaret Atwood casts her eye back to 1759 and brilliantly captures the journal entries of a frightened French woman, trapped in Quebec City as the English forces attack. In "The First of July," David Macfarlane's youthful narrator loses himself in the papers of an elderly neighbour, and through the records of her past, experiences the heartbreaking, stunting loss of war. In Thomas King's hilarious story, "Where the Borg Are," a young boy named Milton Friendlybear offers a Star Trekkian reinterpretation of the Indian Act, linking its significance to the fate of the universe. And revisiting an occasion of huge national pride, Michelle Berry tells the story of a four-year-old girl caught up in the excitement of the 1972 Summit Series, hopeful that the passion of hockey will hold her crumbling family together. Each of these magical stories is further brought to life by an accompanying visual narrative. Vividly illustrating the joy, sorrow, anger and passion of more than two centuries of our history, here are fiftyunforgettable images: the Belgian Queen, a seductive reminder that the Klondike of Roch Carrier's story was anything but a purely masculine domain; Kurt Meyer, the SS officer who represented evil in the childhood of John Ralston Saul and of many other children whose fathers landed on Juno beach in June 1944; and Viola Desmond at the Hi-Hat Club, whose glamour and elegance contrasted starkly with the small-minded racism so powerfully chronicled by Dionne Brand. With a preface by Rudyard Griffiths, executive director of The Dominion Institute, and introduced by distinguished historian Christopher Moore, "Story of a Nation is a moving celebration of Canada's extraordinary history and our exceptional writers.