Breton

Robert J. Morgan has been Senior Historian at the Fortress of Louisbourg and Professor of History at Cape Breton University.

For more than two decades, Richard MacKinnon--Canada Research Chair in Intangible Cultural Heritage, Cape Breton University--has researched Cape Breton's rich cultural heritage: from protest songs to company houses, from co-operative housing to nicknames, from log buildings to cockfighting.In Discovering Cape Breton Folklore, professor MacKinnon revists some of his research and exposes us to some new.

Biff and whiff, baker’s fog and lu’sknikn, pie social and milling frolic – these are just a few examples of the distinctive language of Cape Breton Island, where a puck is a forceful blow and a Cape Breton pork pie is filled with dates, not pork. The first regional dictionary devoted to the island’s linguistic and cultural history, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English is a fascinating record of the island’s rich vocabulary. Dictionary entries include supporting quotations culled from the editors’ extensive interviews with Cape Bretoners and considerable study of regional variation, as well as definitions, selected pronunciations, parts of speech, variant forms, related words, sources, and notes, giving the reader in-depth information on every aspect of Cape Breton culture. A substantial and long-awaited work of linguistic research that captures Cape Breton’s social, economic, and cultural life through the island’s language, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English can be read with interest by Backlanders, Bay byes, and those from away alike.

A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards by most French standards; formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Déguignet is unique not only as a literate Breton peasant, but in his skepticism for the church, his interest in science, astronomy and languages, and for his keen—often caustic—observations of the world and people around him. Born into rural poverty in 1834, Déguignet escapes Brittany by joining the French Army in 1854, and over the next fourteen years he fights in the Crimean war, attends Napoleon III’s coronation ceremonies, supports Italy’s liberation struggle, and defends the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico. He teaches himself Latin, French, Italian and Spanish and reads extensively on history, philosophy, politics, and literature. He returns home to live as a farmer and tobacco-seller, eventually falling back into dire poverty. Throughout the tale, Deguignet’s freethinking, almost anarchic views put him ahead of his time and often (sadly, for him) out of step with his contemporaries. Déguignet’s voluminous journals (nearly 4,000 pages in total) were discovered in a farmhouse in Brittany a century after they were written. This narrative was drawn from them and became a surprise bestseller when published in France in 1998.

With over 100 of her best poems plus George Elliott Clarke's essay on the achievement of Rita Joe, The Blind Man's Eyes confirms Joe's place in Canadian literature. From a homeless child who led a blind beggar door-to-door, Rita Joe emerged as spokesperson for her nation and for the individual's heart. Her much anthologized poems and rare autobiography have riveted her message to the Canadian conscience, revealing both the Mi'kmaq people and the universal artist's heart of this Elder.

This workbook is a tool for assessing inclusion quality in early childhood centres and for helping centre move toward higher quality inclusion. The Scale provides a picture of sustainable and evolving inclusion quality--an emerging issue as more children with special needs attend communitybased centres and as inclusion pioneers leave their centres and a new generation of directors and early childhood educators take on the inclusion challenges.