Forty Eight Days Adrift

Captain Joe Barbour was born in Newton, Bonavista Bay, in 1898. He began sailing as a boy and at the age of twenty-one he first became master of a vessel. For many years he sailed the treacherous waters of Newfoundland's Northeast coast, carrying provisions from St. John's to the outports. In 1932, while on one of these voyages in his three mastered schooner, Neptune II, he was driven off course across the Atlantic to the coast of Scotland by several storms. His thrilling story is the subject of this book.

In the face of loneliness and brutality, a group of boys in the Mount Kildare Orphanage, located in the small city of St. John's, Newfoundland, bands together to look out for one another and secretly train for the city's marathon.

There is a little-known tradition of witch lore in Newfoundland culture. Those believed to have the power to influence the fortunes of others are not mythological characters but neighbours, relations, or even friends. Drawing from her own interviews and a wealth of material from the Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive, Barbara Rieti explores the range and depth of Newfoundland witch tradition, looking at why certain people acquired reputations as witches, and why others considered themselves bewitched. The tales that emerge - despite their seemingly fantastic elements of spells and black heart books, hags, and healing charms - concern everyday affairs and reveal the intense social interdependence central to outport life. Frequently featuring women, they provide fascinating new perspectives on female coping strategies in a volatile economy. By addressing the perennial human issues at the heart of witchcraft - construction of enmity and intertwined fate - these narrative accounts also illuminate older witch beliefs revealed in witchcraft trial documents. Making Witches shows that in storytelling communities with a rich legacy of witch lore, witch tradition has endured well into the twentieth century.

Seafaring before the twentieth century bristled with peril. The safe haven of your vessel might be destroyed by tempest or misadventure, your security scuttled. When you were cast away with only the resources of pluck, stamina, hope – and luck. Where you might end up on the expanse of endless sea facing the prospect of imminent dehydrated, starving death. Or on a safe but potentially forbidding – yet occasionally lush – outcrop of an isolated shore, amongst which perils abounded accounts of courage and companionship. These are narratives of castaways abandoned to fend for themselves, and the ordeals they endured and survived and in remembrance of the seafarers who did not.

In a series of beautifully crafted letters, former Hudson's Bay Company "servant" Leonard Budgell describes life in the Canadian North from the 1920s to the 1980s, as could only be done by someone who lived and worked there.

A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!