Nova Scotia's Historic Harbours

The cities, towns, and villages along Nova Scotia's coastlines have witnessed battles, shipwrecks, celebrations, and tragedies. They have been home to Indigenous peoples and havens for explorers, fishers, and traders. These harbour towns have provided refuge to people escaping intolerable social or political conditions, and joy to those seeking adventure, or love, or a better life. Some communities have blossomed and others have merely survived, but all evolved out of the hard work of the people who have called these seaside places home. With twenty-five historical photos, and featuring profiles of more than fifty harbours-from the Bedford Basin to Shelburne Harbour to Cobequid Bay, Louisbourg, and Canso-Nova Scotia's Historic Harbours explores each harbour's historical significance and transports readers back in time as trusted historian Joan Dawson looks at how these communities have been shaped by the sea, and how Nova Scotia's growth has been driven by its harbours. Inhabiting the lives of the artists who find themselves in the port city taking refuge from the Depression, Lay Figures explores relationships between art and lived experience, artist and subject, artist and audience, and between margins and centre, and traces the development of a young female writer against the backdrop of the Depression and early war years in Saint John. In a story that couples bitter despair with exuberant triumphs, Elizabeth and her fellow artists make life-changing discoveries about politics and social responsibility, desire and betrayal.