I was able to drop in on the Colchester Historeum yesterday, and took photos of a couple more banners.

One photo shows a portion of the banner where the focus is on Chief Peter Wilmot and the Mi’kmaw community of Millbrook. The other photo is of a banner that aims to tell a portion of the story of Truro’s African Nova Scotian community. Burnley “Rocky” Jones is featured on that banner, and his photo faces the image of his grandfather on a nearby window blind.
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There are many more banners covering many more aspects of the history of Nova Scotia’s Colchester County, plus artifacts, giant maps, a sound environment and more.

Last night’s horrible attack and its numbing toll of dead and injured is the third I know of in France in 2015. The assault on Charlie Hebdo took place in January; the apprehended incident on a TGV heading for Paris in August and then the slaughter last night.

Two weeks ago I walked the very streets where some of yesterday’s blood was shed. It is astounding, yet clearly the case, that there are more than a few people on this planet willing to engage in such cold-blooded murder in the name of their religious/political faith. Then again, the world has seen this sort of thing across the millennia, and from all corners of the globe, carnage inflicted by and to many different peoples.

We who value freedom of expression and of belief, and want to practice tolerance, must keep our values intact. Yet we have to do so with an increasing vigilance and an awareness that there could well be some in our midst who wish us dead. This year the target has been France, but it could be anywhere on that continent or on any other continent for that matter. That’s because the logic behind such attacks is terror for terror’s sake among those it considers infidels, who in their minds deserve to die.

The current wave of brutality is tied to a messianic branch of Islam, but I have to point out that a few hundred years ago it was European Christians who acted much the same toward the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Beware extremism in all forms.

Paris and France will endure and shine on: like the golden boy high up in the Place de la République, one of the scenes of terror last night. This is a photo I took two weeks ago.

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The Camus Productions installation going into the Colchester Historeum in Truro, NS is nearly complete. I have posted a short video of one corner of the new exhibit on my Facebook site. Here’s a link to that clip: https://www.facebook.com/A-J-B-Johnston-Writer-521601164625413/

Meanwhile, here below is a close-up of some of the artifact displays. Next week the soundscape and video elements will be added to the mix.

As it is Remembrance Day, I am posting a few photos of my and my sister Elinor’s father, Flight Lt. J. A. L. Johnston. He served in the RCAF during the Second World War. These photos, and many more, are now in the collections of the Aero Space Museum of Calgary.

I’m very pleased to see that Cape Breton University Press has placed an ad for Crossings in Canada’s History Magazine (formerly The Beaver). I like to think that readers across the North American continent, and farther afield, would enjoy my interpretation of a gritty and adventurous 18th century.

Thanks to Cape Breton University Press for the striking advertisement it has placed in the 2015 Atlantic Books for the Holidays. That booklet went into today’s Globe & Mail, and I think it goes in other Atlantic newspapers this weekend.