What a difference a single person can make.

We know this from countless examples in all of our lives, and yesterday in a ceremony at the Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island we were reminded of that truth yet again. I was not there, but wish I could have been, for it was an event to honour publisher and story-collector Ron Caplan. This time the honour was the Katharine McLennan Award. Previously, he had been made an member of the Order of Canada, and there have been other honours bestowed on him as well.

Ron Caplan came to Canada from the USA during a tumultuous time, when thousands of Americans were heading north to continue their young lives in what they hoped would be a better (and more peaceful) place. Canada was enriched by the mass migration of so many creative, thoughtful and hard-working souls. In Ron’s case, he chose Cape Breton Island. Over the decades that followed, first through Cape Breton’s Magazine and then with Breton Books, he has published a wealth of material about the Island and its people. All of us with a connection to Cape Breton are in his debt. Yes, he had help, he did not do everything by himself. But the vision was his. So, thanks Ron Caplan for an untold number of stories, recollections, tall tales, images, novels and histories. Thanks to you, they were not lost but presented to a wider world. A single person, a single life, and so much accomplished.

In addition to my Facebook site — A J B Johnston, Writer — I am now also using Instagram as a place to post images I find interesting or relevant to this or that. They both serve as a sort of Visual Archives. Sometimes I’ll be putting images on both sites, but more often they will be different postings, reflecting what I perceive to be the differences between the two. I have now posted perhaps a dozen or more images to Instagram, with more to come.

Under a new initiative to get Atlantic Canadians reading Atlantic Canadian books, the region’s publishers have made a large number of their titles available as digital versions (e-books) to libraries.

I am informed that two of my novels, Thomas, A Secret Life (2012) and The Maze, A Thomas Pichon Novel (2014), were made available in this way. So, if you’ve not read either book yet, and prefer the e-book format, those two stories are waiting to be read via a digital download from a library.

For the story of this initiative, go to https://library.novascotia.ca/readlocal.

Fellow historian B. A. (Sandy) Balcom and I are both delighted and honored to be asked to play a role in pulling together the historical background of the Mi’kmaw relationship with the French as it relates to the altar recently returned to the Chapel Island First Nation. Sandy and I have each done work in this area, especially when we used to work for Parks Canada at the Fortress of Louisbourg.

Here is a link to one of the recent stories about the altar’s return.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/historic-altar-returned-to-mi-kmaq-church-after-more-than-250-years-1.2478703

It is long overdue for me to say a few words about the Archives at Truro’s Colchester Historeum.

Located on the second floor of the building the archives is a true treasure-house on the history of Colchester County, and wonderfully run by archivist Nan Harvey. The vast majority of the images that will be presented to the public in the new exhibit installation being prepared by Camus Productions come from that archives.

I’ll be posting another image from the Historeum’s blinds tomorrow, an image that like so many others comes from the Colchester Historical Society’s rich archives.

The image I am posting below forms the bottom half of the cover art on my forthcoming third novel, entitled Crossings (and coming from Cape Breton University Press in the fall of 2015). The top half of the cover is a terrific rendering of Thomas Pichon by Cathy MacLean. The basic information on the image is there to read, but it was obtained for use on the cover of the book through the Granger Historical Picture Archive, New York. All rights reserved. La Rochelle figures in the story as the port from which Thomas sets sail for Louisbourg.

FRANCE: LA ROCHELLE, 1762.
View of the harbor of La Rochelle, France. Copper engraving, 1767, after a painting, 1762, by Joseph Vernet.