If you have not seen today’s Globe and Mail, here’s an editorial I recommend. It states clearly why the Colossus of Green Cove would be such a gigantic mistake.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorials/mother-canada-statue-is-hubristic-ugly-and-just-plain-wrong/article25083043/

I was fortunate to have worked for Parks Canada back when it had thoughtful policies for the public good that it actually followed. That day seems to have passed, at least with regard to Green Cove within Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

I find it hard to process how a federal agency that has the mandate to protect and manage its national parks puts up money (100K) to support building something like the colossus that has been proposed. Does the person behind this project have ties with PM Harper we should know about?

Canada already has hundreds, likely thousands of war memorials. There are statues and other monuments in towns and cities across the land, and then there are the schools, highways, streets and buildings named after those who have served. Do they not count?

Each time our Canadian vets go to Holland, I am so very touched by the way that country shows its respect and affection for those from our country who liberated theirs seventy years ago. I take the example of the Dutch as proof of what “Never Forgotten” truly means. It comes from people’s hearts, not giant statues. What Canada needs is not a colossus but its history taught in its schools, and for families to do their part bringing up their kids.

I do sympathize with the people of northern Cape Breton who think this project will bring them some work in construction and a few ongoing jobs. But there have to be better ways to employ people than a mistake like this statue.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/mother-canada-project-given-100k-parks-canada-grant-1.3122741

It’s too early to share, but the cover for the third novel in the Thomas Pichon series is taking shape. Mike Hunter of Cape Breton University Press sent me two different possibilities. I assume that the artwork I was sent is by Cathy MacLean, who did the first two covers. I have not met her, but she is a definite talent.

I have no idea which cover will get the nod, but I think people will like either one, once it’s further developed and finalized. The style will be the same as in the first two, with a twin-image cover. The title of the forthcoming third novel is Crossings. Yes, in the plural, because there are quite a few. It will be out in the fall of 2015.

I have posted ten or so photos of my recent trip to Québec on my Facebook page, at the link given below. Here are two of them.

J’ai affiché une dizaine de photos prises pendant mon bref voyage à Québec sur mon Facebook au lien en dessous. En voici deux.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-J-B-Johnston-Writer/521601164625413?

Last week I was in Calgary and one of the reasons for the trip was to deposit my father’s many photo albums, films, stills and documents relating to his service in the RCAF with the Aero Space Museum. It seemed like the best fit. I had offered the material to the Beaton Institute of the Cape Breton University a few years ago, but archivists Catherine Arseneau and Jane Arnold wisely suggested the collection of hundreds of images and other material should go somewhere more “national”. The Calgary museum’s focus includes the history of the RCAF. Calgary was also where my father was born, and one of their buildings is an old hangar I suspect he was in during the Second World War when he was out west.

I was delighted to find within the museum, among their collection of planes, what would seem to be the very plane my father and other crew were flying in the photo I have posted below. It’s an Avro 652 Anson Mk. II.

The opening of the new Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown, NS, is a great moment in the history of Canada. The pursuit and achievement of freedom by the Black Loyalists, a story long overlooked, is one that should touch and inspire everyone. Congratulations to Elizabeth Cromwell, Beverly Cox and everyone else in the Black Loyalist community who persevered to make it happen.

I am proud to have played a role at the concept design stage as part of the Camus Productions team. Please follow the link below to a story by Elissa Bernard published in the Halifax Chronicle Herald on May 18, 2015.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/thenovascotian/1287408-black-loyalist-heritage-centre-shining-light-into-a-long-dark-corner