Here below is the latest link to the Shepher.com website, the book-lover’s source for great new reads.
If I may be a little bold, I suggest you go to the “Author” search block and type in “A J B Johnston” That will take you directly to the five reading lists I have prepared so far.
There is also the subject heading, of course.
Just play with the search function any way you like.
Mary and I have been giving away hundreds of items (books, clothes, old toys etc) over the past few weeks as we prepare to put our house up for sale.
One item I will be keeping, however, is this little plaque.
Yes, they spelled my last name wrong — there is a “t” in our family’s spelling of Johnston — but that doesn’t matter. One gets used to that with Johnson, Johnston and Johnstone as options.
I have nothing but fond memories of my baseball-playing youth, capped off by our team winning the Truro championship and me being given that little plaque. Handing it to me in one of the photos is Ron Williams. He and Gordon Schurman were the co-coaches.
The coaches’ sons, Butch or Ron Williams Jr. and Wayne Schurman, were the two stars of the team. Each was a dominating pitcher, and I was usually their catcher. But sometimes I played shortstop and pitched once. That one outing happened to be in the deciding game for the west end championship. Butch and Wayne had pitched all the innings they were allowed, so someone else had to be on the mound for our team. It was me. The game was close but our team prevailed.
All happy memories.
African Heritage Month begins tomorrow and I want to mark it.
A few years back, I was fortunate to be able to contribute to both the Black Cultural Centre in Cherry Brook and the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre at Birchtown.
More recently, I was able to include material in Kings of Friday Night about racism in Nova Scotia in the 1960s, and about the influence that Black musicians, especially Murray Dorrington, had on The Lincolns.
A bit of that material is highlighted in the short video (micro-doc) that can be found on YouTube, and on this site in the Media section. The video has the same title as the book.
I recently posted a few photos found in drawers or files that I had not explored in years. The scenes brought back lots of welcome memories.
Here are a couple more shots from my time at the Fortress of Louisbourg.
One is of me in a soldier’s costume seeming to be leading a tour in the ruins of the hospital. The photo was a set-up, as all the adults in the shot worked at the Fortress (Allan MacLeod, David Bateman, Frederika Fallis and another whose name escapes me). The kids were from Louisbourg town. I don’t recall why this scene was captured on film; some kind of publicity photo I guess.
The second photo is a glossy b&w of the bunch of us in Fortress costumes down at Boston’s Louisburg Square, on the steps of Louisa May Alcott’s onetime home. I had posted a newspaper clipping of this scene about 10 days ago, but this is the actual photo of the whole set-up.
It occurred to me the other day that I say very little on this site about the exhibits I work on. Mostly, I post about books or book-related events.
Exhibits, however, remain an important part of my working life. Sometimes I do a lot—like develop the storylines and write all the texts and scripts—and sometimes I contribute only in small ways. Nonetheless, I feel each project is important. Exhibits can reach a lot of people with their messages.
I was very fortunate to have worked as an historian at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site for more than 20 years. Back in that period, the Louisbourg historians were the main interpreters of the site and we wrote all the exhibits, and pamphlets and stuff like that. It was great training, and gave me useful skills learning how to boil down complex subjects into pithy summaries. One quickly learns that it’s a lot easier to write long than short.
Coming out of the Fortress of Louisbourg background served me well on many other projects over the years that followed, two of which are depicted below.
One is the travelling exhibit (Ni’n na L’nu) I wrote for the Mi’kmaq Confederacy of PEI and the other is the Vanguard exhibit I researched and wrote for the NS Museum.
I have also written for five exhibits in the Yarmouth and Acadian Shores of Nova Scotia, the Colchester Historeum, and the Black Cultural Centre. Recently, I contributed words to the new exhibit soon to be unveiled at the Halifax Citadel and I am currently developing the content for a new exhibit to be installed at Skmaqn—Port-la-Joye—Fort Amherst NHS on PEI.
I worked at the Fortress of Louisbourg NHS for 23 years, and occasionally took part in some unusual events or activities.
In 1987, a bunch of us—employees and volunteers—participated in Seasell, a Nova Scotia tourism marketing venture that sailed to Boston aboard the Scotia Prince. The trip had many memorable moments from start to end, from the mystery meat to nearly freezing in our bunks to top-notch musical entertainment.
Once the gang got to Boston it was time to don our various Fortress costumes and talk to media and potential visitors to NS. The thinking was apparently that if Bostonians saw people dressed as we were—as 18th-century inhabitants of Louisbourg—they would want to vacation in NS and come see the Fortress. I have no idea how well that approach worked. In retrospect, it seems like a lot of wishful thinking.
One photo taken by a Boston Globe photographer ended up prominently displayed in the paper. That was the photo of Mary Topshee (aka mon épouse) and Edward Storm.
On one outing away from the ship a bunch of us in Fortress costumes took taxis to Louisburg Square where we were again well photographed. In one of those shots, seen below, Mary and I are coming down some steps—of the onetime home of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women—while Valerie Hunt, Don Tryon and Theresa Boone look on.
These photos turned up in a photo album as Mary and I continue to sort through stuff that needs to be sorted before we sell our house in Halifax (which is having an unprecedented real estate boom) and move into an apartment.
The Boston trip reminds me of a couple of others I went on while working with Parks Canada. In those instances I dressed up as Samuel de Champlain. I know! One time was in Manhattan, another in Miami Beach.
I wonder if Tourism people still think wearing period costumes attracts tourists?