Blain Henshaw – lisa Publishing and Vagrant Press lisa Publishing is the largest English-language publisher east of Toronto Tue, 02 Jul 2024 22:33:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 153484567 Legacy of a Weymouth Woman /store/legacy-of-a-weymouth-woman.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=legacy-of-a-weymouth-woman Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:36:55 +0000 /store/legacy-of-a-weymouth-woman Legacy of a Weymouth Woman is the story of Lillian May Henshaw, a resourceful and talented woman, an advocate for education and an early feminist who, perhaps, was just a […]

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Madam of the Maritimes /store/madam-of-the-maritimes.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=madam-of-the-maritimes Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:34:56 +0000 /store/madam-of-the-maritimes Here is the fascinating true story of how a poor girl from the Prairies rose above poverty and hardship to become the best known, and seemingly untouchable, madam in this […]

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The Peddlers /store/the-peddlers.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-peddlers Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:32:59 +0000 http://nimbus.ca/?post_type=product&p=79007 The Peddlers is the story of the leading roles some Nova Scotians played in the North American door-to-door sales profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It starts with the life of Nova Scotia-born Alfred C. Fuller, the Fuller Brush Man, whose humble upbringing in the Annapolis Valley laid the foundation for what became one of the biggest businesses of its type in the world.

It also follows the career of Yarmouth County's Frank Stanley Beveridge, who co-founded the highly successful Stanley Home Products company. From the tough times of the 1920s and 1930s, the story showcases the Lebanese immigrant backpack peddler Herman Rofihe who established a quality men's wear store that served three generations.

The Peddlers takes you on a door-to-door tour of the origins of household brands like Minard's and Sloan's Liniment, JR Watkins and Rawleigh Products, Fraser's Liniment, Gates Little Gem Pills, Buckley Cough Syrups, Muskol, and other medicinal enterprises founded by peddlers, many of them Nova Scotians. It also chronicles a century-old Hants County murder case involving two young peddlers — one the victim, the other the perpetrator.

Filled with these fascinating stories of Nova Scotia's history in the door-to-door trade, The Peddlers is a tribute to the men and women of a bygone era in merchandising, the likes of which will never be seen again.

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Rescue at Moose River /store/rescue-at-moose-river.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rescue-at-moose-river Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:31:45 +0000 /store/rescue-at-moose-river.html/rescue-at-moose-river On Easter weekend in 1936, three men went down into an old rundown gold mine at Moose River in a remote area of Nova Scotia. While below, they became trapped by a massive cave-in at the 141-foot level. One man was a pediatrician, the second a young lawyer, and the third the mining company timekeeper. They had entered the mine to assess its potential for possible sale to an unnamed United States interest.

With the heroic efforts of more than 150 men and women volunteers, including local miners, hard rock miners from Ontario, draegermen from Pictou County, and a tenacious young diamond drill operator from Pictou County, two of the men were recovered alive. The third man died underground on the eighth day of their entombment.

Halifax broadcaster J. Frank Willis made history with his live reports from the mine head that were broadcast on more than 700 radio stations around the world, including the major U.S. networks and the BBC. It marked the beginning of a new era in broadcasting and in journalism. Until then, radio was known chiefly as a music and entertainment medium; news gathering and reporting had been the bailiwick of newspapers and newswire services.

Little did Willis know when he filed his first report from the site that he was making broadcast history by pioneering live on-the-spot reporting. It would change the face of broadcasting forever. Rescue at Moose River is the story of how these two events, one tragic, one historic, came together in the backwoods of Nova Scotia more than 80 years ago.

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All Hands Lost /store/all-hands-lost.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=all-hands-lost Tue, 20 Feb 2024 23:58:52 +0000 /store/all-hands-lost.html/all-hands-lost All Hands Lost chronicles the tragic last voyage of the gypsum freighter SS Novadoc as she sailed from the Annapolis Basin into a raging nor’east storm in the Bay of Fundy in March 1947. Loaded with four thousand tons of Nova Scotia gypsum, she foundered off Portland, Maine, taking all twenty-four crew members, thirteen of them Nova Scotians, to their deaths.

The story is told through the eyes and memories of those who lost family members on the Novadoc -- the brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren and friends of the young Nova Scotia men, many of them war veterans, and two women who perished in the tragedy. The book tells of the seafaring life of Novadoc’s captain, Allan J. Vallis, OBE, an experienced merchant mariner and war veteran who unwittingly took the vessel into a hurricane-force storm.

Henshaw takes a critical look at the formal inquiry into the sinking and the report that deemed the loss “an act of God.” He questions the seaworthiness of an aging vessel that sailed into that fateful storm with makeshift repairs. He also questions discrepancies in compensation paid to the families of the twenty-four crew members who died with the ship.

The book examines the history of Paterson Shipping, the Ontario company that owned Novadoc, and Senator Norman Paterson, the wealthy Winnipeg grain merchant who founded the company in 1926. All Hands Lost is a moving and factual account of a 1940s tragedy at sea, as well as a tribute to the memory of the men and women who perished on the ill-fated Novadoc.

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