Other critics have been less reticent. Bruce's writing has inspired them to call him no less than "a consummate storyteller"; to marvel over his "magnetic style and marvelous command of the language"; to declare his prose "highly entertaining and gloriously informative"; and to insist that "only the spiritually dead or terminally obtuse could fail to come away from it richer for the experience." 琉璃社区 one collection of his works a reviewer decided, "We are obviously in the hands of a master." Surely a master is right some Jesus good.

And now, The Perfect Day and Other Stories offers the best of Bruce's best essays. From the sweet pain of first love and leaving home to the horrors of killer wasps, bloodthirsty flies, and marauding mice, from the relief experienced in every outhouse in the pines to the joy resounding from neighbourhood curling on a Scottish laird's frozen pond, from the magic mist that sneaks into a ghost village on an abandoned island off Lunenburg to the sheer glory that parades of tall ships grant to great ports around the world, from fogs, bats, cats, and coyotes to the whales, thrones, stags, and steeples that make Atlantic Canada unique...they're all here, and more, in Harry's latest collection.

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After completing a 3,000-kilometre hike of coastal Nova Scotia and making a number of dramatic changes in her life, Emily Taylor Smith is compelled to undertake another Maritime journey on foot, this time following the coastline of New Brunswick and the Gasp茅 all the way to Quebec City.

She plans a solitary trip, searching for life lessons along the way and carrying everything she needs with her on her back. Emily severely underestimates the Fundy Footpath, struggles to communicate in French, nearly throws in the towel at the tip of Kouchibouguac Park, and survives a sleepless night in a collapsed tent on the windy Gasp茅 shore.

What she doesn't count on is the support which appears daily in the form of roadside messages, random gifts of ice cream, generous postmistresses and flag collectors, and help that comes from within. The challenging regimen of 45 kilometres a day for two months is transcended by a growing spiritual bond with the landscape that keeps her moving forward.

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Harry was already acquainted with Halifax; at eighteen, he lived at HMCS Stadacona as an officer-cadet in the Royal Canadian Navy. He joined the navy chiefly to lose his virginity. "For what finer way could there be to serve queen and country?" Though he did not achieve his goal, that summer gave him his first whiffs of the port whose magnetism he would one day find irresistible.

He settled in Halifax鈥攁nd he moved away. Several times, in fact, even going as far as Vancouver. Yet he kept returning to Halifax. Each time he found it had changed for the better and was a little less like the "racist, boring, City of the Living Dead" that comedian Cathy Jones called it forty years ago, and a little more like the lively, welcoming, cosmopolitan town he hoped it would be.

For the past fifty years, Harry Bruce has been working as what The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature calls "an impassioned advocate for the Maritimes and an essayist of great charm and perception." Here, writing more charmingly and perceptively than ever, he celebrates the blossoming of Halifax as "A City to Dance In."

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Memoir: Conversations and Craft is intended for any reader or writer who is fascinated by the renegade memoir form鈥攑ersonal life stories that demand to be read, refuse to be forgotten. Whether you wish to compile memories from childhood to share with grandchildren, or whether you burn with the makings of a literary memoir, this reflection on writing can galvanize you.

Donna Morrissey, Linden MacIntyre, Plum Johnson, Lawrence Hill, Edmund Metatawabin, Diane Schoemperlen, and Claire Mowat鈥攕ome of Canada's top fiction and non-fiction writers鈥攕peak with candour, humour, and compassion about their journeys to memoir. Often touching, always helpful and frank, the interviews cover a broad spectrum of the writing experience. The time to write a memoir is always now鈥攁nd the benefits are transformative.

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Green Ghost, Blue Ocean is a story about taking time and taking a risk, about unwittingly losing your identity while simultaneously redefining yourself in ways never imagined. It is a story about the importance of starting and the acceptance of an imperfect plan. It is a tale of the triumph of conviction: if you believe that you?ll figure it out when you get there, it?s amazing how far you can go.

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Every patient tells a story. Drawing on a forty-year medical career, Dr. Larry Kramer has written about some of the people he has met along the way. The stories chronicle love and loss, tragedy and comedy, and empathetically observe patients who live and die, some with courage and some with fear. These accounts frame the story of one physician's life and how it was shaped, changed, and guided by those he encountered every day. The young, the old, the happy, the sad, and the suffering all bring gifts beyond measure.

Narratives of medicine are increasingly recognized as key components of the therapeutic experience. The Journal of the American Medical Association suggested in 2001, "Narrative medicine can examine and illuminate four of medicine's central narrative situations: physician and patient, physician and self, physician and colleagues, and physician and society." It enables patients, physicians, and others to be moved by stories of illness. Thus we share a common humanity. We all have stories. Our heroes are among us.

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Thien's ship was attacked by pirates and shot at by police. On land, he and his fellow refuges were jailed, starved, and beaten, but survival only brought on tougher challenges. The soldiers forced them at gunpoint back into their damaged boat to be towed to sea. He sought asylum in the United States but found the refuge he was seeking in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where he lives today.

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