Researchers Associated with CCBS   


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Recent Publications 


Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada (Heather Sparling)

Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada


Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada draws on a collection of over 600 songs relating to Atlantic Canadian disasters from 1891 up until the present and describes the characteristics that define them as intangible memorials. The book demonstrates the relationship between vernacular memorials – informal memorials collectively and spontaneously created from a variety of objects by the general public – and disaster songs. The author identifies the features that define vernacular memorials and applies them to disaster songs: spontaneity, ephemerality, importance of place, motivations and meaning-making, content, as well as the role of media in inspiring and disseminating memorials and songs. Visit the companion website: www.disastersongs.ca

$63.50 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Closing Sysco: Industrial Decline in Atlantic Canada’s Steel City (Lachlan MacKinnon)

Closing Sysco: Industrial Decline in Atlantic Canada’s Steel City


Closing Sysco presents a history of deindustrialization and working-class resistance in the Cape Breton steel industry between 1945 and 2001. The Sydney Steel Works is at the heart of this story, having existed in tandem with Cape Breton’s larger coal operations since the early twentieth century. The book explores the multifaceted nature of deindustrialization; the internal politics of the steelworkers’ union; the successful efforts to nationalize the mill in 1967; the years in transition under public ownership; and the confrontations over health, safety, and environmental degradation in the 1990s and 2000s. Closing Sysco moves beyond the moment of closure to trace the cultural, historical, and political ramifications of deindustrialization that continue to play out in post-industrial Cape Breton Island. A significant intervention into the international literature on deindustrialization, this study pushes scholarship beyond the bounds of political economy and cultural change to begin tackling issues of bodily health, environment, and historical memory in post-industrial places.

The experiences of the men and women who were displaced by the decline and closure of Sydney Steel are central to this book. Featuring interviews with former steelworkers, office employees, managers, politicians, and community activists, these one-on-one conversations reveal both the human cost of industrial closure and the lingering after-effects of deindustrialization.

$40.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy (Ian Brodie)

A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy


In A Vulgar Art, Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize—“literature” or “theater”; “editorial” or “morality”—and analyze it accordingly. This book begins with a more fundamental observation: someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh. So this book takes the moment of performance as its focus, that stand-up comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience.

Although the form of talk on the stage resembles talk among friends and intimates in social settings, stand-up comedy remains a profession. As such, it requires performance outside of the comedian's own community to gain larger and larger audiences. How do comedians recreate that atmosphere of intimacy in a roomful of strangers? This book regards everything from microphones to clothing and LPs to Twitter as strategies for bridging the spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural distances between the performer and the audience.

$43.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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The Cape Breton Piano: Life at the Fiddler’s Elbow (Chris McDonald)

The Cape Breton Piano: Life at the Fiddler’s Elbow


Chris McDonald’s conversations with Cape Breton keyboardists and his passionate careful writing share the foundations of piano in Cape Breton’s music. He delivers the history of the instrument on the island and the steps toward the marriage of the piano and fiddle that produces today’s distinctive Cape Breton sound—the solid ground on which change and innovation continue to emerge, creating music that has won both local and worldwide devotion.

“We have always loved our piano players,” says Ronald Caplan, publisher of Breton Books, “Marie MacLellan and Hilda Chaisson, Jason Roach and Dougie MacPhee and Maybelle Chisholm, and so many others. But until recently the piano was more in the background with our focus often on the fiddler. In The Cape Breton Piano, Chris McDonald helps us discover the variety of piano playing as vigorous and sympathetic, sometimes raw, sometimes melodic—never taking over, but absolutely essential to today's Cape Breton sound.”

$23.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Other Publications


Discovering Cape Breton Folklore (Richard MacKinnon)

Discovering Cape Breton Folklore

$24.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Reeling Roosters & Dancing Ducks: Celtic Mouth Music (Heather Sparling)

Reeling Roosters & Dancing Ducks: Celtic Mouth Music

$19.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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The Old Trout Funnies: The Comic Origins of the Cape Breton Liberation Army (Ian Brodie and Paul MacKinnon)

he Old Trout Funnies: The Comic Origins of the Cape Breton Liberation Army

$19.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Rush Rock Music & the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown (Chris McDonald)

Rush Rock Music & the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown

$19.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Stangers in the Land: The Ukrainian Presence in Cape Breton (John Huk, introduction by Marcia Ostashewski)

Stangers in the Land: The Ukrainian Presence in Cape Breton

$19.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Guthan Prìseil [Precious Voices] (Anne Landin)

Guthan Prìseil (Precious Voices)

$22.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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One God, One Aim, One Destiny (Joan Weeks)

One God, One Aim, One Destiny

$22.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Buddy MacMaster: The Judique Fiddler (Sheldon MacInnes)

Buddy MacMaster: The Judique Fiddler

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Vernacular Architecture in the Codroy Valley (Richard MacKinnon)

Vernacular Architecture in the Codroy Valley

$24.95 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Recordings 


Cape Breton Island Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest

Cape Breton Island Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest


This is part two of a program to preserve, promote and make available the steel, mining and protest songs of the region. It tells stories about the struggles to survive strikes and hard times, the courage of workers wives, the fight by trade unionists and the oppression of international company owners.

In 2012, the Centre released the CD “Cape Breton Island Protest Songs, Volume 1” along with an accompanying web site (www.protestsongs.ca). It was also a collaboration between MacKinnon and Cape Breton musicians to record songs that were originally published in Cape Breton newspapers such as the Maritime Labour Herald, The Steelworker and the Steelworker and Miner from the 1920s through to the 1950s. MacKinnon found the words and the musicians created the arrangements and music.

$9.99 CDN

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Cape Breton Island Protest Songs

Cape Breton Island Protest Songs


On Cape Breton Island, where coal mining and steel making were once an essential part of the region’s culture and economy, protest song and verse are found in abundance. The Protest Song Project is an initiative of The Centre for Cape Breton Studies at Cape Breton University. The program’s goal is to preserve and promote the protest songs and verse that represent the region’s rich industrial heritage. The Centre has been collaborating with local musicians to record many of the songs that were published in the Maritime Labour Herald, a newspaper of the 1920s, that includes both local and international compositions. These songs played an important role in the labour struggles of the 1920s and are an unexplored aspect of Cape Breton’s labour heritage. This is a truly interactive, collaborative and community-minded project.(www.protestsongs.ca)

$9.99 CDN

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Gaelic Songs From The Mira - Volume 2 - Lauchie Gillis
(More Songs & Lyrics Included)

Gaelic Songs From The Mira - Volume 2 - Lauchie Gillis


Nestled in the widest span of the picturesque Mira River is the quiet, tight-knit farming community of Grand Mira. In 1952 this mainly Scottish-settled area gained national acclaim. Under the direction of Father Hugh A. MacDonald, the Grand Mira Gaelic Choir won the National Folksong Competition in Halifax.

That award-winning choir included Lauchlin Cyprain Gillis. His strong, melodious voice carried Gaelic songs into homes, concert halls, minstrel shows and folk festivals. During his life he recorded solo records with various people, including the BBC. He was born in Grand Mira where, as a child, Lauchie learned to speak Gaelic from his grandmother. Famous for his voice and generosity of talent, people across Cape Breton also knew him for his job as a farmer and meat man. A hard-working, honourable individual, lauchie possessed a keen sense of humour and enjoyed life.

Lauchie died in his home in 1980. His spirit continues to fuel the island's cultural roots through his powerful tenor voice and the many Gaelic songs he brought to life. Cum Gaidhlig Beo!

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Cape Breton University - SOUNDTRACKS 2010

Cape Breton University - SOUNDTRACKS 2010


The proceeds from this CD go towards Cape Breton University’s ECMA/Rotary Scholarship that helps a student achieve their goal of a university-level education while pursuing a career in the professional music industry.

Thank you for your support!

Peformances by:
Kyle Carey, Carleton Stone, Rachel Davis,Erin Martell,Caroline Murphy
Breagh MacKinnon, The Byegones, CBU Fiddle Music Class, Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Parish, Janice Ester Tulk, Neil Fitzgibbon, Chris McDonald,
Rob Miller, Cape Breton Orchestra featuring Heather Sparling

Executive Producer: Dr. Richard MacKinnon

$15.00 CDN plus tax and shipping

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Centre for Cape Breton Studies

Vernacular Architecture in the Codroy Valley


Promotional CD release 2009.

Performances By:
Erin Martell, CBU Choir, Rob Miller, Claire Lafferty, Richard MacKinnon,
Cape Breton Fiddle Music Class, Fiddle Music for Dance Class,
Kyle Carey, Heather Sparling,Chris McDonald

Out of Print. Duplicated Copies Available.

$15.00 CDN plus tax and shipping

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