Aurora Borealis Tonight!

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Back in the 50's when I was a kid, the U.S. was just in process of building its interstate highway system. My parents had money back in the day--my dad was one of those "Mad Men"--and good at his job--so every winter Mom and her annual bronchitis and me went for a month or so to the West Indies. It was good for her health; it was also very cool thing that no one else did. In those days, the West Indies were truly paradise. There were no high rises, no mobs on those pristine, pre-plastic white beaches; it was our Island in the Sun.

One March, while flying home, we had to lay over in Bermuda because of a huge winter storm that hit the coast. The next day we flew into what was then Idlewild airport (JFK now). First adventure, we got stuck upon landing, in a snow bank, and the next plane coming in flew right over us in order to use the runway to land. We were sitting there, feeling the pilot trying to move the plane--this after a very rough flight--when the other guy roared over our heads. We already had stuff in the aisles and people screaming, and that sound, of another plane approaching, set off more noise. I didn't scream; I was too busy puking into one of those brown bags.







Then, after finally reaching the terminal, Mom and I found my Dad, who'd spent the night there waiting for us. He, of course, had to return home after two weeks and get back to work, leaving Mom and her yearly bronchitis, and me, in the West Indies. He'd driven from Syracuse, NY the day before to pick us up.  Now we'd have a long haul home, through a snowed in world.  The Thruway A.K.A. I-90 was still in pieces of construction, so we'd drive through the city until we could connect with one of the sections which was complete and open to traffic. With all the snow and the blowing, we found ourselves following snowplows more often than not. Progress was slow.

The sun had gone down. We were still not home. Dad drove and drove. Mom was asleep in the back seat. The snow was in high banks all around us, glittering, while a northern high drove it in long moving snakes across the road, the surface of which began to vanish as fast as the plows passed. That night was the single time I've seen Aurora. She appeared as the post storm high moved in. Pale red curtains that moved and shook across the sky; my Dad explained what they were.






We were absolutely alone on the nighttime highway, so he stopped the car and told me to roll down my window. White snow! Black sky and stars like jewels! Hallucinogenic blobs of red--and a faint crackle and hiss, as if we could hear those heavy curtains shaking! I've never forgotten it, this other worldly phenomenon. I'd love to see Aurora again before I die, and I know that the NWT, about which I've written, is THE place to go to see this wonder.  So I'm adding to my "dream trip" list--because today, Aurora tourism is now a "thing" in the NWT.






Circumpolar folk stories are very similar. There are lonely spirits trying to speak to the living; there are spirits of animals and ancestors, some of them dancing, some playing games. Europeans told of the  shields of the Valkyries gleaming, or saw a rainbow bridge to Asgard where dwelt their ferocious Gods. The Inuit tell of walrus skull games played by the dead. The Athabascans speak of ancestors who are ever present, looking down upon their children. Northern people world wide gazed into the aurora filled sky and made stories to explain what they saw.

"The ends of the land and sea are bounded by an immense abyss, over which a narrow and dangerous pathway leads to the heavenly regions. The sky is a great dome of hard material arched over Earth. There is a hole in it through which spirits pass to the true heavens, only the spirits of those who have died a voluntary or violent death--and Raven--have been over this pathway."

We know more about what causes Aurora today than was known in my childhood. We've discovered that this phenomena is caused by our solar wind, constantly blowing from our own mighty local star, when it collides with Earth's magnetosphere. In a way, the original inhabitants of the land are correct--the "hard material" arched over Earth is our planetary shield--and we can see the lights dancing as the solar winds strike.


NWT has plenty of aurora tourism available for the hardy traveler, from Yellowknife to places north, closer to the magnetic pole, where the magic is most reliably to be seen. You can fly or snowmobile or travel in great ice road vehicles farther north; you can even, I read in my wishful thinking ravel brochures, sit in hot tubs and watch the skies, which has to be the height of blissful decadence. I hope to see Aurora again, before I check out, and NWT is clearly the place to go.

Coincidentally, tonight will be a good night to look out for Aurora, perhaps dancing in a cold clear sky over your fortunate head! If you are in Canada, keep a sharp look out! It seems that Old Sol has actually sent a Coronal Mass Ejection our way. Maybe I sensed Aurora coming, dreamer that I am, as I pondered what to write for Canadian Historical Brides...




~~Juliet Waldron
For all my historical novels:
https://www.julietwaldron.com

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The Mi'kmaq of New Brunswick

In my research for my novel set in New Brunswick, I came across the two main native tribes that lived there. I touched briefly on them in On a Stormy Primeval Shore, but they deserve a more in-depth introduction.

First, the Mi'kmaq people. Known as one of the original settlers of the Atlantic provinces, oral history (and archeological discoveries) suggest the Mi'kmaq have been in eastern Canada for over 10,000 years. The name is thought to mean "one of high ability." Other sources say it means "my friends." They refer to themselves as First Nations.

The men hunted and fished, and went to war to protect their families. Women tended the children, gathered herbs, and built the traditional wigwam. These homes are made of wood covered in birch bark. The people lived in villages, usually near water sources.
Men wore breechcloths (a skimpy garment that covered their privates) and leggings. The women wore tunics, long skirts and a peaked hat. They decorate their clothing with dyed porcupine quills, a skill they are famous for.

Traditional quill box

 
Chanting is another tradition, consisting of vocables (broken syllables) that express emotion rather than words with meaning. The Mi'kmaq language is part of the Wabanaki cluster of Eastern Algonquian languages.

Feathers are only worn in their hair during ceremonies. Bothe men and women wore their hair loose and long. White settlers complained, "I can't tell the men from the women."

The Mi'kmaq paddled in canoes, or traveled through the winter snow in sleds and snowshoes. The English word "toboggan" comes from the Mi'kmaq word for sled. Dogs were their pack animals in the years before colonists brought horses to Canada.

Traditional military coat, rear view. Courtesy Glenbow Museum/Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

When the French came in the 1600s many of the Mi'kmaq converted to Catholicism. But European diseases resulted in the death of half their population. Conflicts with the French ensued, though the natives worked together with the French in fur trade.

The British colonization of the eighteenth century brought about the slaughter of the French (Acadians) and breaking and remaking of treaties. The Mi'kmaq were pushed off their fertile land.
The English wanted to alter the indigenous peoples' way of life. Today the 'rights' of the Mi'kmaq are better protected, but their lifestyle is forever changed, their traditions usually limited to special  ceremonies.

View of a Mi'kmaq wigwam, a man, and a child, probably Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, photographed 1860. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Photo NO. 47728.

To learn more about the Mi'kmaq please see the Canadian Encyclopedia link below. 

To find out more about the formation of New Brunswick in On a Stormy Primeval Shore, or to purchase my books at Amazon or All Markets: Click HERE

 For further information on me and my books, please visit my website: www.dianescottlewis.org

 Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.

 
Source: Canadian Encyclopedia

The Love of Writing by Victoria Chatham

AVAILABLE HERE

I can’t actually remember a time when I didn’t write. I was always scribbling something first with crayons, then with pencils and finally, the joy of joys, my very own fountain pen. My first typewriter was an Olivetti and my first computer, circa 1997, a Compaq. I thought I had finally arrived with that equipment sitting on my desk but, back then, what I wrote seemed to be far less important than what I wrote with.  

I told stories to my children when they came along, and we had tremendous fun with what we now call brainstorming. Each child had their chance to pick a topic, or start a story and off we would go, following the thread wherever it led us. I suppose I had always had a good imagination partly, I think, from being an early reader myself. Like so many teenage girls my daughter became obsessed with ponies and that prompted me to write a story about them for her thirteenth birthday.

I had no idea what I was doing, of course. I mistakenly thought writing chapters would be like writing lots of short stories and putting them together. Instead, I found that creating a narrative and keeping all the threads comprehensible was much harder work than I ever imagined it to be. However, I quickly learned that writing is a craft and can be built on. I joined writing groups and learned from other authors. I read craft books and attended writing workshops and found greater satisfaction in writing than I ever imagined I would. I started writing romance because I love a happy ending and, because my favorite romance genre is Regency romance, I started writing Regencies.

This, in turn, has led to my writing other historical fiction, The Buxton Trilogy set in the Edwardian era, and Brides of Banff Springs set in 1935 AVAILABLE HERE. I also had a hand in Anita Davison’s Envy the Wind, set in Prince Edward Island in 1905. I like discovering quirky facts that may or may not make their way into my pages and always plan the happy-ever-after ending. Of course, how that ending is arrived at depends entirely on my characters and on that note, I must return to my current couple in His Unexpected Muse.

Victoria Chatham

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What About Love by A.M.Westerling

February is the month of Valentine’s Day and love. By now, another February 14^th has come and gone but it’s got me to thinking. There are many kinds of love other than – cue the violins and enter Cupid - romantic love for a partner. We love other people in different ways. There’s the love between a mother and her children. The love good friends have for each other. The love we have for siblings and other family members, even the furry ones like my grand dogs, Tilly and Arlow.

But we can love inanimate things as well. A beautiful sunset. A walk on the beach. A favorite sweater. A good book. Then of course there’s the love of good food and I am firmly in that camp. Cooking to my mind combines a number of loves – love of preparing the food itself, love of good healthy eating, even the love of exercise because cooking usually means a lot of standing and walking around. I also love decorating the table because it’s all part of the experience. And in the end, the reward – sitting down to eat with cherished family and/or friends surrounded by a cloud of love. A while ago, one of my boys commented on the fact that most of our family pictures are of us sitting at the dinner table. I rest my case. 

They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach but I think women appreciate fine food as well. In Barkerville Beginnings, one afternoon Harrison buys Rose and Hannah fresh bannock with huckleberry jam and they have a picnic beside the creek. I came across this bannock recipe and thought you might enjoy it. I've never tried making bannock, let me know how it turns out!

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups water

Directions

1. Measure flour, salt, and baking powder into a large bowl. Stir to mix.
2. Pour melted butter and water over flour mixture. Stir with fork to make a ball.
3. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead gently about 10 times. Pat into a flat circle 3/4" to 1" thick.
4. Cook in a greased frying pan over medium heat, allowing about 15 minues for each side. Use two lifters for easy turning. May also be baked on a greased baking sheet at 350° F (175° C) for 25 to 30 minutes.

Recipe courtesy of: https://www.bettertogetherbc.ca/recipe

You can find Barkerville Beginnings at your favourite online store HERE. 

Snow Goose Time

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Every year the geese pass over in great numbers because I live in the Atlantic flyway. When I was small, my dad made a big deal out of the Canadas, because at that time, DDT had nearly killed them off. This is hard to believe now, of course, as the Canadas are seen as a golf course/corporate campus pest.  

In those days, though, the sound of their haunting voices would bring Daddy out of the house with his little girl in tow. He’d tell me another extinction story, the one about the Passenger Pigeons, although the last representative of that family had died a decade before he was born. These birds had gone from a population of perhaps 5 Billion to none in fifty years.

“Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.”

—Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” 1947, from Audubon online

The goose represented wilderness as they flew and called in the truncated V arrangements typical of the early ‘50’s. Where were they going, I wondered. “To the North, to the shores of the Bering Sea, way up north in Canada.” The magical destination was now named--a world as mythical to a small American child as the Back of the North Wind.

The snow geese were a revelation and a delight to a transplant to central Pennsylvania. I remember the first time I saw them, just a few flying over our home, in the sunlight that follows a February snow squall. Light gleamed on their bodies against a blue sky. In a moment of late winter quiet—no trains, planes, snow blowers--I heard their high voices, sweet and whispery compared to the brash honks of their Canada relatives.

The magic of white geese with their black tipped wings reminded me of other mythologies—like those European stories upon which the Swan Lake ballet is based. The sight of them set off thoughts of enchanted princesses and frozen lakes and -- magic!

The snow geese that come through here have a rest-stop fairly close, in Middlecreek. I'd been there in the summer, on long bicycle rides. Once, though, I'd driven out in February and had been lucky enough to find a great host of migrants already there. 

I was simply blown away by the sight and the sound of so much avian beauty, some rising in clouds while others, dumping air beneath their wings like fighter pilots, landed in open water. There were snow geese flying and snow goose swimming and snow geese resting upon the ice. In one small outlet, like royalty keeping to themselves, were the elegant Swans.

Like a child, I could look up and imagine myself rising from the earth and flying off with them, joining the storm of wings. I'd find my place among relations, get in line and cruise across mountains and forests. I'd forget the past and the future and just be in today--the next patch of green, the next drink of water, delighting in the strength and power of my wings! 

This flight of fancy ended abruptly when an eagle cannoned into the cloud of geese and took one of the beautiful creatures. For an instant, seeing a limp neck dangling in his claws--a creature that just seconds ago had been full of life--I was stunned. That's when I remembered the rest of a goose's--or any wild creature's life--suffering through storms, the fox in the night, the insatiable men hidden in the reeds.

 Coming home from a friend's house last Sunday as the sun went down behind low clouds, I could hear the Canada's calling in the last quarter mile. Overhead sailed great Vs of travelers. Others were landing, in the littered cornfield behind a row of old houses. When drivers in front suddenly turned in. I followed them, and sure enough, from a back alley, I could see snow geese, a great army, taking a break, looking around, talking to one another, here before sundown. 

 I had the pleasure of seeing them up close--just for a few minutes. It didn't take the wise old leaders long to figure out that there were too many people here. Soon, too soon, they lifted up again and moved on north, in the direction of larger and more isolated fields. For the brief time it took for the great cloud to arise, I was a kid again, imagining that if I wished hard enough, I could grow wings and travel with them, looking down upon the wonders of our Mother Earth.

~~Juliet Waldron

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Opposites attract? Can an Englishwoman and Acadian Fall in Love?

February is considered the month of love due to Valentine's Day. The old saying is that opposites attract, but is it true?

In my Canadian Historical Brides novel On a Stormy Primeval Shore, I bring two people together from different cultures who meet in the strangest of ways. Amelia is an Englishwoman fresh off the boat in a wild country, the just formed province of New Brunswick in 1784. She's come there at the father's behest to marry one of his officers at Fort Howe.

However, she is repulsed by the rude man, who treats her like a pity-project, and refuses to marry him. Deciding to stay, she struggles to form her own life in herbal medicine in a burgeoning country.

Gilbert, a trader, is an Acadian, descendant from the original French settlers when that area was known as New France. The Acadians hate the English after these invaders swept in, murdered the French, and took possession of what would become Canada.

He had no intention of courting an English miss, but fate was against him. Will more be in store for these star-crossed people?

Read the excerpt:

 A growl startled her. Turning, Amelia gasped. Out of the trees lumbered a large, snarling black bear. The animal’s fluid grace belied the menace in his glare. Saliva dripped from the creature’s mouth when it bared sharp teeth. Fear shot through her like arrows.

Louise froze, eyes bulging. Amelia instinctively stepped back. Her foot found no purchase. She slipped, tumbling down the short embankment, rocks poking into her flesh. Her gloves were ripped off as she groped. She landed with a thunk in the marshy soil next to the stream. She struggled to rise amid her tangle of skirt and petticoats. Hips and knees aching, her hands smarted, scraped and embedded with pebbles, but she scrambled to her feet to scuttle up the hill with muddy fingers to help Louise.

She wanted to call out to the girl, but that might attract the bear. Nearing the crest, dirt dislodged above her, sifting down on her face and scalp. Amelia blinked up, her pulse hammering. She heard movement, footsteps.

A large man with a black beard, wearing buckskin clothing and a leather hat, stood at the top of the slope. He aimed a musket in the direction of the bear. The animal growled louder.

"Don’t move, either of you, mes jeune femmes," he commanded in a French accent.

 

 

Gilbert prepared to fire. “Sors d’ici!” The bear swiped again, knocking the musket from his hands. Claws scraped his right arm. He hissed at the scratching of his flesh, the pain radiating up to his shoulder. The animal snapped at him, teeth close.

Gilbert ducked, just missing a bite from those teeth, his face sprayed with saliva. He reached for the musket, his breath harsh.

The young woman (Amelia) crawled to her feet. She screamed like a lunatic, but it sounded more from anger than fear.

                                                                         * * *

 

The handsome Gilbert, a man about to be pushed off his land by greedy Loyalists, will be impressed by a woman who screams at bears. A most unsuitable courtship has begun.

 

To purchase my books at Amazon or All Markets: Click HERE

 

For more information on me and my books, please visit my website: www.dianescottlewis.org

 

Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.

February, the month of Love by Nancy M Bell

Find out more about Landmark Roses and my other books by clicking on the cover.

February is the depths of winter here on the Canadian prairies. One of my friends in Cornwall, across the pond, recently posted a photo of the snowdrops currently blooming in her garden. My world is full of frost encrusted trees, building, fences and long grasses bent under the weight of the hoar frost left by the ice fog of the past couple of days.

Valentines Day is the bright spot of February. It's lovely to receive cards and messages of love and good will at this time of year. It breaks up the cold dark days of winter. Although the hours of daylight have been slowly increasing since the Winter Solstice we still have a long way to go before Spring Equinox when the hours of light and dark are equal and we embark on the long joyful ride toward the Summer Solstice and longest day. When I was in grade school back in the 1960's it was a tradition that on Valentine's Day every student in the class brought Valentines for the other students. The day before we would create big paper pouches which we decorated and taped to the front of our desks. Then on Valentine's Day after lunch everyone would move around the room and deposit their cards into the pouches. Some would write who it was from while others would leave it as a secret. Even in those younger days it was always exciting to try and guess if one of the secret Valentines was from the boy I currently had a crush on. Of course, I never found out for sure, but I did keep certain Valentines for a number of years, in fact I probably still have a few tucked away in my grade school keepsake book. Those were all the rage in the 1960's and early '70s. My mom bought ours from the Regal catalogue. There was a pouch for each school year where you wrote down the year, the school, teacher, friends etc and then into the pouch went things from that year, birthday cards, pictures, report cards etc.

These days Valentine's Day is pretty low key. Earlier in our marriage, it was an occasion to go out for a fancy dinner, this slowly wound down as the time went on. Now, maybe I might get a card- this would be a highlight LOL- or he might remember to wish me Happy Valentine's Day without me nudging him. After this many years I guess it doesn't really matter. The romance is in the everyday living now not in the expensive celebration of traditional holidays.

I wish you a Happy February, Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Life!