These are the words we have chosen to remember. They are the stories that have touched our imagination. They are the rhymes we teach our children as we drive to the beach in the summer. They are the artwork we share with our grandchildren as we sit by a warm winter fire. In peacetime and in war, they have taught us our history. In good times and bad, they have given us glimpses into our future. Over the decades, they have helped us discover who we are and where we have come from. They have introduced us to our neighbours and helped us bridge our two solitudes. Generation after generation, they have given voice to a nation’s dreams and aspirations, and they have done it with grace and wit and learning and style. These are the books that have won the Governor General’s Literary Awards of Canada.
"This volume arises from a number of observations and suppositions about both the period (3000 BP to European contact) and the scholarship on it that have emerged in recent research. The first was, simply, that the Far Northeast—roughly northern New England, the Atlantic provinces, and the nearby parts of Labrador—had a collection of papers about its Palaeoindian and Archaic periods published relatively recently. These contributions serve an important role of culture-historical synthesis that does not exist for the Far Northeast after 3000 BP, and one that the seventeen papers in this volume help to address."
Song without words (Excerpts) V
Sasha was so overcome with grief [over the death of her mother], that she remained ill all winter. Spring found her flitting about as a mere shadow — emaciated, gloomy and capricious. From time to time, all of a sudden, for one reason or another she would break into uncontrollable sobbing and run to her room, where she would sit motionless the whole day without eating, refusing to see anyone, and only repeating: “Mama, where are you? Where are you?” [p. 262]
Suddenly the velvet silence of that May night resounded with the clear, sonorous tones of Mendelssohn’s “Song without words” in G-minor, under the capable hands of a true master pianist. The first note of the right hand, held for a single, imperceptible moment, rang deep, drawn out with a particular expressiveness. The left hand in the meantime companioned the melody of the right — not so much with its fingers as with its very breathing — whereupon the D-note could no longer be distinguished either in the right or the left hand; everything blended together in song — a song which not only spoke to Sasha of her great sorrow, but at the same time gave her comfort and promised her happiness, life and a brand new love.
It was not a song Sasha knew; in fact, she wanted to know nothing more at the moment; she didn’t even guess at first that this “Song without words” was actually emanating from the little yellowish dacha next door, or that its performer was playing it like someone convinced that nobody is listening. The performer of a musical composition in solitude has no self-consciousness of feeling; he suffers from no distraction of the mutual influence between artist and audience. Instead, he feels a kind of deep, mind-embracing calm, some sort of mysterious bond between the performer and the late composer. Such now was the performance of Mendelssohn’s “Song without words” in G-minor. [p. 269]
« Dans un passé déjà lointain, des Français ont quitté leur pays pour venir tenter leur chance en Amérique. Ils se sont dispersés un peu partout sur le vaste territoire nord-américain. »
« Sous prétexte que les Acadiens refusaient de prêter serment à l'Angleterre, ils furent rassemblés dans des lieux publics, comme dans des églises. Les membres de même famille furent séparés, puis déportés. »
« La plus grande saignée des Canadiens français vers les États-Unis a été sans contredit leur migration massive vers la Nouvelle-Angleterre et le Midwest américain, surtout entre 1840 et 1930. »
