As newly-weds and new immigrants to Canada, we settled in Edmonton in 1952. With true Prairie hospitality, Cora, a young woman I worked with at Marshall Wells, invited us to spend Christmas and New Year’s at her parents’ farm in Provost - a small town on the border with Saskatchewan... Read
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I was born June 22, 1922, the second son of George Nobles and Genora Lucas, the first having died at birth and the name given to me. I have a brother and two sisters born about two years and some months apart... Read
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Vol.10,
No.57, 2007 The Bracelet by Daphne S. Lush (NF)
In nineteen hundred and ninety three
A beautiful bracelet was given to me
All carved design and made of gold
Engraved inside - a sight to behold... Read
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Vol.10,
No.56, 2007 - Contest Issue Drumbolt – Humboldt by Nesta Primeau (BC)
1st Prize Non-Fiction
My parents were great readers - not in the conventional sense of opening a book with hard covers, planting themselves in an armchair and transplanting the words from the page into their brains. Their reading was always aloud and to an audience - my brother and me.... Read
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Vol.10,
No.56, 2007 - Contest Issue Amma Coffee by Sharron Arksey (MB)
1st Prize Poetry
When I was young
our grandma gave us thimblefuls of coffee
in thick white mugs
filled to the brim with milk... Read
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Vol.10,
No.56, 2007 - Contest Issue Big Pig by John C. Hobson (ON)
1st Prize Fiction
My parents were great readers - not in the conventional sense of opening a book with hard covers, planting themselves in an armchair and transplanting the words from the page into their brains. Their reading was always aloud and to an audience - my brother and me.... Read
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For years the children
begged Dad for a horse, but he would have
none of it. “Horses are not toys,” he’d
say. He knew, from working with them while
growing up. They need a lot of pasture
space. Besides we were trying to establish
a dairy farm... Read
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When I was a little girl
I had a secret hideaway down beside our
creek where I went to be alone with my
thoughts.
The grassy edge dropped
abruptly down, making a perfect place to sit
and splash bare feet in the water below. Smooth
stones lined the creek bottom here and poplar
leaves filtered out the hot sun making it
a perfect, little paradise... Read
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Microwave ovens, cell phones,
refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, automatic
garage door openers, timers, televisions and
thermostats are counted among the necessities
of life, these days. When I was a young country
school teacher I lived in a house that had
none of these, and yet, I remember it as one
of the best homes I ever had.... Read
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I spent much of my childhood at my grandparent's house. My grandmother was a brilliant, clever woman who taught me how to cook and how to speak perfect French. Together, we would bake bran-and-raisin muffins, which made the house smell delightful. She grew up on Cobourg Street in the downtown part of Ottawa, and always had a story to tell about her life... Read More
The St. Lawrence River that twists through Eastern Ontario before its imminent arrival in Montreal is a volatile beast. On tranquil summer mornings it presents itself as a sleeping beauty, its surface a verdant mirror tinged pink with the rising sun... Read More
Vol.10, No.54, 2007 Dynamite Dan by Wm. Manley Nobles
Dynamite Dan was not exactly a dynamite man but because of inexperience was given that name by his neigbours who were all experienced in handling dynamite. As I related in an earlier story, when we all settled on these lots and built houses, there were no wells on most of them... Read More
Bessie was Dad’s secret weapon. Actually, her name was Missy Messy Bessie and it more than adequately described her. She became fifteen pounds of sheer destroyer- evictor of lay-about-teenagers.... Read More
It was time to go for the cows. Clyde Sheffield, now sixteen, and his brother John, two years younger, took their duties seriously. They stopped at the stile to listen for cowbells.
Clyde said, “It sounds like they’re down near the swamp. It will be quicker if we take the old wood road.”
The clanging bells began to sound louder as the boys neared the bottom land... Read
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“Prometheus the Firebringer” is one of the greatest of the Greek myths. It is the story of the immortal who so loved mankind that he defied Zeus and endured endless torture in order that Man might have the gift of fire. This story exemplifies more than an origin myth, for Prometheus symbolizes the questioning mind. The young Greek hero is the one individual who dared to question and challenge the very laws of the omnipotent Zeus... Read More
