In My World

We've been to the Petrolia Discovery several times and always enjoy our visits. Everything is so interesting and the history of the oil industry in Ontario and around the world, fascinating.  In 1857,   James Miller Williams   of   Hamilton   began distilling some of the "tar" lying around   Oil Springs   (located a few kilometers south from Petrolia), after buying the property rights from   Charles Nelson Tripp . In July or August 1858, he struck an oil deposit in Oil Springs while digging a shallow well, sparking the oil drilling industry. In 2008, the 150th anniversary of the discovery,   Canada Post   issued a stamp commemorating this first commercial oil well, featuring portraits of Charles Tripp and Williams.   However, these early wells resulted in a large amount of wastage from   gushers , estimated at 5 million barrels (790,000 m 3 ) of oil in 1862 alone. Petrolia got its start in 1866 when a major gas well was fo...

Happy publication to This May Be the Year , Named and Nameless , and Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon , published by Inanna Publications. ♥️ About This May Be the Year by Carole Giangrande: The latest collection from this award-winning poet explores time, grief, rebirth, and recalibration through the lens of the pastoral. In this “birdmind” view of love, loss, and belonging, Giangrande captures the uneasy interplay between the human world and the natural world, offering a poetic meditation on the fragile connections that hold us in place. About Named and Nameless by Susan McCaslin: In this new collection of poetry, Susan McCaslin explores the meaning and significance of identity and all that can be found in a name, or, lack thereof. Mixing the personal with the societal, McCaslin explores her own past and women’s continued role in child-rearing. This dreamlike series of encounters with nature and the divine invites deep reflection through re-discovering the familiar. Her joyful wordplay in...

Happy publication to  Remaindered People and Other Stories , (short stories) by Pratap Reddy, published by Guernica Editions.  Reddy’s first collection Weather Permitting & Other Stories was centred on the predicament of new immigrants who are coping with the challenges they face immediately upon arrival in Canada. In this new collection, the focus is on the other side of immigration, exploring the often-neglected aspects: the plight of empty nesters left behind in India, parents compelled to immigrate with their adult children, about immigrants returning to their home country for good or for holiday, of people aspiring to migrate but falling by the wayside. Whatever the surrounding circumstances, all the stories are about people on the move, people who often don’t seem to know where they are headed. @river_street_writes @pratapreddycanada @guernicaeditions #immigrantstories #shortfiction #mississauga #shortstories #shortstory #shortstorywriter #litfic #canlit #bookishcan...

  Happy release date to Your Devotee in Rags —a metamorphic sonic poetry LP created by cultural icons, Anne Waldman (The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment) and Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene), released by Siren Recordings. Your Devotee in Rags is a missive to this age of patriarchal power, its songs and poems are designed to specifically confront that power and hold it to account. Taking such activist inspiration from musicians like Lido Pimienta and Tanya Tagaaq, musically YDIR blends acoustic and electronic genres, waltzes, laments, and Pauls Boutique-era Beastie Boys mash-ups all with the intent of creating a new artistic headspace: sonic poetry. The cultural direction is forward, the earbuds open up the stereo field, listening to YDIR is, in a word, empowering.  Find out more about Your Devotee in Rags at  sirenrecordings.com .  @river_street_writes @sirenrecordings  #brokensocialscene #poetry #canlit #annewaldman #smashthepatriar...

Happy Publication to   Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada's North   by journalist Kathleen Lippa, published by Dundurn Press.   After years of research, Kathleen has written about the shocking crimes of trusted teacher, Ed Horne, who wrought lasting damage on Inuit communities in Canada’s Arctic. “Arctic Predator achieves profound insight into one of the most disturbing and dismaying series of events in Canadian Arctic history. This is a work of great scholarship and extraordinary depth.  It sets out and seeks to understand how terrible crimes were committed by one evil man against individual children, the communities where they lived, and how the damage has spread deep and wide. Kathleen Lippa has written a book that is of huge importance and, at the same time, as accessible as it is revelatory. It is compelling and anguished and humane. A book of real importance.” —Hugh Brody, author of Landscapes of Silence: From Childhood ...