Great Cape Breton Storytelling

by Ronald Caplan

From a lifetime of collecting, Caplan offers tales from the rare complex of Cape Breton Island traditions. From a grim sealing trek to a mother’s courage in a windstorm, to memories of drunken hens, to a shark attack. The book includes fables from the island’s diverse ethnic heritage in among stories from the Gaelic, French and Mi’kmaq traditions. Good solid reading in one lasting collection! Canadian author Ronald Caplan’s award-winning work is best known for keeping the Cape Breton story alive through oral testimony and images.

184 pages, ebook

Published June 10, 2020

About the author

Publisher, Writer, Folk-historian, Order of Canada appointee. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ronald Caplan emigrated to Canada in 1971, settled in Cape Breton Island's Highlands region, and began chronicling the local history. This was a region where Gaelic was still the language spoken by people in the area, but was quickly being replaced by English. Sensing that he would have only a time-limited opportunity to record this culture before its native speakers died off, he founded Cape Breton's Magazine in 1972, to record the culture and living history of the island and its people. His audio recordings and photographs are a lasting record of this way of life that has mostly disappeared. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2010 for his work on the magazine and as the publisher of the Breton Books imprint. [wikipedia]