Books published by Goose Lane Editions

"There is no great or small art. There is only the striving to make tangible some visual experience that one feels could be thirst quenching to humanity and to oneself." Lucy Jarvis - 20160302"

A man in a darkened workshop, surrounded and obscured by dust clouds. A pair of larger-than-life hands, holding a mallet, ready to strike. Spectacles that play with the idea of turning lies into truth and cynics into believers. A cinder block, precariously suspended above a fragile glass, held in place by a single line of tension. Welcome to John Greer: retroActive.Sculptor, conceptual artist, and unconventional art maker John Greer has been telling stories through his work for more than fifty years. Drawing on his present and past experiences, his travels and exploits, and his anxieties and fears, his work offers poignant meditations on the human environment, all the while challenging the viewer's perspective with humour, intelligence, and a trail of narrative.RetroActive offers a comprehensive view of Greer's work and his commitment to the discourse of sculpture. Stunningly designed by Susanne Schaal and featuring the photographs of Raoul Manuel Schnell, the book contains more than three hundred representations of Greer and his work -- in situ, in galleries, in process -- bringing into focus Greer's significant contributions to the world of art and ideas. Also included in the book are essays by Ray Cronin, Andria Minicucci, Dennis Reid, Ron Shuebrook, David Diviney, Sarah Fillmore, and Vanessa Paschakarnis.John Greer taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for almost three decades, where his thinking and teaching helped shape contemporary sculpture in Canada. His work has been included in more than fifty solo and sixty group exhibitions and is held in public and private collections around the globe. In 2009 Greer was the recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, Canada's highest distinction in the field of art and culture.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the The Rooms in St, John's, NL, from May to September 2015.

"What constitutes our world? We move through it, but even as we travel, we are trying to recreate home. We're trying to step outside of our comfort zone and at the same time protect ourselves in this vulnerable situation." -- STEPHEN ANDREWS The work of Stephen Andrews has long mediated the successive crises of the contemporary world, exploring conflict, social change and identity. For more than a decade, Andrews confronted the AIDS epidemic personally and artistically. Later, his work registered the impact of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the subsequent "War on Terror", the financial crash of 2008 and a new wave of global protests, from those surrounding the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto to those associated with the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. Embedding, layering and erasing meaning, Andrews's work creates a triangle, where meaning resides between the process of painting (magical and sensuous), the represented image (a chronicle of fragility and resilience) and the invitation to the viewer (to look carefully and engage). Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Stephen Andrews POV provides a comprehensive overview of the last fifteen years of Andrews's work, a time when painting has emerged as his primary area of inquiry alongside a multifaceted approach to production that has resulted in drawings, photographs, animations, videos, installations, ceramics and ephemera.

In 1869, in the woods just outside of the bustling port city of Saint John, a group of teenaged berry pickers discovered sme badly decomposed bodies. The authorities suspected foul play, but the identities of the victims were as mysterious as that of the perpetrator. During a coroner's inquest, an unlikely suspect emerged to stand trial for murder: John Munroe, a renowned architect, well-heeled family man, and pillar of the community. Munroe's trial was the first in Canada's fledgling judicial system to introduce the accused's character as a defence. His lawyer's strategy was as simple as it was revolutionary: Munroe's wealth, education, and exemplary character made him incapable of murder. The press and Saint John's elite vocally supported Munroe, sparking a legal debate that continues to this day. Re-examining this precedent-setting historical crime with fresh eyes, Debra Komar addresses questions that still echo through the halls of justice: Should the accused's character be treated as evidence? Is everyone capable of murder?

From the reign of the first philosopher king once envisioned by Plato to the lasting peace to come under the rule of the Democratic Kampuchea Global Party, Daniel Scott Tysdal imagines himself into poetic voices not his own, writing to commemmorate events that never occurred, for the posterity of alternative universes. Fauxcassional Poems urges us to ponder the contingency of history and how each moment brings us to a thousand turning points. Despite our certainties, nothing is ever as it seems, and the future unfolds against our best designs. History is an unreliable vessel for the upwelling of our deepest hopes and fears, and in Tysdal's hands poetry shakes history by the lapels and shouts, "Wake up! Your time is now!"

Is it possible to reach back in time and solve an unsolved murder, more than 170 years after it was committed? Just after midnight on April 21, 1842, John McLoughlin Jr., the chief trader at Fort Stikine, was shot dead by his own men. The Hudson's Bay Company had high expectations for this remote post on the Pacific Northwest coast, but within two years it had devolved into a cesspool of paranoia, violence, misrule, and revolt. The fort's complement claimed the shooting was their only means of stopping McLoughlin's drunken and abusive rampages, and HBC Governor George Simpson took them at their word. The case never saw the inside of a courtroom. McLoughlin was buried withotu ceremony, and the Company closed the book on his death. Now Debra Komar uses archival research and modern forensic science, including ballistics, virtual autopsy, and crime scene reconstruction, to unlock the mystery of what really happened the night John McLoughlin died. The story of his murder provides a glimpse into the sometimes brutal reality of life in the Hudson's Bay Company and the role it played in shaping the Canadian north.

"You see a descendant of one of your own ancestors and you say, Hi, there, Pit-à-Thomas-à-Picoté, how's it going, eh? Then you see someone across the room looks just like you do, and who's speaking like it's you who's talking, and who has the same job as you, and who wouldn't look down her nose at you just because you're a cleaning lady who's never done nothing much and never been nowhere." The old woman speaks in a voice rough with the stuff of life. She's never done nothing much and never been nowhere, but the stories she tells fill a world. In her younger days, she traded favours with sailors to make ends meet; now she wears her body down scrubbing floors. She rants and reminisces, telling stories about herself, her friends and neighbours, the priest and his church, and every other aspect of of life in her village. Bawdy and tenacious, sharp-tongued and warm-hearted, la Sagouine's voice is the irrepressible voice of Acadie. With La Sagouine, Antonine Maillet brought Acadian literature to the world's notice. Since then, Maillet has been awarded the Prix Goncourt (the first non-French citizen to be so honoured) and the Governor General's Award for her novels Pélagie-la-charette and Don l'Orignal.

Facing the dwindling years of his life, the old man waits for his turn on the auction block, hoping to be sold to a family as decent as the one he is leaving. It is not the first time he has been here, and it may not be the last. Mute in life but loquacious on the page, he tells the colourful story of his rootless past. Abandoned by his family and first auctioned off at the age of seven -- "Ladies and gentlemen, this boy may not be a rare gem, but he is certainly worth a look" -- he moves from oen farm to another, taking comfort from the people around him. Daniel Poliquin's work of piercing wit and insight revisits an all-but-forgotten era, when orphaned children and the elderly poor were auctioned into a form of indentured servitude. Narrated through the eyes and ears of an unforgettable protagonist, The Angel's Jig -- a finalist for the Trillium Award in its original French edition -- is a joyous meditation on identity and the unpredictable voyage of existence.

Peter Norman finds the uncanny in the everyday. His poems surprise you, making you laugh and weep (sometimes simultaneously) with recognition at the fleeting spark of existence. Like archaeological sites between the strum und drang of our daily dramas, Norman's poems excavate playgrounds freshly vacated, graves until recently inhabited, basements and dark corners where life and death go on without us. They present us with a world that lives and breathes and endures, where we are simply transitory visitors.

Like the fever dream of a modern Odysseus, Safely Home Pacific Western is an electric rumination on the moment of departure, of squaring those provisional instances of settlement with the ingenuity and cunning that it takes to persevere. Latosik's tour package journeys into ruined stretches of the rural US and Ontario mine country, across the English Channel in a hot-air balloon, into the flight paths of fish hurled across Northern Territory Australia by a water spout, and even to the far, blinking orbit of a Navstar satellite. Neither safe nor conciliatory, these poems peer deep into the notion of human progress to reckon with the only seeming certainty: that in a poem, as in our lives, we are done and undone by the emergent element we cannot control.

For more than thirty years, Lynn Johnston captured the hearts of readers around the globe with her Pulitzer Prize-nominated comic strip "For Better or For Worse." Chronicling the lives of the middle-class suburbanite Patterson family Elly and John and their children, Michael, Elizabeth, and April "For Better or For Worse" was both goofy and ground-breaking. The experiences of the Patterson family mirrored those of their readers, the characters aging in real time with the audience. "For Better or For Worse: The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston" takes you behind the scenes of one of the world's favorite comic strips. Explore Lynn Johnston's influences and early drawings and the surprising, real-life inspirations behind her beloved characters and storylines. Along the way, revisit some of the most memorable moments in the "For Better or For Worse" universe. Whether you're encountering Lynn Johnston's work for the first time or a fan returning to it once again, you'll find something new yet richly familiar in "For Better or For Worse: The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston.""

On the battlefields of the Somme, Ypres, Amiens, Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, and Passchendaele, Canada came into its own as an independent nation. Nearly 65,000 Canadians lost their lives in these battles, and over 150,000 were wounded. Since the Armistice in 1918, the battlefields of World War I have been a tourist destination. Rushing to see where fathers, brothers, husbands, and lovers had fought, and in some cases died, Canadians travelled the roads of Europe soon after the war. Later generations have continued to visit the battlefields and memorials to the Canadian soldiers who fought in the war to end all wars. The first book of its kind, Canadians at War follows the route of the Canadian Expeditionary Force from its first encounter with the Germans to its final battles. In this informative guide, Susan Evans Shaw provides an overview of each battlefield as well as maps, modern photographs, and information on memorials and cemeteries.

A hot summer afternoon in 1975. Gunshots ring out across a swamp in rural Massachusetts. April and Pilgrim -- sixteen-year-old twins infatuated with the same man -- are forced apart. Three shots. One for each decade Pilgrim will spend running from the past.

Published for Goose Lane's diamond anniversary.

Home is like a leaf on a tree: other people, other homes, are the other leaves. They live beneath the same sky, share the same memories, survive the same storms. But one leaf is a solitude. After twenty-five years on a New Brunswick farm, award-winning author Beth Powning came to understand the land she calls home. Now, almost 20 years after the initial publication of Home, readers may once again experience the spirit of home in nature in this new edition of her seminal book. Time has made the subtle messages of the valley beyond her door clearer, if not less mysterious: the glorious rawness of winter storms, the effortless dominance of oak trees, the distinctive poetry of night, the universes found within a humble garden. Placing herself in the dual roles of explorer and storyteller, Powning navigates the unspoken divide between the untamed and the domestic, revelling in the complex bonds that exist between the natural world and those who would seek to explore its wonders. Home was originally released in 1996 in Canada as Seeds of Another Summer and in the US as Home. This new edition, which includes a new introduction and gorgeous reproductions of Powning's sumptuous nature photography, will inspire those who seek a simpler life and enchant those who have already found it.

Patrick Warner's Perfection makes a carnival of our most potent and dangerous obsessions. A factory outlet sells designer human parts at cut-rate prices, a midlife crisis becomes a cleansing ritual, a chocolate chip pancake stands accused at trial, and the predatory voice of anorexia speaks to a transfixed audience. Descending the rabbit hole of this wildly imaginative collection, we find ourselves in a field of engagement where the destructive ideals of beauty, politics, art, romantic love, and spirituality are ambushed by roguish parody, acerbic satire, life-affirming laughter, and a hard-won pragmatism. In Perfection, where death is certain and certainty is hell-bent on death, Warner refuses to rest on his laurels, continuing to build on his reputation as one of the most respected voices in Canadian poetry.

Some days, it doesn't pay to be a lapsed pretend Buddhist, particularly when you�ve been charged with a lengthy list of war crimes. Zavida Zankovic's world has come undone. Caught up in the insanity of war and the capers of a larger-than-life father, he has subsisted on the black market, been forced into the army, deserted when trying to save a young boy trapped beneath a mountain of corpses, and lived by his wits. Now, he awaits trail on a dizzying array of charges -- Fomenting Treason, Providing Material Support for a Terrorist Organization, Consorting with History. He has survived the Balkan wars with only his life and a lamb to show for it. To keep his sanity, he gathers up the threads of his past and spins an audacious narrative that includes a levitating holy man, "bombs" of western consumer products, and stories that may or may not be true. In this sly, often amusing novel, Chris Gudgeon exposes the universal human experience like never before, crafting a transcendent tale that leads through some of the darkest moments of the late twentieth century. As he weaves strands of Balkan mythology into the real events of war, Gudgeon creates a story that blurs the distinction between fact and fiction, between the stories we tell ourselves and those that we tell others.

Thrill to the extraordinary untold story of the early career of escape artist extraordinaire Harry Houdini! Gasp at heroic trials and dreadful tribulations as a struggling young magician goes on the road with the acclaimed Marco Magic Company to conquer the competitive and challenging theatre circuit of eastern Canada! Witness elaborate acts of illusion as Houdini astounds crowds by effortlessly freeing himself from the clutches of even the most inescapable of restraints! Swoon as Houdini goes out on his own with his young wife in tow! Cheer as he mesmerizes and marvels with the miraculous metamorphosis! Cast your gaze upon a veritable cornucopia of rare photographic images, many never before seen in public! Be astonished as we finally unveil the mysterious truth behind Houdini's fabled straitjacket escape!! Guaranteed to be 100% true!!!

Is it possible to reconcile the mind of a youth with the actions of a monster? In this set of dazzling stories, Dora Award-winning playwright Anton Piatigorsky casts his imaginative gaze across the formative years of the world's most infamous dictators.

Les collections d'œuvres d'art racontent des histoires qui reflètent les intérêts du collectionneur et de son époque. Chefs-d'œuvre de la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook relate la vie rocambolesque de sir William Maxwell (Max) Aitken, aussi connu sous le nom de lord Beaverbrook, magnat de la presse multimillionnaire, éditeur de journaux arrogant, habile politicien, maître de la propagande, auteur et grand philanthrope.En 1959, sir Max Aitken inaugure à Fredericton, au Nouveau-Brunswick, la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook pour abriter une collection exemplaire de tableaux. Constitué par lord Beaverbrook lui-même et son entourage de conservateurs et de collègues, ce noyau initial d'œuvres deviendra l'une des plus belles et des plus importantes collections d'art britannique en Amérique de Nord. Il comprend notamment des œuvres de J.M.W. Turner, Lucian Freud, Graham Sutherland et Walter Sickert, ainsi que des tableaux représentatifs de Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, John Singleton Copley, Eugène Delacroix, Joshua Reynolds et Salvador Dalí, qui témoignent du caractère distinctif et de la qualité de la remarquable collection de la Galerie.Ces œuvres importantes sont réunies pour la première fois dans cette publication luxueuse comprenant plus de 75 reproductions en couleur, ainsi que des essais sure l'histoire de la collection et les chefs-d'œuvre, signés par six critiques renommés: Elliott H. King, historien de l'art et spécialiste de Dalí James Hamilton, auteur de Turner: A Life; Richard Calvocoressi, directeur de la fondation Henry Moore; l'auteur et conservateur Angus Stewart; l'historienne de l'art Katharine Eustace; ainsi que Terry Graff, conservateur de la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook et principal auteur de cet ouvrage.Pour clore l'ouvrage, le journaliste Marty Klinkenberg et le directeur général de la Galerie d'art Beaverbrook, Bernard Riordon, retracent les péripéties du différend opposant le musée et les deux fondations Beaverbrook.