Western and Eastern Rambles: Travel Sketches of Nova Scotia by Joseph Howe, and: Nova Scotia: Window on the Sea by Ernest Buckler, Hans Weber (review)

396 LETTERS IN CANADA style of the stylist we find relief in the simple vigorous unadorned talk of Rural Rides (a remark that could be reversed), but there is no justice in describing him as an elegant stylist. As for Edward Thomas's early dilettante Paterism and his violent reaction in favour of Cobbett and the plain style, one might wish that he had stopped short of the point (not referred to by Mr Keith) where belligerent anti-aestheticism made him prefer a parish church to a cathedral, and a fine folk song to the best 'art' music. The University of Toronto Press should perhaps have acknowledged the charming Bewick and other illustrations which are used on the title page and as chapter headings to this very nicely printed book. (N.J. ENDICOTT) Joseph Howe, Western and Eastern Rambles: Travel Sketches of Nova Scotia, edited and with an introduction by M.G. Parks. University of Toronto Press '973, iIlus., 208, $3.50; Ernest Buckler and Hans Weber, Nova Scotia: Window on the Sea. McClelland and Stewart '973, >27, $>2.95 Joseph Howe was twenty-four and editor of the newspaper Novascotian when he began to publish a series of sketches of his native province which came to be known as the Western and Eastern Rambles. Like many Nova Scotians and visitors to the province in the ,820S and 305 Howe was interested in the economics, politics, and social life and was entranced by the overpowering beauty of the new province. Such writers as Haliburton , McCulloch, Young, and others published books during this period from various poinfs of view. All shared a common concern, often critical, for the slowly developing agricultural, industrial, and cultural well-being of Nova Scotia; all were optimistic about the province's future. Howe's Rambles reveal much about the province and its people; and much about the man himself. The young editor's insight, energy, business acumen, and sensitivity emerge from each sketch. His non-political writings, which possess the same passion and enthusiasm of the more formal political writings and utterances, are expertly and imaginatively edited by M.G. Parks. The introduction and well-selected illustrations by a number of contemporary artists provide a background for Howe's sketches. Altogether they produce an informed inSight and an intimate feeling of a sense of place that was Nova Scotia almost a century and a half ago. Howe's rambles were not mere journalistic junkets, but rather the often arduous travels and wide-ranging explorations of a young writer already launched on the mission that was to be his life's work, the strengthening of all that was Nova Scotian. It is often the case when writers and photographers combine that the text is overwhelmed by the shutter's magic. This is not the situation in Nova Scotia: Window on the Sea, text by Ernest Buckler, photographs by Hans Weber. The writer and photographer create a happy marriage HUMANITIES 397 and the reason is, I suggest, that Ernest Buckler reveals himself here, as he has done so often in his novels, to be more poet than prose writer. His sensitive eye and ear are evident from the first section of this book, 'Amethysts and Dragonflies,' which is a superb prose poem. In an intoxicating buildup of detail by means of short sentences and ingenious word combinations, Buckler miraculously evokes the land, the people, the sea. The matching double-page spread is a black and white photograph of giant combers against sea-rock. The power is there in words and photograph . The text of this section of the book will hopefully find its way into future anthologies of Canadian poetry. The majority of the black and white and colour studies are of the countryside where sea, land, and people are involved. A few 'windows' open upon the ambitious construction undertakings in present-day Halifax . But in the ordering of words and photographs (unfortunately no locations are given) there is always the return to fence posts, ferns, gulls, children, spring flowers, men, and women in a landscape and in their seasons. This book is one of prose-poems with pictures about nature, about life in all its stark and...