Dear readers,
July here in Nova Scotia is an embarrassment of riches. The long winter and the torrential spring have broken into a series of unending sunny days. The streets of Halifax which were not so long ago narrowed by piles of snow are lined now with out-of-province licence plates (Has someone really driven here from Georgia? From the Northwest Territories? From British Columbia?), with small kids on small bikes, and tourists smiling like they wouldn’t believe a raincloud if they saw one.
This August will mark my first full year of living here, being one of many Ontarians who have found their way east. It’s been a year of the strange education that comes with being new to a place, but now with the sun smiling above, with the Atlantic Ocean sparkling, looking less like a dark mass that plans to shipwreck you, I feel less like a stranger and more like a thing growing here.
Traces News
Now Open to International & Canadian Submissions
We’re pleased to share that we’re now open to submissions for our autumn issue! New this fall, we will be open to submissions from around the world. Please share this exciting news with your friends abroad and be sure to submit.
The Order of Love
Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem
“Nobody has ever heard language pure and simple. Instead, we hear utterances that are shrill or sardonic, mournful or nonchalant, mawkish or truculent, irascible or histrionic. And this, as we shall see, is part of what we mean by form.”
Community Events & Opportunities
Arts & Letters Club of Toronto Foundation Poetry Award: League of Canadian Poets
The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto is sponsoring a poetry contest for early stage career Canadian poets. See the League of Canadian Poets contest page for other great contest opportunities. Deadline: August 13, 2026
Short Fiction Contest: The Fiddlehead
The Fiddlehead is inviting short fiction submissions for their 2026 short fiction contest. Deadline: September 1, 2026.
Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence: The Ex-Puritan
The Ex-Puritan is currently accepting fiction and poetry submissions for the 2026 Austin Clark Prize in Literary Excellence. Deadline: September 15, 2026.
CBC Short Story Contest: CBC Short Story Contest
Time to start planning ahead! The CBC Short Story Contest is open for submissions starting Sept 1. Deadline: November 1, 2026.
Do you have a publication, event, or milestone you’d like to share with the Traces community? Submit your news to be featured in a future edition of “Contributor Sightings.”
Ordinary Time
Summer is a time for novels under shady trees or with a beer by the ocean. Here are a few for your consideration.
No Great Mischief, Alister MacLeod
Dare I recommend a book I haven’t yet finished? I do dare since No Great Mischief was in 2009 voted the greatest Atlantic Canadian book of all time. A story about family and the relationship between two brothers, this novel takes place in Cape Breton, Toronto, and Northern Ontario and for me carries with it the zing of a story unfolding in familiar places. And I was immediately endeared to a novel that hates on the 401 in the first chapter.
The Blue Castle, Lucy Maud Montgomery
May we not forget that this incredible installment in Canadian literature is turning 100 this year. In addition to Pride and Prejudice, this novel tops the charts for me in the genre of ‘women marrying for incredible real estate … and love’. Or perhaps more accurately, a book about learning to live well.
Pick a Colour, by Souvankham Thammavongsa
One of my favourite CanLit reads from this year. The story of a nail technician and the raw and beautiful thing it is to observe the lives of those around you.
Second Reading
The History of Emily Montague by Frances Brooke, Novel.
Sometimes the bits of a novel that stick with you are surely not what the author intended the lasting impression to be. For me that’s a line about the weather from the (perhaps) first Canadian novel, The History of Emily Montague, written in 1769 by Frances Brooke. This novel is a travelogue told in a series of letters between genteel English friends about their experiences in post-settler, pre-confederation Canada. It’s a fascinating timepiece. One of the characters who is often commenting on what’s wrong with Canada states quite definitively about the people he encounters,
…there is something in the climate which strongly inclines both the body and mind, but rather the latter, to indolence: the heat of the summer, though pleasing, enervates the very soul, and gives a certain lassitude unfavorable to industry; and the winter, at its extreme, binds up and chills all the active faculties of the soul.
The locals are often getting called lazy in this novel by our carriage-riding, party-attending cast of main characters. Indolence! How rude, I think in the winter, while nearly falling asleep at 8pm wearing multiple sweaters. How rude, I think now as the heat warnings roll in, while lying starfish on the floor next to the air conditioning unit.
Though I wouldn’t call it indolence, I’m often thinking about this problem, that our greatest efforts towards meaning and beauty are so often thwarted by the whims of weather on our silly human bodies. How frustrating, and yet what rich opportunities to live so closely with the knowledge of our own limitations.
Off the Beaten Path
For lovers of hiking and secrets, I am pleased to say I have located the Secret Beach along the Gaff’s Point hiking trail, accessible only by belaying yourself down a treacherous rock wall. Perhaps the directions to it are easily accessible online, and perhaps the cove stank of seaweed, but ah! The adventure!
