One Summer in Whitney Pier

Set in Cape Breton, this autobiographical picture book is a nostalgic retelling of a childhood summer. It is the second children’s book written by the Honourable Mayann Francis, Nova Scotia’s first Black Lieutenant Governor, who served in this role for the province from 2006 to 2012. Francis now resides in Halifax and is the recipient of numerous awards related to her lifelong work to promote and support cultural diversity and a promotion of the Arts. While her first book, Mayann’s Train Ride, was centered around a trip to New York City, this story provides an accessible glimpse into a multicultural community in Cape Breton where the author lived as a child. It depicts how grassroots cooperation can foster greater understanding and cultural appreciation. It offers insight into Francis’ childhood experiences and how her perceptions of the norm of cultural diversity served to shape her life’s work. To underscore this point, a map and two insets on the opening pages show the setting for the story with stars indicating the origin point of the various families in her Cape Breton community.

The second daughter of a church minister and his wife, Mayann Francis grew up in the working-class steel plant town of Whitney Pier. The story describes her daily life and then focuses on the events of one summer when she was 11. When school break arrives, Mayann is saddened to learn that her two best friends will be going away. With no playmates to fill her days and being too young to play baseball with her older sister and her teammates on the Hankard Street Crew (HSC), Mayann is not looking forward to the prospect of spending the summer break on her own. Seeing her sad, lonely, and bored, her father encourages her to fill some of her time by helping around the house and seeing how much there is to do.

Mayann spends her first few weeks happily practicing her embroidery stitches, helping to organize the church for Sunday services, and assisting her parents as they cook and bake. Food plays an essential role in the community of Whitney Pier. Both her parents were from the Caribbean, and her home meals reflect her mother’s heritage coming from Antigua, a West Indies island, and her father’s Cuban roots. A variety of different foods from johnnycake, black-eyed peas and rice, sugar cake with coconut, oxtail, pigs’ feet, sorrel drink, ginger beer (a West Indian drink from fresh ginger and lemonade), hot sauce, and coo-coo are introduced in this story, along with the concept of freely sharing food with neighbours.

I cooked, stitched, baked, organized, and made lists for weeks. I was so busy I almost forgot to miss my friends. Almost.

And whenever Mom and Dad didn’t need me, I watched my sister play baseball.

One day I brought an embroidery project my mom had given me to an HSC and Laurier Street Crew baseball game. I sat and stitched, and I noticed that Laurier Street Crew were wearing beautifully matching sweaters and slacks. The HSC’s clothes were all mismatched, and they didn’t look like a real team compared to the Laurier Street Crew.

Suddenly, I had an idea.

Although Mayann’s plan isn’t clearly stated at first, it clearly gains the approval of her parents, and it involves using many of the skills she had learned during her summer so far. After a week of hard work baking, sewing, embroidering, and working on her list of tasks on her secret project, Maryann’s only worry is whether she will be able to finish everything in time. However, when her two best friends return early from their summer holidays, they jump into action and help her complete her tasks. Maryann’s idea is finally revealed as a highly successful church-sponsored bake sale of cakes and cookies which raises more money than anticipated. The funds are then presented to her sister’s baseball team to purchase new matching uniforms featuring hand-embroidered HSC badges. Involvement by the entire community has helped to make this possible.

One Summer in Whitney Pier includes two recipes in the back – for Johnnycake and Sorrel Drink – although possibly a different choice might have been selected for the second recipe as dried sorrel is not readily available for anyone wanting to make this beverage.

Illustrator Tamara Thiébaux-Heïkalo is a very experienced artist and graphic designer with numerous picture books to her credit, including Mayann’s Train Ride and Driftwood Dragons and other Seaside Poems (2012), both of which were shortlisted for the Lilian Shepherd Award for Excellence in Illustration. Her colourful watercolour paintings support the text and transport readers back in time, using the clothing and setting to identify the characters and recreate the time period. As an extension, there is a very informative seven-minute YouTube video available perfect for a child audience in which the illustrator demonstrates how she created the colourful watercolour illustrations for One Summer in Whitney Pier. She relates how images come to her mind as she reads through the text and how she inserts additional details to enhance and extend the storyline through her paintings. She also discusses how she uses photographs, Google maps, and other research tools to ensure accuracy in her work.

This 32-page story is a simply told memory from Mayann Francis’ childhood and would be a welcome addition to an elementary school library’s diversity collection or to support Canadian Black History month. One Summer in Whitney Pier could also be read aloud as a spark for encouraging children to gather childhood memories from older family members to inspire the creation of their own books.