100 Things You Don’t Know About Atlantic Canada (For Kids)
100 Things You Don’t Know About Atlantic Canada (For Kids)
Nova Scotia
#38 : In 1905, Alexander Graham Bell invented a kite that could lift a person.
Alexander Graham Bell never took time off from having ideas. In fact, he hadn’t even finished inventing the telephone when he decided to try creating something else amazing: a flying machine.
In the mid-1890s, he started doing kite experiments in the Cape Breton Island town of Baddeck, Nova Scotia, and the whole town got in on the act. People would hang around nearby to watch, take pictures, or help out. And picture this: because he wanted his invention to be able to carry a person, the kites were so large that he used horses to try and get them into the air. He’d tie a rope from the kite to a horse and then send the horse running across the fields.
This went on for a long time without much success. He tried a lot of different shapes and structures, but nothing worked-until Bell invented the tetrahedral kite in the early 1900s, which was a big step in the right direction. A tetrahedron is a shape made up of four equilateral triangles, in case you were wondering.
After that, Bell focused his experiments on different types of tetrahedral kites, and in 1905, he finally reached his goal. On December 28, one of his kites lifted a man named Neil Mac Dermid thirty feet into the air.
East Coast journalist Sarah Sawler’s 100 Things You Don’t Know About Atlantic Canada (For Kids) features 100 unique facts, stories, historical events and bits of trivia gathered from the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. Sawler, also the author of 100 Things You Don’t Know About Nova Scotia, has provided a map of the Atlantic Provinces in the front of the book for those unfamiliar with the region. The facts are numbered from 1 to 100 and listed chronologically, beginning 36 million years ago when a meteor hit Labrador and ending with the rare discovery of a Maud Lewis painting in a thrift shop in 2017. Each fact is accompanied by a black and white photo or an illustration and a “Fun Stuff” or “Learn More” interactive sidebar. The “Fun Stuff” sidebars offer details on an accompanying activity, such as a visit to the Maud Lewis House at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia for fact #100, and a website URL for further investigation. The “Learn More” sidebars range from a recipe for Cape Breton Pork Pie for fact #9 (which readers will learn is actually a sweet dessert tart and not a meat pie), to a directive to readers of fact #54 to visit a local library to learn more about Wolfville, Nova Scotia’s Mona Louise Parsons and her escape from the Nazis.
Sawler’s compilation will appeal to budding artists interested in the fact that famous New Brunswick artist Mary Pratt began painting at age four, and young geologists will learn that gold was first discovered in Nova Scotia in 1858. Emerging historians will learn of the disturbing fact that indigenous children forced to attend Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Residential School were experimented on by nutritionists in the mid-1800s, and that Rose Fortune of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, was Canada’s first female police officer. Readers will learn that icebergs were first harvested commercially in Newfoundland in the 1990s for use in skincare products, beer, wine and water, and that in the early 1800s a pirate treasure was buried near St. John’s, NL.
100 Things You Don’t Know About Atlantic Canada (for Kids) could not have a more accurate title. It is an interesting read that includes the expected famous facts (Titanic, Halifax Explosion…) but also highlights lesser known facts and stories unique to the Atlantic Provinces. The sidebars are a helpful inclusion for readers wanting “more”, parents looking for side trips and rainy day activities, or teachers and library staff interested in library and classroom extension activities and cross curricular connections. Although there is no index, Sawler’s book can be picked up and dived into at any point making it suitable for reluctant readers (especially those addicted to world record and trivia style books) and those requiring high interest paired with low vocabulary. The only fault to be found is the “for kids” designation as this book will surely garner many adult fans as well.
Cate Carlyle, an author and former elementary teacher, currently resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she is a librarian at Mount Saint Vincent University.