December 13, 2011

Archibald MacMechan (1862-1933) was a well-known Nova Scotian writer, academic, and chronicler of his adopted province's seafaring past. He taught in the English department of Dalhousie university for many years and counted among his students Lucy Maud Montgomery and Hugh MacLennan. Though well-respected as a scholar--he was among the first to teach a course in Canadian literature and to publish a critical survey of that literature, Headwaters of Canadian Literature, in 1924-- MacMechan's best-remembered work was contained in three collections of stories from Nova Scotia's golden age of sail: Sagas of the Sea (1923), Old Province Tales (1924), and There Go the Ships (1928). These collections reveal MacMechan's careful documenting of life at sea in the nineteenth century through many years of correspondence and visits with those who experienced it firsthand; many of his accounts of sea calamities and sheer human endurance through mutinies, storms, fires, and shipwrecks read more like thrilling fiction than bare fact. Elizabeth Peirce, editor of the newly-published collection of reprinted MacMechan stories In the Great Days of Sail, will speak about MacMechan's life, times, and contribution to Nova Scotia's cultural history. Dec. 13 - 7:30 pm