autism – Poor Farm

April 23, 2023 / 0 Comments

Beyond Documentary

UPDATE: Click here for my interview with Portia Clark on CBC radio’s Information Morning.

Learningo is a non-profit society dedicated to helping people with Autism become active members of their company. I am honoured to have been recently made vice-chair of the board. As part of Autism Awareness month, we are excited to show you an amazing documentary called Beyond. The movie covers the challenges faced by a single mother, Tamara Mark, to two non-verbal adults, Ian and Harry. The movie will be shown on April 30th, 1pm at the Woodlawn Library Auditorium.

August 16, 2021 / 0 Comments

Recent News

Front Page of July 21st The Cole Harbour Wire

Poor Farm has been in the news recently! Along with the reading at Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum, there have also been features in local media. Check out below for more details:

April 3, 2021 / 0 Comments

The Inventor

Alexander Graham Bell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell#/media/File:Alexander_Graham_Bell_and_family.jpg — Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell helped shape the modern world. Famed for the telephone, he had a broad range of interests that spawned a number of inventions: spanning airplanes and kites, to deaf education and artificial respiration. His legacy is so ubiquitous that the Bell telephone company founded by his brother-in-law is still around today.

January 22, 2021 / 0 Comments

Abandoned

The image above is from a recent CBC news article on one man’s quest to preserve Nova Scotia’s abandoned cemeteries. Steve Skafte, a Bridgetown poet and photographer, has created an online map of the forgotten graveyards that dot the province. I felt the same impulse to record the history around one of these sites when out walking with my son and we stumbled upon the Poor Farm burial ground. This became the opening chapter of my novel, Poor Farm.

January 5, 2021 / 2 Comments

Hello

Poor Farm Cover — Working Cover for Upcoming Novel Poor Farm

Welcome to the Poor Farm blog! I will post updates about the novel here, along with longer background pieces. As outlined on the Welcome page: this novel is about an autistic character in nineteenth century Nova Scotia. Why? There are a lot of books on autism but few that imagine what it was like for people on the spectrum in previous times. That’s one reason. The bigger reason is I wrote it for my autistic son.