Ron Caplan of Breton Books has spent his summer searching for Christmas memories. He can often be found on the island’s beaches, wearing an electric orange bathing suit and inviting everyone to send him stories for Cape Breton’s Christmas: Book 5. Maybe you’ve seen him, or the posters he’s put up all around the island, inviting people to share their stories.
The book will be published before Christmas. And again this year, all royalties from the sale of Cape Breton’s Christmas will be donated to Feed Nova Scotia through the CBC Radio Cape Breton’s “Light Up a Life” project.
“We’ve been able to donate close to $5000 so far from sale of the Christmas books,” says Caplan who published the first volume of Cape Breton Christmas books in 2014, and has done one each year since then, collecting hundreds of stories in the process.
Now working toward Book 5 of Cape Breton’s Christmas, he is still out there looking for stories.
“I’m sure that everyone has at least one good Christmas story,” says Caplan. “My job this summer is to encourage everyone I meet to remember those stories and to send them in.”
A story for Cape Breton’s Christmas can be happy or sad, long or short. It can be a memory of something that happened in Cape Breton or “Away”, recently or long ago. It can be true or it can be a good fiction. And if your story is used, you will receive a free copy of Cape Breton’s Christmas: Book 5.
Everyone is invited to send their stories and memories to ronaldcaplan@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is September 1, so send them now. Christmas will be here before you know it.
