Deflagrate: The Great Fire of 1892

A month without much rain, a high westerly wind, and weak water main pressure were trigger points in a 1892 fire, when a spark of dubious origin ignited a stable and then proceeded to deflagrate St. John's, Newfoundland.

Skirl: Sweet Music

Nova Scotia is not so far away that I can almost see the "new world Gaels," their convex cheeks puffing life into their bagpipes as they synchronize my soul with the skirl of "Amazing Grace."

Quatorze Juillet: Oxford English Disctionary

Quatorze Juillet, Bastille Day, La Fête Nationale: No matter the title of this French national holiday, parades and fireworks are among the festivities that commemorate this day in 1789 in Paris, when a mob of angry demonstrators morphed into a revolutionary force and overran the Bastille garrison.

Silly Season: A Fictional Account

Benoit's intermittent alcohol-induced behavior, which transformed a shy teetotaler into an outlandish drunkard, lasted two years—a period he would later refer to as his silly season.

Tucket: A Poem

A departure from the sentence, but to not dismayI crafted a poem for today's Word of the Day

There lived a kind trumpeter on the isle of Nantucket
He stood on the dunes, tooting mellow tunes
While his son shoveled sand into a bucket
Then a friend from Methuen, carrying balloons
Hiked onto the scene, with a smile so serene
The trumpeter welcomed him by blaring a tucket

Sciential

The Internet affords the erstwhile novice novelist a a sciential pool of opportunties to fortify his stories with credible content.

A Triumvirate of Terms

While I was unplugged and on vacation in New Brunswick, PEI and the Magdalen Islands, I missed the challenge of infusing my vocabulary with an Internet-generated word-of-the day. I did, however, bolster my Atlantic Canada vernacular by reading Wayne Johnson's, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

A triumvirate of terms I plucked from Johnson's novel about Newfoundland's first premier, Joe Smallwood, and the history of this colony/country/province:

syllogism: a crafty argument
dory: short, flat-bottomed boat with high flaring sides
confederation: alliance

Tempers flared, like the sides of dories, as politicians and all manner of pundits cast their syllogisms in favor and against Newfoundland's proposed confederaton with Canada.