StFX Connection Behind

The Pictou Bee Press

Dr. Laurie Stanley-Blackwell, retired StFX history professor, and John Blackwell, former Director of Research Grants at StFX, are sharing the history and culture of northeastern Nova Scotia, through their new publishing venture, The Pictou Bee Press.

Founded in 2022, the press has already produced nine children’s books, which are Scottish-themed, such as Hanging Out With The Haggis. Their books have reached a wide reading audience as far away as Finland, Scotland, Florida, and the Yukon; some of them are currently being sold by the Gaelic Books Council in Scotland.

Cover of children's book, The Pets that Came to Palmerston Street, by Laurie Stanley-Blackwell, featuring an illustrated house with children in the window

A notable feature of The Pictou Bee Press is its strong connection to the StFX community.

Collaborators have included Effie Rankin, former instructor in the Celtic Studies Department, who translated two of their Gaelic-English children’s books, The Pets that Came to Palmerston Street/Na Peataichean a thàinig gu Sràid Phalmerston, and Meeting the New Neighbours/A' cur fàilt' air na Nabaidhean Ùra. Dr. Michael Linkletter of the Celtic Studies Department is currently translating for The Pictou Bee Press another Gaelic-English children’s book, My Dog Tank/An Cù Agam, Tank.

Cover of the children's book, The Crow that Wouldn't Go, by Matea Drljepan, featuring an illustrated black crow in front of Main Street

Cover of the children's book, Hanging Out with the Haggis, by Laurie Stanley-Blackwell, featuring an illustrated tree and a signpost pointing to Pictou, Cape Breton, and Antigonish

A recent publication, The Crow That Wouldn’t Go, was written and illustrated by Matea Drljepan, academic technologist for the Centre for Online Learning & Professional Studies and adjunct professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at StFX. In February 2026, children’s book reviewer Sue Slade and The Miramichi Reader featured The Pictou Bee Press and its four most recent publications on “World Read Aloud Day,” a day that highlights “the importance of sharing stories and reading them aloud.”

StFX is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw People.