Spring has come and George sails with his grandfather to an abandoned fishing outport so the old man can visit his wife’s grave. On their return, they are caught in a fierce storm. They pull their boat onto an ice floe and take shelter under the boat. As the ice breaks up under them, the old man shows the courage and dignity he wants his grandson to remember.

Artist Geoff Butler is a Nova Scotian artist and writer who was born on Fogo Island, NL. He did paintings for the "Ode to Labrador" during an artist residency at North West River, Labrador, just a stone's throw from Dr. Paddon's house. Geoff's self-published books are Art of War: Painting it out of the picture; The Look of Angels: Angels in Art; With Every Breath We Take: a modern fable in which a snowflake helps put an end to war; and Our Own Little World: in paintings and verse. He has also illustrated Ode to Newfoundland (Tundra Books, 2003).Author Robin McGrath is a former academic who specialized in Inuit Studies She did twenty-five years of field research in the Canadian Arctic before returning to her home in Newfoundland, later moving to Labrador in 2006. She is the award-winning author of numerous books, including Inuit Literature: The Development of a Tradition, the novels Donovan's Station and The Winterhouse, the poetry collections Escaped Domestics and Covenant of Salt, and All in Together: Nursery Rhymes of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Geoff Butler's profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Awards - Children's Literature - Illustration

“Butler has written a lyrical, elegiac tale and accompanied it with gorgeous moving lyrics and pencil drawings.”
–Maclean’s

“A tribute to the traditional Newfoundland fishing communities that have survived and triumphed over their bleak isolation.”
–Trade & Culture