"Unconventional tales": Baraka Books profiled in Montreal Gazette

The Montreal Gazette featured a profile of Baraka Books with a focus on James Jackson’s recently released book The Riot that Never Was, running a photo of the publisher taken right where the three innocent Montrealers were shot dead by troops on May 21, 1832.

Following the footsteps of Daniel Tracey.

You could say that Daniel Tracey was publisher Robin Philpot’s 19th-century forebear. Philpot himself sees it that way. (…)

Tracey was among the anglos who prominently sided with the Patriotes of the 1830s who rebelled against British colonial rule in what was then Lower Canada. In support of the cause, he ran a scrappy Montreal newspaper, The Vindicator, devoted to getting up the nose of the colonial ruling clique, and stood for election as a Patriote candidate.

It explains in part why Philpot’s fledgling English-language publishing house, Baraka Books, was keen to issue The Riot that Never Was, a book that tells the story of that fateful election in May of 1832 with Tracey as its protagonist. Another reason is that it challenges the conventional version of the tale.”

“It’s a remarkable story,” said Philpot in a recent interview. “I mean, how often have we had troops shooting down innocent bystanders in Montreal? The book clearly shows there was a coverup and historians have let it stand until now. If we hadn’t published it, the story wouldn’t have come out again.” (…)

Coming soon is Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media by eminent African American writer Ishmael Reed, which equates attacks on Obama with so-called “nigger breakers,” who in slavery days whipped uppity blacks into submission. In a gentler vein, there will be Roads to Richmond by Eastern Townships writer Nick Fonda, a collection of small town tales from the region.