Letters to Levi: A Young Fisherman's Mail

Les Harding is Reference Librarian at the University of Waterloo.

The title says it all. Levi Thomas (1872–1933) was an ordinary
fisherman who lived an ordinary life in Blanche, Barrington Township, in
the southwest corner of Nova Scotia. What we have here is a collection
of letters written to Levi, between 1890 and 1896, by friends and
relatives in Nova Scotia and the “Boston States.”

These are real people on the page. They write with a naive poignancy
(often with erratic grammar and creative spelling) about love, sex,
scandal, loneliness, good times and bad times, birth, and death.
Levi’s letters provide us with a unique opportunity to look into the
lives of a class of people who rarely get to speak through the pages of
a book.

It is amazing that these letters have survived at all. Stephenson found
them tucked away in the bottom of a battered old sea chest. She has done
a commendable job of rescuing the letters and bringing them to a wider
audience. Readers will also thank her for her thorough notes.