Publisher Brack and Brine is putting the Big Land in the spotlight

What can a box of old videotapes tell you about the culture and history of a place?

According to the founders of Brack and Brine in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, they can tell — and show — a great deal.

Morgen Mills, Brack and Brine's co-founder, has described one of the company's goals as creating "beautiful books that matter."

With the release of its second book, the company is well on its way to sharing the cultures of Labrador and the greater Canadian North with the world.

"It's evident to us that there is an appetite for more Labrador stories," said Mark David Turner, Mills's business partner.

"Outside of [Labrador magazine] Them Days, which does amazing work, there's kind of an absence. There's not even a newspaper or magazine anymore."

Who are Brack and Brine?

Brack and Brine is the brainchild of co-founders Turner and Mills. Turner is a St. John's native who lives and teaches in Toronto while continuing to work in Labrador.

Mills was born in St. Catharines, Ont., and moved to Happy Valley-Goose Bay in the mid-2000s.

After years of collaboration, they created the company, which Turner describes as a "container" to house the work they do in the service of Labrador culture and records.

The origin story of Brack and Brine could be said to start with some 1,600 analog film records accumulated by the Labrador Institute, now Memorial University's Labrador Campus.

Turner was hired in 2010 to digitize these records. They included old VHS copies of the CBC series On the Road Again, footage of northern Labrador recorded by the Quebec government, and even film captured by the ground-breaking British documentarian Richard Leacock.

A book about filmmaking in Labrador

Brack and Brine's first publication was Labrador Cinema, released in 2022, the culmination of over a decade of work that started with the 2010 digitization project.

The process required playback of each recording, giving the pair real-time exposure to the content.

"It was an interesting way to learn about the history of a region," said Turner, "to learn about a place through its video record."

The pair's exposure to these film records inspired them to share the content with Labradorians and other interested individuals through community film screenings and a research forum hosted by the Labrador Campus.

Labrador Cinema, the book, was conceived as a capstone to the screening series. Of all the content he viewed during this process, Turner said, "The stories that are most interesting are not actually the famous directors."

More interesting to him were early 20th century Hollywood works featuring actor Esther Eneutseak of Nain and her daughter, performer and screenwriter Nancy Columbia, whom Turner describes as "Labradorians that have left their mark on international film industry." 

A survey of Labrador literature

Brack and Brine has just released its latest book, A Reader's Guide to Labrador by Robin McGrath, a survey of written works from the past 25 years.

Mills says the volume is intended both for people with an interest in Labrador and for those with a curiosity about literature of any kind.

"I would say the audience is people who want to walk down literary roads that they haven't walked down before," she said.

The end goal for all Brack and Brine's books is to honour the subject matter by creating products of high quality.

"It shows that we are proud of this, and we want you to be proud of this, and we think what's contained here is important," says Turner. "So the physical form, the way we market it, the distribution channels, everything about the way we approach it, we want to be consistent with this idea that this content is important and valuable." 

From the Big Land to the Great White North

What's next for Brack and Brine?

Turner says the duo would like to expand the company's scope beyond Labrador to other parts of Canada.

"We have an ethical relationship to the [Labrador] space and we want to celebrate it, but we are going to be doing more books in the North."

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