Philip Roy

Event Info: 'What's the Story with CBC' Stage at 12:30 - 1:00

Philip Roy was born and raised in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He studied music with Sister Rodriquez Steele and Professor James Hargreaves, and aspired to a career as a pianist. After graduating from high school, he left Antigonish to work and travel. As a young man, he returned to the study of piano with Oriole Aitchison in Halifax, where he also began composing music. After getting married, Philip moved to Ontario and devoted his time to raising his children, later returning to school and degrees in history at University of Waterloo and at McMaster University. Master's degrees in hand, he moved to the island of Saipan in Micronesia, where he taught English and History in a high school for two years. Following that, he returned to Canada and settled for a time in Ontario, teaching piano. The lure of his home province eventually brought Philip back to Nova Scotia, where he began writing young adult novels and stories for children. In 2008, his first novel, Submarine Outlaw, was published by Ronsdale Press of Vancouver. The fifth book in the series, Outlaw in India, will be released at the same time as Blood Brothers in Louisbourg. Philip currently lives in Halifax, where he continues to write novels and compose music.

Books

Blood Brothers in Louisbourg

As the son of an officer, Jacques was expected to pursue a career in the military. In the spring of 1744, at the age of fifteen, Jacques and his father leave France for Louisbourg, the French capital of Île Royale, where Jacques is to learn the military arts - a far cry from his books and music and the comforts of his mother's home. In the Acadian forests that surround the French fortress of Louisbourg, a young Mi'kmaw man named Two-feathers watches the strange comings and goings of soldiers and citizens. Two-feathers is hoping to find his father who, he has been told, is an important man among the French - they have never met. From his discreet camp outside the walls of the fortress, Two-feathers watches, believing that he will know his father when he sees him. At night, he moves silently about the city, including the Governor's apartments, where he befriends a beautiful young French woman. Jacques' life in Louisbourg is a curious mixture of military duties and his visits to the Governor's apartments where he teaches the daughter of a visiting merchant to play the violoncello. The two young men follow very different paths - one formally educated and refined, the other curious and skilful - both seeking to understand their father. Their paths and their worlds collide during the violent siege by British forces in 1745.