The Richmond end of the Townships; the St. Francis River basin, past & present; education, then & now; Southern Canada Power; voices from the past, readings from oral histories; the life and times of Frederick Simpson Coburn.
Nick Fonda is an amateur historian; he has no formal training to go with an innate love of the subject. A long-time resident of Quebec’s Eastern Townships, he taught for many years but found time to try his hand at other jobs from restaurateur to raconteur. For the last few years he has been a contributor to the Record (a daily published in Sherbrooke) and the Townships Outlet (a small, subscription-based paper which publishes fortnightly) and, on occasion, to the Quebec Heritage News. He is a multiple winner of Quebec Community Newspaper Association awards and the author of Roads to Richmond, Portraits of Quebec’s Eastern Townships, a work of non-fiction which drew favourable criticism from, among others, Alistair MacLeod who wrote, “It possesses both truth and charm, which is a rare combination in today’s world.” His second book, Principals and Other Schoolyard Bullies, Short Stories, is being released in September of 2011. He is currently President of the Richmond County Historical Society.