A crowdfunding opportunity
Goal: $5000
Progress: $4895
Number of supporters: 51
New Leaf Network Press is inviting you to support the forthcoming book by Kurt Armstrong through your investment in a crowdfunding campaign. We know that many people in our network support Canadian publishing for the Canadian church.
We're so grateful for the many ways you've supported New Leaf Network Press and our authors over the years. You've bought books, recommended them to friends, and shown up at events in church basements and conferences. That kind of grassroots support is what makes a small Canadian Christian press possible.
Now we're trying something new to continue supporting authors writing for the church in Canada. This is our first crowdfunding campaign, and we'd love for you to be part of it. By backing Repair and Remain, you're helping us bring Kurt Armstrong's beautiful new book into print. Your pre-order tells us the book is wanted, and your dollars take it from manuscript to a printed copy in your hands. Your name goes in the acknowledgments. You become a co-publisher of this book.
If you've ever wanted to be part of bringing a book into the world, this is your invitation. Don’t miss your chance to pre-order the book and other rewards to help make it possible to publish in a small-scale and sustainable way. We hope you will join us in the grassroots Canadian project.
Support this book with limited time rewards available until May 31, 2026
Repair & Remain
by Kurt Armstrong
About Repair & Remain
Repair and Remain is a book for my son, about masculinity. Not the crossed-arms, clenched-jaw stereotype, nor its retreating, apologetic opposite. It’s about a masculinity that is strong, attentive, responsible, and careful. I want to encourage my son to develop a wholesome and generous masculinity, honed and shaped by the exacting demands of work and love. This is about my formation of masculine identity amongst farmers, teachers, preachers, and fundamentalists. It’s about grief, manual labour, friendship, bad jobs, depression, community, loyalty, and a handmade coffin. It is a vulnerable, honest account of fatherhood, faith, fear, and love.
I know masculinity is damaged and flawed, but I owe my boy more than simply “masculinity is toxic." I wrote Repair and Remain to tell a better story. While culture shakes and rattles in the cacophony of social upheaval, and looming political and ecological disasters continue to threaten the world we as we know it, it is that wild-haired, energetic boy with the enormous appetite, sitting at my supper table, who reminds me of the crucial task of helping guide our boys to become good men.
Boldly asserting an old-fashioned masculinity is mostly just going to wreck things. A healthy masculinity demands attention and care. Having grown up on a farm and spending nearly all my working life in manual labour and the trades, I’ve had to learn to work with great care. Take drywall mud, for example, which requires me to pay attention to the materials and work very carefully to get satisfying results. Or, much more dramatically, my tablesaw, with its mindless, vicious, whirling blade, which has taught me that tools have demanding and inflexible rules which I ignore at my peril. (I have had some scary run-ins with my tablesaw, but I still have all my digits intact, knock on wood.) In order to do good work, I must start by paying attention. Likewise in love, a fragile gift which will wither and die in the face of the brute force, hubris, and swagger that characterize the toxic expressions of masculinity. If I am to be a good man and loving father, I must be present, vulnerable, attentive, open to grief and suffering, and generous.
“I’ve been tending these twin works of repairing and listening for a long time now. Sometimes these vocations stay in very distinct compartments—breakfast with an unemployed parishioner who wants to talk about his struggles with various addictions, then off to a flooring job in an empty condo suite owned by some guy who hired me over the phone, someone I’ll meet once when he shows up at the end of the job, home for a quick shower and supper with my family, and then I’m off to the church to set up for an evening poetry reading and conversation. But most of the time it’s impossible to draw a clear line between the pastoring and building: I might be building walls in someone’s basement and suddenly find myself leaning against the doorframe for half-an-hour so I can listen more carefully to the owner of the house, who’s recounting to me the grief he’s carrying after a failed marriage.”
About the Author
Kurt Armstrong
Kurt Armstrong is a writer, home-repair contractor, and lay minister at Saint Margaret's Anglican Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has two undergraduate degrees, a master's in theology with a concentration in creative writing, and zero official trade certifications. He has planted more than half a million trees across the mountains and boreal forests of British Columbia, hauled twenty tons of livestock mineral per day at a feed mill, and built everything from bookshelves to coffins. He lives with his wife, Erika, and their three children in the north half of a century-old duplex. Kurt has written for The Plough, Comment, Ekstasis, Geez, Mockingbird, Breaking Ground, The Globe and Mail and The Winnipeg Free Press.
Subscribe below to the New Leaf email list to get updates about Repair & Remain.
Support Tiers
Donate without reward
Support independent publishing and Canadian authors by donating towards the costs of writing, revising, editing, designing, formatting, printing, and promoting. All donations of $20 or more are eligible for a tax receipt. Donors will be named in the book acknowledgments.
All donations are non-refundable support for New Leaf Network Press.
$30 Pre-order the paperback
Pre-order a paperback copy of the book today and get your name in the acknowledgments of the book.
Worldwide shipping.
$50 Pre-order a signed paperback
Pre-order a signed paperback copy of the book today and get your name in the acknowledgments of the book.
Worldwide shipping.
$75 Pre-order the book + rattleback
Pledge $75 and receive a signed copy plus a handmade hardwood rattleback, crafted by Kurt. For the uninitiated, a rattleback is a small, smooth, canoe-shaped wooden toy that spins in one direction but refuses to spin in the other. It's a conversation piece, a desk toy, and a tiny work of art. Your name in the acknowledgments.
Shipping in Canada only.
Limit of 20
$250 The Bookclub package
Pledge $250 and receive 10 copies of the book and your name in the acknowledgements. We will include a study guide with your package of books.
Worldwide shipping.
Limit of 5.
$100 Zoom call with the author
Pledge $100 to get an exclusive Zoom call with the author about the book. This call can be solo or with a group that has been reading the book.
Worldwide access.
Limit of 3.
$150 Homemade, handbound copy of the book
Pledge $150 and receive a homemade, handbound copy of the book made by the author. The book will be signed, and your name will be in the acknowledgments of the book.
Shipping in Canada only.
Sold out.
$150-$200 Pre-order the book with hardwood breakfast boards
Pledge $150-$200 today and receive a signed paperback copy of the book, and get your name in the acknowledgments of the book. We will include hardwood breakfast boards (5×10”) with your order.
Shipping in Canada only.
-
Pledge $150 today and receive a signed paperback copy of the book, and get your name in the acknowledgments of the book. We will include 2 hardwood breakfast boards (5×10”) with your order.
Shipping in Canada only.
Limit of 4
-
Pledge $175 today and receive a signed paperback copy of the book, and get your name in the acknowledgments of the book. We will include 4 hardwood breakfast boards (5x10”) with your order.
Shipping in Canada only.
Limit of 4
-
Pledge $200 today and receive a signed paperback copy of the book, and get your name in the acknowledgments of the book. We will include 6 hardwood breakfast boards (5x10”) with your order.
Shipping in Canada only.
Limit of 4
$500 Pre-order the book + crokinole board
Pledge $500 and receive a signed copy of the book plus a round, tournament-style crokinole board, handmade by Kurt. Kurt has built crokinole boards for everyone in his family, and now he'll build one for you. Your name in the acknowledgments.
Pick up only - Winnipeg and area.
Limit of 3