Posts by Ken McGoogan
John Rae’s childhood home set to become memorial visitor centre
The John Rae Society has finally purchased the Hall of Clestrain, the childhood home of explorer John Rae. The Society, created three years ago to restore the 18th century building, acquires entry to the Hall and surrounding lands as of Sept. 30 — which would have been Rae’s 203rd birthday. The Society put down a…
Read MoreFlashback to when W.P. Kinsella worked magic with Shoeless Joe
The passing of author Bill Kinsella, who died peacefully at 12:05 pm today, swept me back twenty years. I was working as books editor at the Calgary Herald, and wrote a yarn focusing on Kinsella’s breakthrough moment. Others will write the obituaries and fill in the blanks. This is a personal hit that ran Oct.…
Read MoreJohn Rae sails on through confusion & nay-saying
So here we are at Beechey Island, wending our way towards Victory Point, Rae Strait, and Gjoa Haven. We’re on the Ocean Endeavour, we’re sailing with Adventure Canada, and when I turn to Wikipedia, I discover a bit of confusion in the entry on explorer John Rae. I read that “Ken McGoogan has claimed that…
Read MoreA rucksack warrior hits the Psychedelic Sixties in Kerouac’s Ghost
OK, so we’re away Into the Northwest Passage. Before sailing, and so going incommunicado, I offer a brief excerpt from my novel Kerouac’s Ghost. This newly revised ebook edition publishes on Sept. 16, but is now available from Bev Editions at the advance price of $2.99. Again it was 1966, Thanksgiving Day, and I had just…
Read MoreNorthwest Passage Voyage Begins Among Icebergs in Greenland
So we’re less than one week away from sailing Into the Northwest Passage with Adventure Canada. Are we excited yet? We’re reversing the voyage I described below, starting among the icebergs of Greenland and wending to Kugluktuk . . . with history all the way! We head north into Smith Sound, and who knows? May…
Read MoreKerouac’s Ghost delivers ‘unrepentant blast from the past’
Author’s Note from the new ebook edition, available here from Bev Editions . . . . “The secret Canadian life of Jack Kerouac.” So said the headline in Maclean’s magazine. A subhead elaborated: “Reading Kerouac’s lost French writings reveals the travails of a Canuck in America.” The date was June 2016, and I could only scratch…
Read MoreArtist John Hall is Travelling Light with a spectacular retrospective
Here we see Canadian artist John Hall at work in his Mexico studio in 1989. I fell in love with his work, and then met the man, a few years later. For years, Hall shuttled back and forth between San Miguel de Allende and Calgary, six months each. These days, the artist is based in…
Read MoreWhirling away to the Northwest Passage, Halifax, and Port Dover
We’re gearing up to go voyaging Into the Northwest Passage with Adventure Canada, departing from Greenland on August 26. Above, we see the three musketeers who figure in Passage, the docudrama based on my book Fatal Passage. Two of them — Inuit leader Tagak Curley and myself — will sail aboard the Ocean Endeavour. The…
Read MoreNarrative nonfiction is what’s happening at U of T summer school . . . .
In recent weeks, I purchased two books written by emerging writers who had passed through one of my University of Toronto workshops. And I had long since collected The Monks and Me by yet one more: Mary Paterson. I would like to say that all of these publications are down to me. But I don’t…
Read MoreKen and Sheena’s Excellent Adventure in the Scottish Highlands
In Perth, we had dinner at the Hightower Hotel with my long-lost, DNA-found cousin Jim McGugan. In Sutherland, we visited Dunrobin Castle, the most politically incorrect edifice in Britain. In Helmsdale, by about an hour, we missed coincidentally encountering our Orcadian pal, historian Tom Muir . . . and so failed to meet his new…
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