Sporran works magic at event honoring Robert Burns
Over on Facebook, a recent image sparked complaint. Where was my sporran? The clamor induced me to solicit yet one more kilted photo from Sheena Fraser McGoogan. Here we have Our Hero setting out with Sheena for the Robert Burns extravaganza sponsored by the St. Andrew’s Society of Toronto. And quite a shindig it was,…
Read MoreAnd the $5,000 VIA-Rail Travel Voucher goes to . . .
My all-time favorite moment as a hander-out-of-prizes came late last year. At the Toronto launch of 50 Canadians Who Changed the World, I was honoured to give The Best Little Boy in the Whole Wide World Award to James P. McGoogan, who by good luck happened to be in the audience. That would be James…
Read MoreThe Art of Fact, toasting Robert Burns, and Revisiting Rae Strait
Our Hero disappeared from this space over the holidays. Fortunately, nobody noticed. And here he is, back on Day Two of the New Year, with comings and goings to proclaim. First up: I spent the morning working on an online course I teach through the University of Toronto. The title says it all: The Art…
Read MoreWriting Nonfiction: Everything you wanted to know . . . available online!
He’s back! The Dr. Jekyll in me is gearing up to teach an online course through University of Toronto. It’s called The Art of Fact: An Introduction to Writing Nonfiction. We launch January 20. And the particulars look like this: “The hallmarks of Creative, Literary or Narrative Nonfiction are truth and personal presence. The genre includes…
Read MoreIn defence of Celine Dion (thanks for asking)
Re: 50 Canadians Who Changed the World. I very much appreciate the spirited review that turned up in today’s National Post. Vit Wagner makes some good points (see here). He’s right to mention Lester B. Pearson. I’m a great admirer of Pearson, and I was sorely tempted to include him even though he was born…
Read MoreLegendary Different Drummer plays host to 50 Canadians
This morning took us out to Burlington to talk about 50 Canadians in the Different Drummer Book & Author Series. Would you believe that this series has been running since 1975? It may well be the oldest bookstore-based reading-talking-and-seriously-buying series in Canada. The only contender I can think of is the Books-and-Breakfast series operated by…
Read MoreGotta love how The Morning Show goes beyond the conventional
Wow! So that was different . . . and especially fun. Hats off to the folks at Global TV Toronto who put together The Morning Show. In the past month, thanks to VIA-Rail and HarperCollins Canada, I’ve done half a dozen morning shows across the country. And this one, I can tell you, was unique…
Read MoreNew Zealander’s G-G shows why we should focus on books, not authors
By winning the governor-general’s award for fiction, novelist Eleanor Catton reopened an old debate. Catton was born in Canada but left with her parents while still a child. Is she a Canadian novelist? Is she not? One academic called her victory a scandal. Others defended the decision to give her the prize. The sound and…
Read MoreWhy CTV’s Canada AM is this country’s top-rated breakfast show
They did their homework. That was the first thing I noticed. When we chatted in the Green Room, before entering the broadcast studio, I could tell that producer Katie Johnson had read the book. Same with host Beverly Thomson, who, a few minutes later, interviewed me on air: she had a welter of yellow stickies…
Read MoreVIA-Rail, ocean-to-ocean, 50 Canadians: this really happened!
One month ago, we boarded a train called The Canadian in Toronto. We were bent on celebrating 50 Canadians Who Changed the World – the majority of whom are alive and thriving — by following in the footsteps of those who created this nation by running steel rails across it. We called this endeavor The…
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