Birding with Yeats

The debut memoir by Toronto bookseller Lynn Thomson is a gentle story about a parent connecting with a child, similar in spirit to David Gilmour’s The Film Club. There are crucial differences, however: Gilmour imposed ... Read More »

August 27, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

So Long Marianne: A Love Story

By Kari Hesthamar; Helle V. Goldman (trans.)

Marianne Ihlen has the rare distinction of having been muse to not one, but two famous men. She figures in the novels of writer Axel Jensen, with whom she moved from Oslo to the Greek ... Read More »

June 26, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery

By Karyn L. Freedman

The life-altering effects of sexual violence on a body and mind, and the complex processes of recovery that survivors of trauma face, are at the heart of philosopher Karyn L. Freedman’s powerful memoir. Deeply personal ... Read More »

June 5, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Writing with Grace: A Journey beyond Down Syndrome

By Judy McFarlane

In Writing with Grace, Vancouver’s Judy McFarlane addresses issues of intellectual disability and what it means to be a writer. Although the young woman McFarlane mentors self-identifies as Cinderella-Princess-Grace, the rest of the world is ... Read More »

March 13, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

We Go Far Back in Time: The Letters of Earle Birney and Al Purdy, 1947–1984

By Nicholas Bradley, ed.

The lost art of snail-mail correspondence often reveals the true personalities of those involved, especially when the exchanges are off-the-cuff and conversational. Al Purdy was a voluminous and candid letter-writer who, during his lifetime, saw ... Read More »

March 13, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

My Journey

By Olivia Chow

Two memoirs by high-profile Canadian women show just how far ambition and single-mindedness can take a person. My Journey, by New Democratic Party MP Olivia Chow, and Unsinkable, by Olympic rower Silken Laumann, are motivational ... Read More »

March 3, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Troubled Pilgrimage: Passage to Pakistan

By Balwant Bhaneja

What makes us decide to stay in one place or leave our homes forever? That is the question that underpins Balwant Bhaneja’s memoir. A retired Canadian diplomat raised in India, Bhaneja decides to search for ... Read More »

February 20, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Orr: My Story

By Bobby Orr

A hockey prodigy at the age of 12 and a legend by the time he made his professional debut with the Boston Bruins at 18, Bobby Orr enjoyed the kind of early celebrity that can ... Read More »

February 20, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco

By John Glassco; Brian Busby, ed.

In the introduction to A Gentleman of Pleasure, his 2011 biography of John Glassco, Brian Busby points out that the flamboyant memoirist, pornographer, poet, and flâneur characterized himself as “a great practitioner of deceit.” “Among ... Read More »

November 13, 2013 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ Chuvalo: A Fighter’s Life

By George Chuvalo and Murray Greig

Here are some things commonly said of boxing hall-of-famer George Chuvalo: he could take a punch, he threw powerful body shots that sometimes drifted below the belt, he never won a major title, and his ... Read More »