Without Vodka: Wartime Adventures in Russia

Like an extremely long letter from a dear old uncle, this Second World War memoir contains some genuinely interesting anecdotes, but readers have to slog through an overwhelming number of incidental and forgettable details to ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Lion in the Room Next Door

By Merilyn Simonds

At what point, if ever, do events recalled from memory become history? And how accurate is that history and whose story does it tell? Once that story is told, perhaps with artful intervention to improve ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Resurrection: The Kidnapping of Abby Drover

By John Griffiths

Reaching back across 23 years into a windowless concrete cell, John Griffiths’ Resurrection recreates the kidnapping, sexual abuse, starvation, and six-month confinement of 12-year-old Abby Drover in Port Moody, B.C.While the police and Drover’s family ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Death Dealers: A Witness to the Drug Wars That Are Bleeding America

By Yves Lavigne

When you’ve spent your life in the middle of a war, it must be easy to think the rest of the world is in it too. This certainly seems true for the narcotics agents and ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Spinwars.ca: The Politics of Media in the Digital Age

By William J. Fox

As a subscriber to an e-mail listserv for journalists, I receive numerous postings of interest to people in the business of disseminating information. Topics such as the buying and selling of newspaper chains, and the ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

By Jamie Zeppa

Arriving in a place like Bhutan, the tiny Buddhist kingdom in the eastern Himalayas, requires a series of physical actions that happen all at once, writes Jamie Zeppa. A plane touches down, a passenger disembarks. ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Reference

★ Water

By Marq de Villiers

Water is necessary for all life. Wars have been fought over it and leaders assassinated, yet it is something that we usually take for granted.Marq de Villiers, former editor and publisher of Toronto Life, is ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Ancient Land, Ancient Sky: Flying Canada’s Native Canoe Routes

By Peter McFarlane and Wayne Haimila

In 1996, Peter McFarlane, a former CBC journalist and pilot, and Wayne Haimila, an employee of a B.C. native band, flew a tiny Cessna from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, following aboriginal canoe routes that were ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Reference

Gabrielle Roy: A Life

By Francois Ricard, Patricia Claxton, trans.

The biographies of any age, it has been said, have more in common with their biographers than with their subjects. Four recent literary biographies allow us to test this premise, for the authors have many ... Read More »

February 12, 2004 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography