Book Review - The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

I just finished a fabulous book The Marrow Thieves by Canadian, Métis author Cherie Dimaline.

In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. 

Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."

What can I say about this book but "WOW", what a fabulous story.

The Marrow Thieves has won the following awards : American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Young Adult Book (Honor Book) (2018), Governor General's Literary Awards / Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général (2017), CBC Canada Reads Nominee (2018), Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature (2017).

Interesting that many of the awards are for Young Adult or Young Readers categories. I didn't find it young adult at all. As a 64 year old reader, it kept me fully engaged and constantly worried for the characters.

I enjoyed how the story is set in the dystopian future, but talks so much about the indigenous past. Set in a story like this, one can't help learn and feel how it must have felt like being in the residential schools and the attempts to have your peoples past taken away.

Definitely worth reading!

About Cherie Dimaline:

Cherie Dimaline won her first Governor General's Literary Award in 2017 with The Marrow Thieves. She is an author and editor from the Georgian Bay Métis community whose award-winning fiction has been published and anthologized internationally.

In 2014, she was named the Emerging Artist of the Year at the Ontario Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and became the first Aboriginal Writer in Residence for the Toronto Public Library. Cherie Dimaline currently lives in Toronto where she coordinates the annual Indigenous Writers' Gathering.

Book Review - Best of Bridge Slow Cooker Cookbook: 200 Delicious Recipes

Last weekend I made a Fragrant Chicken Curry from the Best of Bridge Slow Cooker Cookbook. Teena thought it was delicious. I made it again last night for my son Ken, and his girlfriend Jasmine. They really enjoyed it. I'm not a big curry fan but thought it was okay.

Sally Vaughan-Johnston and Best of Bridge -- the winning team that brought you "Bravo " and "Fan Fare " -- are back with this collection of brand-new recipes created specifically for the slow cooker. This truly is a winning combination: the convenience of a slow cooker combined with absolutely sure-to-please Bridge recipes.

There are loads of recipes that will help you deal with the madness of meal preparation quickly and easily, with ingredients that can be found at any local supermarket across North America. This collection of recipes features everything from the perfect choice for your next neighborhood potluck, to elegant appetizers, breakfast and brunch ideas to delectable desserts. There's even a special chapter devoted to classic Bridge recipes that have been updated for today's tastes and slow cookers.

This wide range of Bridge recipes are sure to satisfy and delight everyone and they're categorized into the following tantalizing chapters: All-Day Breakfast Nibbles, Dips and Drinks Soups Beef and Veal Pork and Lamb Chicken and Turkey Meatless Mains Sides and Accompaniments Desserts.

The Best of Bridge motto remains the same: "Simple recipes with gourmet results." The recipes work and the one-liners will keep you smiling in the kitchen.
As I have scoured the book from end to end and made a few recipes from it, I can now comment.

The is a diverse collection of recipes in here to suite every taste. None of them are very difficult and most use everyday items you can shop for from your local grocery. I think this is a plus as I hate finding wonderful sounding recipes with unique, expensive ingredients which are hard to find.

I have 6 or 7 recipes marked for the future. In fact I promised Teena to make a Beef Goulash from the book on Sunday.

It's a great recipe book for anyone with a slow cooker. (Crock Pot)

Book Review - Terry by Douglas Coupland

Teena has taken part in the annual Terry Fox run for the past two years. This year she volunteered as well as walked for the Liberty Village Terry Fox Run.

Terry Fox is one of the most important Canadian and even the world in the last 40 years. Every Canadian knows what he did. As of 2017, over $750 million dollars has been raised in Terry's name for cancer research. I'm not sure if it is on the Canadian citizenship exam or not but there should be a question on Terry Fox's accomplishments on it.

I just completed reading Terry by Douglas Coupland.

In 1980, Terry Fox was just a young man with a dream. Three years earlier, he had lost a leg to cancer. Some combination of passion, idealism and sheer guts led to the impossible notion that he would run across Canada on one good leg and a prosthesis. His goal was to raise $1 from every Canadian to help find a cure for cancer. Twenty-five years later, the dream remains alive, and Terry's legacy has raised more than $360 million for cancer research.

Terry has been written with the support of the Fox family and the design reflects the style of Douglas Coupland's Souvenir projects, mixing more than 145 superb photographs of a previously unknown collection of family memorabilia with a very moving text about Terry's life and the Marathon of Hope. Printed in full colour, the book brings a profound moment in Canadian history, and the young man who inspired it, freshly to life.

I really enjoyed this book. Most of Terry's story is told through photographs which were saved by his family. The pictures are not only of Terry's run but home shots, pictures of his journals, letters and drawings that supporters sent him. Coupland keeps his descriptions to the minimum using them to accent the photos, rather than telling the story himself. Because of the many many personal photos and the way it was written, I came away with a greater sense of knowing him.

Even during his last Christmas alive, Terry was broke and refused to take any money from the funds he raised during his run to buy presents for his family. He scrimped to buy a present for his mom. Of course, there is a picture of it. Coupland does the same with this book as all royalties from the sale of the book goes to cancer research.

Definitely worth reading.

About Douglas Coupland

Since 1991 Coupland has written thirteen novels published in most languages. He has written and

performed for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and is a columnist for The Financial Times of London. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, e-flux, DIS and Vice.

In 2000 Coupland amplified his visual art production and has recently had two separate museum retrospectives, Everything is Anything is
Anywhere is Everywhere at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, and Munich's Villa Stücke. In 2015 and 2016 Coupland was artist in residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute. In May 2018 his exhibition on ecology, Vortex, opened at the Vancouver Aquarium and will be traveling globally throughout 2019-2021. In June 2018 National Portrait, an installation of over 1,000 3D-printed heads and busts, pens at the Ottawa Art Gallery.


Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Officer of the Order of British Columbia, a Chevlier de l'Order des Arts et des Lettres and receiver of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

Book Review - Chasing the Wind by C.C. Humphreys

I just finished reading Chasing the Wind by C.C. Humphreys

You should never fall in love with a flyer. You should only fall in love with flight. 

That's what Roxy Loewen always thought, until she falls for fellow pilot Jocco Zomack as they run guns into Ethiopia. Jocco may be a godless commie, but his father is a leading art dealer and he's found the original of Bruegel's famous painting, the Fall of Icarus. The trouble is, it's in Spain, a country slipping fast into civil war. The money's better than good--if Roxy can just get the painting to Berlin and back out again before Reichsmarshall Hermann Goring and his Nazi pals get their hands on it . . . 

 But this is 1936, and Hitler's Olympics are in full swing. Not only that, but Goring has teamed up with Roxy's greatest enemy: Sydney Munroe, an American billionaire responsible for the death of her beloved dad seven years before. When the Nazis steal the painting, Roxy and Jocco decide that they are just going to have to steal it back.

I have read a few of C.C. Humphrey's books in the past including all 3 books in the Jack Absolute series and Fire. A couple of more on my on reading list.

The story of Roxy Loewen's is quite the ride. I really enjoyed the writing style and the way the book never went in the direction I figured it would. It was obvious this book was heavily researched by Mr. Humphreys and his Author's Notes at the end  proves this. In fact I enjoyed the Authors Notes as much as I enjoyed the book. 

Chasing the Wind is a wild ride worth reading.

About the Author

Chris (C.C.) Humphreys was born in Toronto, lived till he was seven in Los Angeles, then grew up in the UK. All four grandparents were actors, and since his father was an actor as well, it was inevitable he would follow the bloodline. Chris has performed on stages from London's West End to Hollywood.

A playwright, fight choreographer and novelist, he has written eleven adult novels including 'The French Executioner', runner up for the CWA Steel Dagger for Thrillers; 'The Jack Absolute Trilogy'; 'A Place Called Armageddon'; 'Shakespeare's Rebel' and the international bestseller, 'Vlad - The Last Confession'.

His recent novel 'Plague' won Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 2015. The sequel, 'Fire' is a thriller set during the Great Fire, published Summer 2016. Both novels spent five weeks in the top ten on 2016's Globe and Mail and Toronto Star Bestseller lists. He is translated into thirteen languages. In 2015 he earned his Masters in Fine Arts (Creative Writing) from the University of British Columbia.

Chris now lives on Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada, with his wife, son and cat, Dickon (who keeps making it into his books!).

Book Review - American War by Omar El Akkad

I just finished American War by Omar El Akkad.

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. 

Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

American War is a very powerful and well-written book which kept me engaged throughout. It is quite unique in the way the story is told, as the narrators focus is different in each section but with Sarat very much, always the main part of the story.

What is scary is that the story is one that could happen in our future. I surely hope not. It's a book that is definitely worth reading.

About the author:

Omar was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Doha, Qatar until he moved to Canada with his family.

He is an award-winning journalist and author who has travelled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade. His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantànamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri.

He is a recipient of Canada’s National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honourable mentions.

Book Review - Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada

I finished reading Luminous Ink today.

Twenty-six writers in Canada were asked to contribute pieces of original work describing how they see writing today. From Atwood’s opening, through writing from Indigenous writers, the reader is given a sense of how twenty-six of the country’s finest writers see their world today. With an introduction by the editors, Dionne Brand, Rabindranath Maharaj, and Tessa McWatt.  

Contributors include: 
Margaret Atwood -         Michael Ondaatje -         Madeleine Thien, 
M G Vassanji -                Lawrence Hill -              Pascale Quiviger 
Nino Ricci -                    Sheila Fischman -           Heather O’Neill 
Camilla Gibb -                Eden Robinson -             Lee Maracle 
Rawi Hage  -                   Michael Helm -              Lisa Moore 
Rita Wong -                     Hiromi Goto -                George Elliott Clarke 
Nicole Brossard -            Judith Thompson -         David Chariandy 
Richard Van Camp -       Marie-Hélène Poitras -   Stephen Henighan 
Greg Hollingshead -       Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

I found Luminous Ink to be an eclectic, enjoyable, exceptional read. Some writers are white and born in Canada. Some are black and born in Canada. Some immigrated to Canada while others are expatriates.

Each writes from their own angle. Some talk about their current lives. Some tell us a story which comes from their past. Some explain on how they came to write. And some give their views on issues of great importance to them.

Some are humorous, some angry, some profound, some make your think but all of them are worthwhile to read.

The points of view are all varied and it's so wonderful to have such a diverse collection captured under one cover. 

Miss Confederation: The Diary of Mercy Anne Coles by Anne McDonald

I have just finished Miss Confederation: The Diary of Mercy Anne Coles.

History without the stiffness and polish time creates.

Canada's journey to Confederation kicked off with a bang - or rather, a circus, a civil war (the American one), a small fortune's worth of champagne, and a lot of making love - in the old-fashioned sense. Miss Confederation offers a rare look back, through a woman's eyes, at the men and events at the centre of this pivotal time in Canada's history.

Mercy Anne Coles, the daughter of PEI delegate George Coles, kept a diary of the social happenings and political manoeuvrings as they affected her and her desires. A unique historical document, her diary is now being published for the first time, offering a window into the events that led to Canada's creation, from a point of view that has long been neglected.

I thought this was a very interesting read. Not only does this book give us an inside look at the makings of Canada's Confederation from a woman's point of view, but is an excellent look at the social aspect of upper society back in the mid 1800's. It seems that dance cards were of great importance back then. I also found out that "humbug" has a different meaning than what I thought it was from "A Christmas Carol".

Definitely worth reading.

About Anne McDonald:

I studied at Second City, Humber College’s creative writing program, Sage Hill’s Fiction Workshop, the Sage Hill Poetry Colloquium and I have participated in numerous voice and theatre workshops. I teach theatre improvisation for Education students at the Gabriel Dumont Institute, and theatre classes for the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance at the University of Regina. I also teach creative writing to a number of groups, from inner city youth, to newcomers to Canada, to participants in creative writing courses. I also love to facilitate workshops for organizations interested in collaborative communication and creativity.

If you want to know more about me and my influences:

I studied psychology, creativity, improv and finally creative writing. All these areas come together for me I find, when I'm writing. I love writing - and reading - books that are related to real historical figures and events. I love the researching and discovery of unusual connections, and the reading between the lines.

One of the things I love about writing is the exploration of the past – the interaction and impact the public and the personal have on each other. I also teach and study improv where the focus is on play, the principles of creativity and the discovery of one’s own uniqueness.

Anne lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Company Town by Madeline Ashby

From Amazon :

New Arcadia is a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd.

Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bio-engineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig—making her doubly an outsider, as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire. Still, her expertise in the arts of self-defense and her record as a fighter mean that her services are yet in high demand. When the youngest Lynch needs training and protection, the family turns to Hwa. But can even she protect against increasingly intense death threats ...?

Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city's stability and heightens the unease of a rig turning over. All signs point to a nearly invisible serial killer, but all of the murders seem to lead right back to Hwa's front door. Company Town has never been the safest place to be—but now, the danger is personal.

I really enjoyed this book. The author Madeline Ashby created a very interesting and unique dystopian universe. The story is entertaining, suspenseful, and very well written.

It has received the following awards and accolades:

2017 Winner of the Sunburst Award Society's Copper Cylinder Adult Award 
2017 Canada Reads Finalist 
2017 Locus Award Finalist for Science Fiction Novel Category 
2017 Sunburst Award Finalist for Adult Fiction 
2017 Aurora Awards Finalist for Best Novell

About the Author from Goodreads:

Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer and strategic foresight consultant living in Toronto. She has been writing fiction since she was about thirteen years old. (Before that, she recited all her stories aloud, with funny voices and everything.) Her fiction has appeared in Nature, Tesseracts, Escape Pod, FLURB, the Shine Anthology, and elsewhere. Her non-fiction has appeared at BoingBoing.net, io9.com, Tor.com, Online Fandom, and WorldChanging. She is a member of the Cecil Street Irregulars, one of Toronto's oldest genre writers' workshops. She holds a M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies (her thesis was on anime, fan culture, and cyborg theory) and a M.Des. in strategic foresight & innovation (her project was on the future of border security).

Book Review - Could It Happen Here?: Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit

Back in March my friend Malcolm and I went to a talk at the Toronto Reference Library called "Star Talks: Trump and Brexit: Could it Happen Here?" It was a very lively and enlightening look at the vast differences between American, British and Canadian societies, more so between Canada and the US. The talk even included a look at Provincial Conservative leader Doug Ford, who at the time had just been named to the leader of the party.

It was interesting enough that I bought Micheal Adams book Could It Happen Here?: Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit.

From award-winning author Michael Adams, Could It Happen Here? draws on groundbreaking new social research to show whether Canadian society is at risk of the populist forces afflicting other parts of the world.

Americans elected Donald Trump. Britons opted to leave the European Union. Far-right, populist politicians channeling anger at out-of-touch “elites” are gaining ground across Europe. In vote after shocking vote, citizens of Western democracies have pushed their anger to the top of their governments’ political agendas. The votes have varied in their particulars, but their unifying feature has been rejection of moderation, incrementalism, and the status quo.

Amid this roiling international scene, Canada appears placid, at least on the surface. As other societies retrench, the international media have taken notice of Canada’s welcome of Syrian refugees, its half-female federal cabinet, and its acceptance of climate science and mixed efforts to limit its emissions. After a year in power, the centrist federal government continues to enjoy majority approval, suggesting an electorate not as bitterly split as the ones to the south or in Europe.

As sceptics point out, however, Brexit and a Trump presidency were unthinkable until they happened. Could it be that Canada is not immune to the same forces of populism, social fracture, and backlash that have afflicted other parts of the world? Our largest and most cosmopolitan city elected Rob Ford. Conservative Party leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch proposes a Canadian values test for immigrants and has called the Trump victory “exciting.” Anti-tax demonstrators in Alberta chanted “lock her up” in reference to Premier Rachel Notley, an elected leader accused of no wrongdoing, only policy positions the protesters disliked.

Pollster and social values researcher Michael Adams takes Canadians into the examining room to see whether we are at risk of coming down with the malaise affecting other Western democracies. Drawing on major social values surveys of Canadians and Americans in 2016—as well as decades of tracking data in both countries—Adams examines our economy, institutions, and demographics to answer the question: could it happen here?

This book is full of telling and sometimes very surprising statistics, charts and explanations. One chart that jumped out at me (shown below) was a comparison between Canada and the US on how much of the population believes the father of the family should be the "master" of the house. During the talk the stats were also broken down by province. Even the most rural and rugged province in Canada, Alberta, which had the highest of all the provinces in the belief that the man should be, was far more liberal in this view, by almost half, than the least chauvinistic state in the US.

The chapter titles show how deep the research goes.

The Global Re-awakening of the Xenophobic populism
We've Been Here before
Canada and Immigration in the Era of Trump and Brexit
On Being Muslim in Canada - Optimism with Vigilance
The Taxi Driver with the PhD
Occupy This - The Politics of Inequality in Canada
Doing Democracy Differently

Adams book speaks not only of our different cultures but also happiness levels, economics, health systems, the political system of each country, acceptance of immigrants and refugees, immigrant views on their new countries, racism and even a look at the difference on how our leaders were raised as children and their respected countries views towards that.

In the end, yes, Canada as a whole, except of course for the few assholes that exist in any country, has a much greater acceptance and welcoming attitude when it comes to immigrants and diversity when compared to the US. I am very proud of that. That view and the set-up of our political system is one where we most likely will never fall to the current level of the US state of affairs.

But that's no reason to be smug. We can never be complacent and must always work to ensure that the levels of hate in Canada continue to fall and that we fight to keep our standard of living and the positive views the world has of us as a nation.

Book Review - Generation A by Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland is one of my favorite authors. He is also an artist and has one of his works featuring the War of 1812 on display at the corner of Bathurst and Front Street. Today, I just finished a novel he wrote in 2009, Generation A.

A brilliant, timely and very Couplandesque novel about honey bees and the world we may soon live in. Once again, Douglas Coupland captures the spirit of a generation….

In the near future bees are extinct — until one autumn when five people are stung in different places around the world. This shared experience unites them in a way they never could have imagined.

Generation A mirrors 1991’s Generation X. It explores new ways of looking at the act of reading and storytelling in a digital world.

The book is told in first person by five different people, Harj, Zack, Samantha, Julien and Diana, which was a little difficult to grasp at first. Once I realized that each chapter is named for the character who is doing the narrating, it became easy. I don't think many authors could pull this off but Coupland does and quite well.

The story is well told, highly imaginative and the last quarter of the book is quite unusual, but highly entertaining. Coupland does a great job is describing a world without bees. With no bees to pollinate plants, they no longer grow. Other animals die because of this. The chain reaction goes on and how the world comes to cope with it.

What killed off the bees. Why are they suddenly making an appearance. Will they return and flourish again. It's not a depressing look at the future but a very enjoyable one.

I enjoy Coupland's books and after reading this one, his Generation X (1991) is next up for me for books of his to read.

Book Review - The Wolves of Winter

I just finished The Wolves of Winter by Canadian writer Tyrell Johnson.

Forget the old days. Forget summer. Forget warmth. Forget anything that doesn’t help you survive.

Lynn McBride has learned much since society collapsed in the face of nuclear war and the relentless spread of disease. As memories of her old life haunt her, she has been forced to forge ahead in the snow-covered Canadian Yukon, learning how to hunt and trap to survive.

But her fragile existence is about to be shattered. Shadows of the world before have found her tiny community—most prominently in the enigmatic figure of Jax, who sets in motion a chain of events that will force Lynn to fulfill a destiny she never imagined.

I really enjoyed the book. It's not your normal 'end of the world' kind of story but one more of survival in the north. This is a family that fled the big city life of Chicago to live in a community in Alaska, then had to pack up whatever belongings they could carry and head to the Yukon in order to find a secluded place to live away from all mankind.

I hold back the reasons why, which is all part of the back story. Suffice to say that when they are discovered by the outside world, their lives become complicated.

Tyrell Johnson is a very descriptive writer and has an excellent way of setting the scene in the readers mind. The story is told in first person by Lynn, who I found to be torn by her need to be alone, and a hunger to venture to find out what is out there beyond their valley and to meet new people. People she is not related to.

I liked Tyrell's style of writing and would not hesitate to go out and read his next book.

About the author:

Tyrell Johnson is originally from Bellingham, Washington and studied at the University of California Riverside before he got married and moved to Kelowna, BC. He has two children "and can often be found on the mountain with my Siberian Husky" (there is a husky in the story)

I did have a chuckle in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book where he thanks his mother- and father-in-law for providing him a place to write. Then he thanks his wife Tessa, "for believing in me and for doing all the hard work while I sat in a horse barn and wrote stories."

The Wolves of Winter is his debut novel which I guess was written in a horse barn. Just goes to show you that when you have a good story to tell, neighing horses can't slow you down.

Book Review - Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations

I have just finished reading Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations  by Richard Wagamese.

In this carefully curated selection of everyday reflections, Richard Wagamese finds lessons in both the mundane and sublime as he muses on the universe, drawing inspiration from working in the bush—sawing and cutting and stacking wood for winter as well as the smudge ceremony to bring him closer to the Creator.

Embers is perhaps Richard Wagamese's most personal volume to date. Honest, evocative and articulate, he explores the various manifestations of grief, joy, recovery, beauty, gratitude, physicality and spirituality—concepts many find hard to express. But for Wagamese, spirituality is multifaceted. Within these pages, readers will find hard-won and concrete wisdom on how to feel the joy in the everyday things. Wagamese does not seek to be a teacher or guru, but these observations made along his own journey to become, as he says, "a spiritual bad-ass," make inspiring reading.

It's easy to tell that these meditations come straight form the authors heart. Although the book is just 172 pages, I found that in each page I either found an inspiring message or something thoughtful or profound for me to ponder.

In fact I found Embers so meaningful that first thing each morning I read a page by selecting the page number by random.

Here is one of his meditations that I found both moving and inspiring:

All we have are moments. So live them as though not one can be wasted. Inhabit them, fill them with the light of your best good intention, honour them with your full presence, find the joy, the clam, the assuredness that allows the hours and the days to take car of themselves. If we can do that, we will have lived.

This is a book that I highly recommend.


About Richard Wagamese

Richard Wagamese was one of Canada's foremost Native authors and storytellers. He worked as a professional writer since 1979. He was a newspaper columnist and reporter, radio and television broadcaster and producer, documentary producer and the author of twelve titles from major Canadian publishers.

He was born in northern Ontario to the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations where his family followed the traditional lifestyle of the Ojibwa people before he was placed in foster care.

He took up writing and in 1979 became a professional writer when he became a reporter for The New Breed, an Indigenous Regina newspaper.

In 1991, while working for the Calgary Herald, Mr. Wagamese won a National Magazine Award for column writing and was the first Indigenous person to do so.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, Richard Wagamese’s debut novel, Keeper’n Me won the Alberta Writers Guild Best Novel Award in 1995. Wagamese also won the Canadian Authors Association Award for his novel Dream Wheel in 2007 and the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature for his memoir, One Story, One Song, in 2011. In 2012, he was the recipient of the National Aboriginal Achievement Award (now Indspire Award) for Media and Communications, and, in 2013, he received the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize and the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature.

Wagamese was given an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops in 2010.

Mr. Wagamese passed away on March 10, 2017 at his home in Kamloops BC. Embers was his last published book to date. He died a week after the announcement that Embers had made the short list for the BC Book Prize for which it ultimately won.

Book Review - Chuvalo: A Fighter's Life: The Story of Boxing's Last Gladiator

I have always been a fan of George Chuvalo and was thrilled to have met him last year. He has seen great times and devastating times during his life, which are all told in Chuvalo: A Fighters Life.

The inspirational memoir of the Canadian boxer who fought some of the greatest heavyweights in history, including Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, but lost everything outside the ring.

From a tough Toronto childhood as the only son of immigrant parents, through a twenty-three-year career that earned him induction into the World Boxing Hall of Fame, to the public tragedies that decimated his family long after the cheering stopped, George Chuvalo tells his life story as only he can.

Chuvalo traded punches with several all-time greats—Joe Frazier, George Foreman and, most famously, Muhammad Ali (twice)—yet in nearly one hundred bouts, he was never knocked down. But his biggest fight came after he hung up his gloves, when drugs and suicide devastated his family. Chuvalo is both a top-flight boxing memoir and a poignant, hard-hitting story of coping with unimaginable loss.

Chuvalo held the Canadian Boxing Championship longer than any other boxer. Although he had fought the worlds greatest contenders and champions of his era, he was never offered a shot at the British Commonwealth Championship even though he fought the worlds greats contenders and champions of his time, and had legendary fight in 1966 at Maple Leaf Gardens with World Champion Mohammed Ali in Toronto after being notified of the fight just 17 days before.

He retired from fighting in 1978 as the Canadian Heavyweight Champion at the age of 41 with a record of 72-19-2 with 63 knockouts. Chuvalo is famous for never once being knocked down in a fight.

Chuvalo should have better financial paydays and an even more prestigious fight career but made the mistake of signing a long term contract with Irv Ungerman, who knew nothing of the fight game, and was in it only for the financial rewards he could funnel away from Chuvalo.

In this book he is very open and honest about his life after boxing. Many of his immediate family, wife and sons, suffered from drug addiction which ultimately led to drug overdoses or suicide.

I really enjoyed this look back on his life and highly recommend this book.