Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy

By Manjusha Pawagi

In April 2014, author and family court judge Manjusha Pawagi was diagnosed with an acute form of leukemia. Her candid and often funny new memoir covers the period from her diagnosis to her meeting, two ... Read More »

September 12, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Dirty Kids: Chasing Freedom with America’s Nomads

By Chris Urquhart; Kitra Cahana (photog.)

If you live in an urban centre, you’ve seen them, perhaps even daily: unbathed youth in rotten studded jackets begging for change streetside; dreadlocked 20-somethings napping on sidewalks midday beside Sharpied cardboard signs; a kid ... Read More »

August 30, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

I Never Talk About It

By Véronique Côté and Steve Gagnon; Peter McCambridge et al. (trans.)

Spare a thought for the country’s translators. In a nation that is nominally multicultural and officially bilingual, the diligent wordsmiths who devote themselves to rendering foreign-language texts into the dominant English are rarely afforded the ... Read More »

August 29, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Memoir & Biography

The Sea Was in Their Blood: The Disappearance of the Miss Ally’s Five-Man Crew

By Quentin Casey

On February 17, 2013, five men set out from Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia, aboard a 12-metre fishing boat called the Miss Ally. Despite a non-functional spotlight and warnings that a massive winter storm was approaching, ... Read More »

July 4, 2017 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography

Where I Live Now: A Journey through Love and Loss to Healing and Hope

By Sharon Butala

Given that the one absolute certainty about life is that it will end, it would make sense for adults to come to psychological terms with the fact of their own deaths and consider the effect ... Read More »

June 12, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ The Barefoot Bingo Caller

By Antanas Sileika

According to the book’s afterword, Antanas Sileika’s new memoir originated in a conversation between the author, his wife, Snaige, and ECW Press co-publisher Jack David at a bar in Windsor, Ontario, during that city’s Bookfest. ... Read More »

June 8, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Out Standing in the Field: A Memoir by Canada’s First Female Infantry Officer

By Sandra Perron

On paper, Sandra Perron was the perfect soldier: a fit, fearless warrior who earned top marks in training, was comfortably bilingual, unquestionably dedicated to the Canadian Forces, and rose to become the first female officer ... Read More »

May 26, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ A Queer Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bébout

By Marilyn R. Schuster (ed.)

One of the most dismal consequences of the Internet’s cultural ubiquity has been the demise of the personal letter. Not surprisingly, the loss is felt especially where writers are concerned. Though there has always been ... Read More »

May 17, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews, Social Sciences

Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis

By Jen Powley

Just Jen chronicles author Jen Powley’s life with multiple sclerosis. Forthright, illuminating, and frequently moving in her narration, Powley addresses the clichés of typical illness stories upfront. Facing the reality of her diagnosis as a ... Read More »

May 11, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Where it Hurts

By Sarah De Leeuw

Where it Hurts, by University of Northern British Columbia associate professor Sarah De Leeuw, details (among other things) the author’s life and times as a restless yet perceptive resident of remote outposts in northern B.C., ... Read More »

May 3, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations

By Richard Wagamese

The theme of healing is present in two recent non-fiction books by indigenous authors. But each author approaches the process of healing, and the question of what needs to be healed in the first place, ... Read More »

January 30, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples

Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD

By Jessica Dee Humphreys; Roméo Dallaire

For more than two decades, Roméo Dallaire, a retired lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces, has borne the inconceivably heavy weight of representing the public face of the international community’s failure to prevent the 1994 ... Read More »

January 30, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours)

By Harold R. Johnson

The theme of healing is present in two recent non-fiction books by indigenous authors. But each author approaches the process of healing, and the question of what needs to be healed in the first place, ... Read More »

January 24, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples, Politics & Current Affairs

Birds Art Life

By Kyo Maclear

Back in 2012, author Kyo Maclear was feeling untethered. Her father was becoming increasingly frail, having succumbed to two strokes and a couple of bad falls. Then an MRI revealed he had an unruptured cerebral ... Read More »

January 9, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Elephants in My Backyard

By Rajiv Surendra

If you know Rajiv Surendra at all, it’s probably from his scene-stealing performance as Kevin G., a rapping mathlete in the 2004 movie Mean Girls. He threw himself into the audition, wowed the director, and ... Read More »

November 15, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Bleeding Blue: Giving My All for the Game

By Jim Lang; Wendel Clark

For Toronto hockey fans born before 1980 or thereabout, Wendel Clark is as close to godly as a Canadian is likely to come. His No. 17 jersey hangs in the rafters above the ice at ... Read More »

November 7, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail

By Noah Richler

Noah Richler’s latest book is meant to be the story of one unlikely politician’s doomed campaign as a candidate for the federal New Democratic Party. But this enjoyable, albeit uneven, memoir also provides some insight ... Read More »

November 7, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Politics & Current Affairs

The Woods: A Year on Protection Island

By Amber McMillan

Amber McMillan’s memoir tells the story of the author’s escape from Toronto to B.C. Tired of city living, McMillan and her husband set their sights on Protection Island, in Nanaimo Harbour. The couple is drawn ... Read More »

November 1, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War

By Deborah Campbell

B.C. author Deborah Campbell, a self-styled “immersive journalist” who has published in Harper’s, The Walrus, and elsewhere, sees it as her goal to “bridge the gap between the readers of magazines I write for … ... Read More »

September 22, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

One Night Only: Conversations with the NHL’s One-Game Wonders

By Ken Reid

As far as most hockey fans are concerned, there’s only one No. 4. But throughout the 1950s and most of the ’60s – that is, before Bobby Orr ever laced up his skates – No. ... Read More »

September 6, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies

By Ross King

In the spring of 1914, Georges Clemenceau – journalist, republican, once and future prime minster of France – paid a visit to his close friend Claude Monet. The artist had been depressed since the death ... Read More »

August 23, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Dependent: A Memoir of Marriage and the Military

By Danielle Daniel

In The Dependent, Danielle Daniel shares the interconnected stories of her troubled marriage to a military man, her struggles with depression, and the accident that left her husband a paraplegic. Recently, several strong women writers ... Read More »

August 23, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The “Red” Kelly Story

By David M. Dupuis; L. Waxy Gregoire; Leonard “Red” Kelly

As far as most hockey fans are concerned, there’s only one No. 4. But throughout the 1950s and most of the ’60s – that is, before Bobby Orr ever laced up his skates – No. ... Read More »

August 22, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone)

By Kamal Al-Solaylee

The first time Kamal Al-Solaylee watched Carol Reed’s film Oliver! on TV, he had the sudden wish that he were white. Even as a boy in Cairo, Al-Solaylee had already absorbed what is an all-too-regular ... Read More »

June 27, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ You Only Live Twice: Sex, Death and Transition

By Chase Joynt; Mike Hoolboom

Two men could not be more different. Two men could not have more in common. Both filmmakers and careful observers of the human condition, Chase Joynt and Mike Hoolboom have written a love letter to ... Read More »

June 20, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography