Books On Beechwood

Most newswriters who say they are telling it like it is are keeping something back. Not Craig Oliver.

His book “Oliver’s Twist” is a racy frank tale of major political figures across this country, as well as some extraordinary stories from his own life. Well-known today as the chief Parliamentary correspondent for CTV news, based in Ottawa, Oliver has covered every kind of story ever since he broke gently into CBC radio as a student in Prince Rupert, B.C. He learned early to take chances whenever they turned up. The only child of alcoholic parents, he had spent his growing-up years in the houses of strangers. Only at school did the occasional teacher give him a chance to practise his writing with which he showed talent. After the job with the CBC in Prince Rupert he was able to move to Toronto and eventually Ottawa, Washington and Central America.

Oliver has a natural charm and talent, beloved by anyone who watches him on television. He is also loyal, even to the mother who often had to give him up for care, but to whom he dedicates this book. He has followed the lives of politicians in this country for four decades and his insight has led to some amazing anecdotes which are found in this book.

Apart from his profession, Oliver had a passion to go on canoe-trips on some of Canada’s wildest wilderness rivers. He did this with a distinguished group including Tim Kotcheff, Eddie Goldenberg and Pierre Trudeau. He has managed all this while being declared legally blind for more than a decade. His book is a treat, Christmas or any time.

Review by Anne McDougall

The CBC Massey Lectures are fifty years old this year. To celebrate them we have a fascinating book called “Winter” – a collection of five essays by the best-selling writer Adam Gopnik.

He looks at the Romantic side, beloved by painters, poets, even musicians (and the book has some excellent illustrations); next the Radical winter, made famous by expeditions to both North and South poles by men whose names have become legendary because of their bravery. Gopnik looks at the making of the modern Christmas with some surprising adventures by Santa Claus. Another chapter covers Recreational winter, with fine bits on hockey, and finally Remembering Winter, showing winter stress making summer sweetness.

Gopnik confesses winter is his favourite season. These essays provide a welcome lead-up to the year’s coming cold days. The lectures themselves are given in November, 20ll. Gopnik was born in Philadelphia but raised in Montreal, where he went to McGill University (and to the Forum to watch hockey). He has been a staff-writer at “The New Yorker” for twenty-five years and is the author of “Paris to the Moon” and other collections of essays, as well as novels.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is “an irresistible novel”, as Alice Munro says, by one of Canadian Literature’s early writers.

Jack Hodgins lives and writes in British Columbia. Since “Spit Delaney’s Island” (stories) he has produced twelve books including novels, books for children, a travel book and a guide for teaching fiction.

“The Master of Happy Endings” is now out in paperback, and you can enjoy the story of Axel Thorstad, a tall, 6 foot eight inches, Norwegian, retired school-teacher, who lives in a cedar shack on an island in the Georgia Strait, off Vancouver Island, where he plunges into the ocean to swim every day and tries to get over the loss of his beautiful wife, Elena. His hermit’s life was beginning to pall when he hit on the idea of running an ad in the B.C. papers advertising his services as a tutor.

His reputation as a superb teacher brought in some interesting results, and he found himself on the way to Los Angeles to tutor a boy who had been offered parts in a television series but was failing at school. The story is fascinating and Thorstad more than holds his own with Hollywood operators. While finding his way around this tinsel world he is not fooled, and returns to his cedar shack. Who knows what next? The offers keep coming in. As one reviewer notes Thorstad is the kind of man a reader might want to spend time with.

Review by Anne McDougall

From the moment eleven-year old Michael Ondaatje climbs on board the luxury liner “Oronsay” to sail from Ceylon to England there is a feeling of adventure that makes “The Cat’s Table” a sheer delight to read. The reviews are pouring in, and they all say the same thing. People who loved “The English Patient” and
“In The Skin of a Lion,” but found later Ondaatje books a bit obscure, are thrilled with the fast pace, sense of magic and mystery, that fill this new book.

Ondaatje takes a true happening from his own life; he did leave Ceylon as an ll-year old to meet up with his estranged mother in England: a trip of 2l days on a 7-storey liner holding 800 other passengers. When he told his own children, many years later, about this trip, they were so full of questions that he turned back and decided to use the trip for a fictional account of three young boys, travelling alone, and their close meetings with adults, romantic, dangerous, sometimes terrifying.

The cat’s table referred to the least prestigious spot in the ship’s large dining-room, the farthest away from the Captain’s Table. This did not mean it did not have some fascinating members: the musician, retired from a jazz band, who played with the ship’s orchestra and was full of ribald lyrics; a mysterious spinster who wore a jacket with pockets to carry live pigeons, a retired ship dismantler who had the complete run of the ship and got the boys into forbidden spots in the engine and furnace rooms as well as the lifeboats where they hid for hours eating stolen fruit from the First Class.

Michael, nicknamed Mynah, finds his l7-year old cousin Emily on board ship, and has a very touching visit catching up and reaching an intimacy he had not known before. As the book, and the journey, progress, and Aden and Port Said are reached, Ondaatje flashes forward to his later life, remembering how his discoveries on shipboard affected his own emotions. In England he picks up with the boys he knew on board. He even tracks Emily down on the west coast of British Columbia.

Because Ondaatje is so frank in sharing what is true, and what is fiction, we get a quite inspired story of youth and age, of growing up, snatches of life in Ceylon versus life in England. Ondaatje is generous, as well a polished and graceful writer. This is a wonderful book.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is a scholarly look at a fascinating period in Canadian History – the beginning of the Canada Company and the settling of the Huron Tract in Ontario.

This company had its base in England and was responsible for settling over two million acres of land in what was called Upper Canada. It turned up a lot of colourful characters with different visions as to how this should be done. Among them were John Galt, the Scottish author of novels like Annals of the Parish, beloved by generations of Scots – who sometimes paid more attention to the needs of the settlers, such as buying seed for their crops, than to the books of the Company he was charged with starting. Also Tiger Dunlop, a medical doctor who became Warden of the Forests. Very concerned with Britain’s position was the lieutenant governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland; also very involved were the Bishops Macdonell and John Strachan.

This is a picturesque part of Ontario and there are excellent descriptions (and good photographs) of the founding of the cities Goderich and Guelph. This period has been described in a number of previous books and pamphlets, but Robert C. Lee writes a particularly vivid account because his family came from England to Goderich as early as l834 and later descendants served as mayor of that city and ran businesses there. Bob Lee studied history at Bishop’s University and later wrote his masters degree at the University of Guelph on the Canada Company. Lee later joined the Canadian Foreign Service, posted to the U.S., Yugoslavia, Japan, Korea and Indonesia. He now lives in Ottawa.

Review by Anne McDougall