By Claudio D’Andrea At a slim 124 pages, Mel Hurtig’s latest book, The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper’s Takeover of Canada, doesn’t leave him much track to bulldoze the Conservative prime minister’s record. Instead this series of short chapters is like a bobcat that levels the mess that “The Harper Government” has made of our country. […]
Margaret Atwood and The National Post: We’ve been there
In honour of Margaret Atwood’s temporary banning by The National Post, and subsequent re-posting in helpfully edited form, we offer backofthebook.ca editor Frank Moher’s “On being disappeared by the National Post,” originally published on January 5th, 2010. By Frank Moher I knew when I submitted my last book review to The National Post that it might […]
Allen Ginsberg, photographer
By Rod Mickleburgh I met William Burroughs once. It was during my magical year in Paris (sigh). I’d read in Libération that morning that the legendary icon of the Beats would be at the City of Light’s annual Salon du Livre at the Grand Palais. I thought ‘”What the hell,” and went down to catch […]
The book of Heather
By Rod Mickleburgh Like many Vancouverites, I presume, I have a love-hate relationship with the big box Chapters bookstore downtown at Robson and Howe. Stocking the main floor with almost everything BUT books, bringing in the flag-waving American Girl franchise to what is supposed to be a Canadian bookstore, and, worst of all, the shameful […]
Harperism, from Hayek to Koch and Coyne
By Alison@Creekside Neo-liberalism: trickle-down, deregulating, deunionizing, globalizing free market privatization of government. When Stephen Harper was studying under the “Calgary school” in the 80’s, he became so enamored with the neo-liberalism of Austrian philosopher Friedrich von Hayek — guru to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the Chicago boys, the IMF, and the WTO — it formed the basis […]
Vancouver’s dark flaw
By Jim Henshaw I spent a couple of days in Vancouver this week and on a sunny day, it’s probably the most beautiful city in the world. It ain’t half bad looking on a rainy day either. And as the locals say, “Wait twenty minutes” and you can observe it either way. It’s hard not […]
Eating like your ancestors
BY TJ Dawe It’s Farmer’s Market season, and that means it’ll be that much easier to shop and eat locally, and in season. Fresh fruits and vegetables are unquestionably good for you, but some are better than others. How can you tell which ones? By buying and reading Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing […]
Quidditch, Canadian style
A BoB Short: Twenty-eight athletes from across the country will be dusting off their broomsticks to represent Canada as they host this year’s International Quidditch Association (IQA) Global Games, the international championship of a sport taken straight from the pages of Harry Potter. IQA’s style of quidditch differs from its fictional counterpart in a few […]
The Alice Munro effect
Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for literature. In the Sept. 15, 2001 edition of Saturday Night magazine, Frank Moher, backofthebook.ca’s editor, wrote with tongue only-slightly-in-cheek about the great volume of short story collections published in Canada, perhaps inspired by having the great Ms. Munro among us. His suggestion for a short-story moratorium did […]
Calgary’s artists rebuild
By Mark Leiren-Young As I was driving away from Calgary it started to rain. I was on my “C Canada tour,” promoting my new book in Cochrane, Calgary, and Cranbrook. The Calgary event was a reading at Pages — a funky bookstore in the type of funky neighbourhood that doesn’t exist in the minds-eye view […]
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