Eavesdroppings recounts life in the small towns of Ontario before sin arrived on the Internet - a time when churches were never locked and parents, not wishing to be disturbed while they listened to the radio, shooed their children out to play in the dark, unguarded streets without fear. Here you’ll find comedy, outrage, and tragedy but no disguise. Included are actual events and the names of all persons involved.The author tracks the quaint immorality of smalltown sin in ...

With COVID-19 taking dancing off the table for such an extended period, thoughts turned to food and cooking. Based on Michael Pollan’s idea - “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants...”, these recipes explore the beauty and joy in cooking. This book intends to accomplish three things: feature appetizing images; offer recipes tasty to eat; and provide a chuckle or a groan along the way.

Answers to Faith Crushing Questions provides answers to questions that are intended to destroy our faith and discredit our Creator.The Bible says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6 New American Standard Bible). Skeptics try to destroy the faith of others by asking difficult questions that seek to seed doubt and disbelief into a person’s faith.Jesus ran into this frequently from both religious and nonreligious persons. His poignant answers straight t...

Selected from 15 years of radio-show archives and re-edited by the author, this onderfully eclectic essay collection gives a glimpse into the thoughtful mind at work behind The Vinyl Cafe. From meditations on peacekeeping to praise for the toothpick, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks runs the gamut from considered argument to light-hearted opinion. Whether McLean is visiting a forgotten corner of the Canadian Shield, a big-city doughnut factory, or Sir John A. Macdonald's gravesite, his ob...

For ten years, listeners of The Vinyl Cafe have shared their personal stories with Stuart McLean on The Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the segment, Stuart and his long-time radio producer, Jess Milton, have collected their favourites. The result is a wise, wonderful anthology of stories about rituals and romance, road trips and guitar licks, Saturday-night hockey games and Sunday morning pancakes. A story about an exploding outhouse sits right beside one a...

Picking up her story in the late ’60s at age 21, Cathy Gildiner whisks the reader through five years and three countries, beginning when she is a poetry student at Oxford. Her education extended beyond the classroom to London’s swinging Carnaby Street, the mountains of Wales, and a posh country estate.After Oxford, Cathy returns to Cleveland, Ohio, which was still reeling from the Hough Ghetto Riots. Not one to shy away from a challenge, she teaches at a high school where police es...

Causeway is Linden MacIntyre’s evocative memoir of his Cape Breton childhood. At once a vibrant coming-of-age story, a portrait of a vanishing way of life and a reflection on fathers and sons, the narrative revolves around the construction of the Canso Causeway that would link the small Cape Breton village of MacIntyre’s childhood to the wide world of the mainland. Shot through with humour, humanity and vivid characters, Causeway is an extraordinary book, a memoir that ha...

Memoir, biography, and outrageous comedy make for a perfect blend in the debut book from acclaimed writer Steve Burgess. Telling the tale of his mother's life and death, and along the way laying bare his own life and struggles, Burgess renders a memorable and deeply moving meditation on life and family.The author's mother, Joan, barely survived her thirteenth birthday: a rare disorder had made it almost impossible for her to swallow food. Her battle to survive this...

An almost unnaturally poignant love story from the father of “Gonzo” journalism and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson.What makes the romantic short story Screwjack so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School...and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again."Hunter S. Thompson’s mos...

It's safe to say that world-famed speaker and author Og Mandino has as many friends as any man alive, thanks to his inspiring motivational lectures and his bestselling books. This new book is a special gift to all his friends, old and new, a book they may cherish above all the rest. Secrets for Success and Happiness is Og's beautifully written journal, an intimate record of his innermost thoughts and feelings, the heartwarming events of his day-to-day life.Whether he's writing in hi...

Written by fellow Canadians from Cape Breton Island to Prince Edward Island, from Montreal to Vancouver, this book reveals the people, the history and the special moments that give Canada such a distinctive charm and character.

The 1920s were one of the wildest decades in Canada's history a time of frivolous fads shocking crimes and political and social changes that definitively yanked the country out of the 19th century and into the modern age. In Strange Days Ted Ferguson revisits dozens of stories that could only have happened in the '20s tales of serial killers athletes con men crackpots prime ministers bathing beauties and more all of them nearly too amazing to believe and too entertaining to be for...