Hockey forms the backdrop of our lives. For many Canadians, the big moments — births, deaths, marriages, moves — are all mixed up with the wins and losses of our teams. The voices of Hockey Night in Canada sportscasters are our soundtrack, and visions of skates scraping across the ice lull us to sleep. George Bowering, Canada's former poet laureate, is no different. Growing up in Oliver, BC, Bowering was entranced by the kids from Saskatchewan who skated and handled pucks as easy as breathing. His fascination with hockey followed him into adult life, from BC to Quebec and back again. Bowering followed his teams with a critical eye and a fan's passion, and his stories bring us on a cross-country hockey-themed road trip, with occasional forays into boxing, poetry, and sports fashion. Bowering has an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. He has been an avid and attentive hockey fan since boyhood, and has an extensive catalogue of thoughts and opinions on the personalities and events that populate Canadian hockey history. In The Hockey Scribbler, Bowering brings us along on his richly detailed look back at the hockey in Canada since the 1950s.

“Covering many of the biggest names and greatest events in sports, it’s a wonderful collection of yarns and reminiscences, told in Perk’s inimitable style” (Postmedia News). Dave Perkins was once told by a bluntly helpful university admissions officer: “You don’t have the looks for TV or the voice for radio. You should go into print.” Which he did, first at the Globe and Mail, and then for thirty-six well-traveled years at the Toronto Star. In Fun and Games, Perkins recounts hysterical, revealing, and sometimes embarrassing personal stories from almost every sport and many major championships. After forty years of encountering a myriad of athletes, fans, team managers, and owners, Perkins offers unique observations on the Blue Jays and Raptors, fifty-eight major championships’ worth of golf, ten Olympic Games, football, hockey, boxing, horse racing, and more. Learn why Tiger Woods asked Perkins if he was nuts, why he detected Forrest Gump in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and why Super Bowl week is the worst week of the year. Perkins exposes the mistakes he made in both thought and word—once, when intending to type “the shot ran down the goalie’s leg,” he used an “i” instead of an “o”—and to this day, he has never found a sacred cow that didn’t deserve a barbecue. “Few can spin a yarn with the wit and clever turns of phrase that Perky can.” —Shi Davidi, Sportsnet “Anyone who has ever spoken to Dave Perkins, or read Dave Perkins, remembers his voice. This book is a delightful way to experience it all again, through the wise, funny man’s eyes.” —Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star sports columnist

The book is built up on autobiographical stories of travels in various parts of the globe, capturing in its frame the geographical settings, the layman’s geology, the historical anecdotes, some anthropological findings, narration of relevant social and academic environments, and description of stunning landscapes. This is primarily based on the author’s personal diaries spanning over a few decades. The book is pictorial, and the author consolidated his narrations in sixteen independent chapters. The book starts with the author’s growing up in the suburbs of Kolkata, and his education in Presidency College, now University, in Kolkata and later in the erstwhile Soviet Union. The book also narrates the unique features of the USA, the Swiss Alps, the Scandinavia, China, Africa, Australia and Middle East. The contents, however, are not designed to provide any travel guide. The book is totally apolitical. It focuses on the author’s penchant for knowing and sharing diversity of the world through irresistible wanderlust.

In this unique book of correspondence, two men from different generations write to each other about the burdens, anxieties, and singular joys of parenthood. Thirtysomething Charles Demers and 80-year-old George Bowering are both celebrated authors and the best of friends, and soon both will be the fathers of daughters. The letters begin as Charles and his wife discover they will become parents; he expresses his hopes and fears of impending fatherhood, compounded by his OCD and his own father's illness, while George recalls his own experiences raising a daughter in the 1970s and his own anxieties about bringing a child into a troubled world. Together, their thoughtful, funny, candid missives reveal what fathers know (or don't know) about raising daughters, as well as themselves and each other. Their combined observations make for a passionate, funny and moving portrait of fatherhood in all its imperfect, beautiful glory. George Bowering is Canada's first poet laureate and an officer of the Order of Canada. He is the author of more than eighty books, the most recent of which include The Hockey Scribbler, Writing the Okanagan, and Pinboy. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Charles Demers is a comedian, performer, and writer. His previous books are The Horrors (Douglas & McIntyre) and Vancouver Special (Arsenal). He lives in Vancouver, where he teaches writing at the University of British Columbia.

This book recounts the remarkable life of Roy Peck, a quintessential yet extraordinary Canadian. Born into an austere rural situation, he stuck by home and family through tough times and discovered the fun of living and the benefits of choosing well. He received Canada's and Quebec's top honours for his chosen genres in the shooting sports of target archery and rifle. The young athletes of the Northeast Pontiac and Central Gatineau nicknamed him "The Chief" for his winning ways as their coach and mentor, and they still call him "The Chief." And anyone who hired him as their carpenter or builder will testify that all his doors still work very well.

E.Rick Jones was a penniless author while Fred, his twin brother, was a successful inventor and entrepreneur. Fred's advice on how Rick could improve his life was never any use because Rick, although he dreamed of becoming like his brother, in reality was hobbled by his timidity. When Rick was accused of being a paedophile, he found himself being investigated by the police and hounded by the media. The evidence appeared conclusive. No one would believe him that he was being framed and everyone he knew (including his wife) seemed to have a reason for wanting him imprisoned or murdered. There was no one he could trust. The media were doing their best to stir up a lynch mob and the police weren't interested in offering him protection. His brother thought his predicament hilarious. One way or another it seemed that his sheltered life was about to come to a painful end.

Includes section "Reviews and notices of books".

Soon to be a feature film, The Late Bloomer is the revealing, harrowing and often funny memoir of a celebrity journalist and former hotshot hockey player who discovers that he has been biochemically infused with a female hormone. On the surface, Ken Baker seemed a model man. He was a nationally ranked hockey goalie; a Hollywood correspondent for People; a guest-lister at celebrity parties; and girls came on to him. Inside, though, he didn't feel like the man he was supposed to be. Although attracted to women, Ken had little sex drive and thus even less of a sex life. To his anguish, he repeatedly found himself unable to perform sexually. And, regardless of strenuous workouts, his body struggled to build muscle, earning him the nickname "Pear" from his macho teammates. Physically, matters turned bizarre when he discovered that he was lactating. The testosterone-driven culture in which Ken grew up made it agonizingly difficult for him to seek help. But in time he discovered something that lifted years of pain, frustration, and confusion: a brain tumor was causing his body to be flooded with massive amounts of a female hormone, which was disabling his masculinity. Five hours of surgery accomplished what years of therapy, rumination, and denial could not -- and allowed Ken Baker to finally feel -- and function -- like a man. Now Ken's story comes to the screen in the feature film, The Late Bloomer, starring Academy Award-winner J.K. Simmons and Jane Lynch.