Ten Years Ago Today

I never envisaged it would end this way. I had always expected that when my career in Canadian daily newspapering came to a close, I would write a farewell column thanking the readers for taking the time to look at my stuff, and sometimes taking the time to phone or write. I would gather with my colleagues in the centre of the newsroom, the managing editor would make a nice speech about me, and I would respond in kind. I would tell my colleagues that during my time as the Calgary Herald’s theatre critic I “gave my best jeers to Theatre Calgary.” There would be laughter, cards, cake, and a chorus of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” My colleagues would present me with a framed replica of a dummy front page, filled with photographs of me and mock news stories about my journalistic achievements. It would be a splendid send-off.

None of this happened, of course. Instead, I found myself, a few weeks after my fifty-sixth birthday, scurrying down the back stairs of the red-brick fortress, clutching my well-thumbed copy of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary and the framed photographs of my wife and daughter that had been sitting atop my desk, held vertical by little cardboard flaps covered in fake velvet. There had been no fireworks, no marching band, no ticker-tape parade. This world was ending not with a bang or whimper, but with a step into the unknown. The first strike of newsroom employees in the 116-year history of the Calgary Herald was about to begin....

(The above is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir. If the snippet whets your appetite for more, please let me know. I hope to have the book published next year, after the noise about the Sarah Palin memoir subsides.)

View with a room

The Website ad looked enticing. But then the ads always look enticing. Afternoon tea in the lobby, with the lake in the background, and classical favourites played on the grand piano. Who could resist that? “A visit to the Prince of Wales Hotel is like taking a vacation at a European resort of old,” said the ad.

European resort of old, you say? Now, there’s a concept I could embrace. I close my eyes and think of the Villa d’Este at Lake Como, where the staff serve champagne by the pool and the guest rooms are redolent of what a visitor once described as “gentle breezes, cool linen sheets, satin, silk, and silence.”

I should have read the reviews rather than the ad. “Hated this hotel, not worth the money,” said one. “Visit, but don’t eat or stay,” said another. The Prince of Wales does have the breezes —call them high winds, if you will —and the rustic silence. But for $299 a night plus taxes, you get little more than an eight-by-twelve four-bit room with wafer-thin walls, space for just a single and double bed, and a porthole view of postcard-pretty Waterton Lake. I could have gone for the slightly cheaper room with the mountain view, I suppose. But the hotel ad’s surprisingly candid description of this room as “run-of-the-mill accommodation” didn’t sound particularly inviting. No spa, no pool, no pets. I ain’t got no cigarettes.

No television, no clothes closet, no mini-bar, no Internet connection. Instead, you get what the hotel ad describes as a “quaint” wash basin affixed to the wall at the foot of one bed because there’s clearly no place for a basin in the poky little bathroom between the tub and the toilet. I felt like the guy in that television ad for Canadian Direct Insurance who says, “I can’t believe this, why does my insurance cost so much?” The red-haired woman shouts back, “WHY? You don’t ask WHY! WHY is not something you ask. Hey, Perry, this guy just asked WHY his insurance costs so much. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” I can’t believe this, why does this mediocre hotel room cost so much? You get my drift.

Did I tell you about the stain on the bedspread, or the scorch mark on the dresser, or the interesting paint job on the washbasin mirror? Don’t ask. Or how about the antique elevator that could barely hold two people with luggage, and had to be operated by a member of the hotel staff—if you could actually find one?

The staff were mostly students, pleasant enough when spoken to, but clearly green behind the ears. If you had started to hum Wagner while waiting for a table in the half-empty dining room at breakfast-time, you’d have gone through the entire Ring Cycle before one of these fresh-faced kilted staff would have come over and asked if you were being served yet. Our server at dinner was a young woman from Portland who told us how happy she was to be working “abroad” for the summer. Go figure.

And therein lies the problem with the Prince of Wales, which they say the last prince chose not to stay in when he visited Waterton in 1927. It is nothing more than an overpriced summer lodge, open from early June to mid-September, without any sign of it ever becoming the European-style resort that it purports to be. “They do have a tendency to cut corners,” acknowledged a former staffer who served us at Bel Lago Ristorante, one of the better-value restaurants in Waterton. When the Chateau Lake Louise was open only in the summertime, the level of professionalism and quality there was comparable to what you would have found at such great old CP hotels as the Banff Springs, the Royal York in Toronto, or the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. At the Prince of Wales, you get a bunch of inexperienced kids whose idea of customer service is to keep you waiting forever and then asking you, “How’s your day going so far?” When you tell them that the guest rooms could have a few more basic amenities or that a modicum of efficiency could be brought to the running of the dining room, they simply shrug and ask what part of the States you’re from.

It's been more than thirty years since I last spent time at the Prince of Wales. It will be at least another thirty before I go back.

Reprieved

It’s a great day for Alberta writers. The listeners have pledged money and CKUA, the province’s listener-supported public broadcaster, has granted a stay of execution to Bookmark, the weekly half-hour radio program dedicated to exploring Alberta’s literary scene.

For a while there, it looked as if the two-year-old Bookmark would have to be cancelled due to lack of funding. CKUA announced in late June 2009 that it couldn’t afford to keep the program on the air for a third season. “Spoken-word programs are more time consuming, and therefore more expensive to produce, than music programs,” said the press release. If funding for twenty of the thirty-five Bookmark programs planned for 2009-10 could not be found by the end of July, the program would be terminated.

Bookmark’s host, Ken Davis, immediately launched a province-wide campaign to save this program that has made an important contribution to the provincial conversation about books and writing. Over the past several months, it has featured lengthy interviews with such well-known Alberta writers as Thomas Wharton, Sheri-D Wilson, Fred Stenson, Marina Endicott, Linda Goyette, Andrew Nikiforuk, Shirlee Smith Matheson and Alice Major.

Davis set himself what seemed at first like an impossible goal. He undertook to raise $20,000 in a matter of weeks. He invited Bookmark fans to donate $500 to sponsor one broadcast of the program, or $900 to sponsor two programs, or $1,300 to sponsor three programs, and so on.

After one week of campaigning, Davis had good news and bad to report. Corporate donors had pledged $10,000 and individuals had contributed $5,000. “The not-quite-so-good news is that we have two weeks left to get over the $20,000 mark or CKUA management will have to announce cancellation of the program,” said Davis. “So we’re not quite out of the woods yet.”

At the eleventh hour, on July 23, Davis and his supporters received word from CKUA that they had met their fundraising target, and that Bookmark would be on the air for another year. The new season begins Sept. 13, after the summer repeats. “Bookmark is not just a unilateral initiative by a few people,” said a grateful Davis. “It is a broad-based co-operative effort by literally hundreds of people across Alberta to ensure the literary community and book trade in this province have a forum and a communication platform for reaching out to each other, and to Albertans, and to the world.”

Like I say, it’s a great day for Alberta writers.

Rap on!

Edmonton has boldly claimed the title of Canada’s capital of literary cool by naming an underground hip-hop artist as the city’s latest poet laureate.

Cadence Weapon (real name, Roland Pemberton) is a 23-year-old rapper who identifies more with Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and other “songwriters-slash-poet-type guys” than with Keats or Sylvia Plath. He succeeds outgoing laureate E. D. (Ted) Blodgett, a professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of Alberta, who reacted to the surprise Cadence appointment by telling The Globe and Mail he “didn’t think that this was how a poet laureate was to be defined.”

Cadence acknowledges that the city of Edmonton took a risk by appointing him to a two-year position previously held by what The Globe calls “esteemed veteran poets.” Blodgett has published 17 collections of poetry and won the Governor General’s Award twice. Blodgett’s predecessor, Alice Major, has published eight collections of poetry, and is this year’s winner of the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a Canadian woman.

Cadence wondered at first if he needed “a staff and a big grey beard” because laureate jobs have traditionally gone to what The Globe calls the “stodgier, tenured, grey-haired crowd.” He also wondered if he had the right literary qualifications. “I never really considered myself a poet or anything,” he told The Globe. But Cadence then realized that his work as an Edmonton-based rap artist gives him the regional focus, if not the poetic sensibility, to become a worthy literary ambassador for his city.

“Most of my content is about Edmonton,” Cadence told the Edmonton Journal. “Most of the music I’ve put together comes from a very specific regional source. And I feel like I can just expand that into the poetry as well. It’s basically another outlet for the writing I’m already doing, and I can focus it even more now.”

Born and raised in Edmonton, Cadence is the son of the late Teddy Pemberton, a pioneering hip-hop deejay with Edmonton’s campus-based CJSR during the 1980s. Cadence’s maternal grandfather, Rollie Miles, was a versatile professional footballer who won three Grey Cup championships with the Edmonton Eskimos during the 1950s. Cadence dropped out of journalism school at age 18 to pursue a career in rap music and has since released three remixed-tape albums, all lyrically infused with a strong sense of home. “Where I’m from has really inspired me,” Cadence tells a British hip-hop website. “The people there are special, but it’s also the place too.”

As poet laureate, a largely ceremonial job that comes with an annual honorarium of $5,000, Cadence hopes to promote his city to the world as a place where performance poetry and hip-hop music really matter. “If people see me as representing Edmonton, maybe it will give them an overall different perception,” he tells the Journal. “I think that’s a positive thing. And it’s getting people talking. I’m excited.”

Death of a bookstore

Canadian book sales may be on the rise again, as BookNet Canada reported earlier this year, but independent booksellers are still feeling the pinch. The recent death of the Banff Book & Art Den —the only indie bookseller in the mountain resort town — proves that not even in oil-rich Alberta are retailers immune from the lethal impact of the economic downturn.

Besides being a local bookselling institution, the family-owned Book & Art Den was an important community gathering place and —for more than 40 years — an important independent publisher. Founded in 1965 by Peter and Barbara Steiner, the store made its mark as a literary mecca during the early 1970s when the poet Jon Whyte took over as manager. He claimed —with some justification —that the Book & Art Den was one of the three best bookstores west of Toronto.

Whyte was gently adept at offering unsolicited advice; steering customers away from escapist literature toward more serious work. He didn’t think it at all unusual that the Book & Art Den sold more Dostoevsky and Jorge Luis Borges than Raymond Chandler or Erle Stanley Gardner. “There’s no condescension here because this is a resort area,” Whyte said. “Our main customers are not the tourists who go shopping for shirts on Banff Avenue. They’re the students who attend the Banff School of Fine Arts or work at the Banff Springs Hotel.”

Whyte and Peter Steiner established the publishing arm of the bookstore, Summerthought Press, in 1970 when two of the Book & Art Den employees, writers Brian Patton and Bart Robinson, went looking for someone to publish their hiking guide to the mountain parks. The resulting book, The Canadian Rockies Trail Guide, became a runaway bestseller. Whyte edited and designed the book. Thirty-five years later, it was into its seventh edition, with more than 230,000 copies sold. As well as putting out a series of popular mountain guides and histories, Summerthought also published collections of poetry by Whyte. “Poetry is concerned with the quality of life,” he said. “If we’re ever going to get the tribal history of this country done, it’s going to be by the poets.”

Aside from the poetry, his own contribution to the “tribal history” included non-fiction books about the Natives of the Rockies, the wildlife painter Carl Rungius, Lake Louise, and Lake O’Hara. In 2006, Summerthought parted company, amicably, with the Book & Art Den. It was sold to a Banff-based travel writer, Andrew Hempstead, and his wife, Dianne. Two years later, in June 2008, the store itself was put up for sale. But after six months of trying, the owners couldn’t find any takers. “It’s very difficult to be an independent bookstore,” said Neil Wedin, who had taken over the running of the store with his wife, Gabi, the daughter of founders Peter and Barbara Steiner.

The Book & Art Den shut its doors at the end of February. “We’re certainly sad. We wish we could have found a buyer,” said Neil Wedin. “An independent bookstore is such an integral part of a city or town.” The last straw for Wedin was a decision by town council—in the face of a 500-signature protest petition he launched—to let a well-known chain store, IndigoSpirit, move in down the street. “That really hurt us,” said Wedin. “It will be very difficult, but now we have to move on.” The closure of the Book & Art Den follows the shuttering in the past year of such other independent Canadian bookselling institutions as The Book Room in Halifax and Laurie Greenwood’s Volume II in Edmonton.

Bumped

The CBC called. Would I like to go on the radio and talk to Donna about the Google book settlement? Hey people, you’re talking to an Irishman here. Of course, I would like to go on the radio and talk about the Google book settlement. I would like to go on the radio and talk about anything.

For those who haven’t been following this story, here’s a quick recap:

For the past seven years, Google has been engaged in an ambitious plan to digitize every book on the planet. In September 2005, American authors and publishers launched a class-action lawsuit challenging the legality of the scanning project. In October 2008, they reached a settlement. Google will pay U.S.$45 million to the authors and publishers for books already scanned, and establish a $34.5 million system for giving them a cut of future proceeds from the sales of digitized books.

I sat by my phone waiting—like a would-be contestant on The Price is Right—for the call from Donna.

The call never came. First, the bookseller got to speak his piece. Then the publisher talked for a bit. Then the CBC switchboard lit up. “We have a caller on the line from Calgary,” said Donna. Then she went to a caller from somewhere else and before you could say, “Give the Irishman a chance to talk,” the program was over. Too many callers, not enough time.

Ever since then, I have been imagining how the interview could have gone:

Donna: So, how do you feel, as a writer, about Google digitizing your books and making them available over the Internet? Are you shaking under the covers?

Me: I don’t give a rodent’s posterior about Google digitizing my books. I just want to be fairly compensated for my work.

D: But Google is giving you a share, isn’t it?

M: A modest share, yes. Maybe sixty bucks for each book.

D: And you could get more money in the future, right?

M: If I don’t opt out of the settlement, perhaps yes.

D: Why would you want to opt out?

M: I might not like the conditions set after the settlement goes to a New York court for approval. I also have some worries about what might happen to my books after they end up in Google’s digital database.

D: What might happen to them?

M: Piracy. If the electronic versions of my books end up in the hands of just one unscrupulous person, they can be shared around the Internet like tunes on Napster.

D: Well, of course, Napster was shut down, so you don’t have to worry about that. But how can you stop people from sharing pirated versions of your books over the Internet if they are determined to break the law?

M: We don’t have a law. At least, not in Canada we don’t.

D: We do have copyright protection for books, surely?

M: Only for books made of paper. Not for books that can be created, copied, and distributed electronically. There have been two attempts in the past four years to amend the Canadian copyright law to provide this protection, but in each instance the bill has died on the order paper. Because of this failure to enact new legislation, the Americans have now put Canada on a priority watch list of countries where Internet piracy flourishes.

D: Very interesting. We have a caller on the line from Lethbridge. Hello, Chris, you’re on the air.

Prize winner

Not only can Lee Henderson sing well -- see my previous posting about the laptop sing-along -- but he also writes well. Lee, a first time novelist, has just been named the winner of the $2,000 Ethel Wilson Prize for excellence in fiction at the annual B.C. Book Prizes. Lee's book, The Man Game, prevailed over such heavy-duty entries as The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway and Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane. The other finalists in the fiction category -- all deservedly recognized for their work -- were Andreas Schroeder for Renovating Heaven and Paul Headrick for That Tune Clutches My Heart. Congrats to Lee for joining the pantheon.

Laptop sing-along

Banff is on my mind again. In a few days, I will be heading up there to chat about nonfiction with a group of fellow writers.

We call ourselves the Creative Nonfiction Collective. Can't say I'm a big fan of that unwieldy term, creative nonfiction. We are all widely published, in periodicals, newspaper columns and books. What is our kind of writing if not creative? As J.C. Hallman says, whoever has heard of creative painting? Or creative sculpting? Or the creative play of an instrument? But that's the name chosen for this branch of the clan, so I'll live with it until something better comes along. I refer to my kind of writing as narrative nonfiction, but that's a rather cumbersome term as well. Suggestions, anyone?

I don't know if we'll come up with a new name for our group during our forthcoming get-together. We've been living with Creative Nonfiction now for five years. But there may be other discoveries in store for us. Last time I was in Banff with a group of writers, all of us recently featured at the WordFest international writers festival, I discovered the joys of the laptop sing-along.

It happened after an evening of socializing and exchanging of trade gossip. I had retired to my room when the phone rang. “You absolutely can’t go bed now,” said the voice at the other end. “You’ve got to come back to the Borgeau Lounge. We’ve just found a piano.” Of course, this was the Banff Centre. There had to be a piano around every corner. The hills are alive with the sound of music, don’t you know. And if there’s one thing writers like to do almost as much as they like to dance, it’s to sing.

We had the talent, the enthusiasm, and the piano we needed to get a sing-along happening. But we didn’t have song sheets. What were we to do for lyrics? How could we have a sing-along without words at our disposal? Enter Google, the search engine without which we would all be spending less time at the computer and more time in the library.

“Let’s do Elvis,” said someone. “Can you play ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love with You’?” Yes, I can play it, but who’s got the lyrics. Lee Henderson had the lyrics. He had his laptop with him, taking advantage of the fact that Wi-Fi abounds throughout this campus in the clouds. As soon as someone yelled out the title of a song, Lee had the lyrics up on the screen in front of him. Others went to their rooms and brought back laptops. “I thought it might seem a bit nerdy at first, but then I thought why not?” said one singer. Five more laptops soon appeared, and now the chorus was in full voice. “Can you sing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat?’” Nobody can sing Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat.” But we gave it a try anyhow.

We sang until the sleepy residents of Lloyd Hall complained to security. The man came and asked us, politely, to shut down the music. I have since conducted some research and discovered that this was the first ever laptop sing-along in the recorded history of Canadian writers’ festivals. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. For all the entertainment distractions now available, from flat-screen TVs to iPods, writers still love to do sing-along. Who knew?

WordPress vs Blogger?

Members of a writers' group I belong to have been touting the benefits of WordPress recently, saying it's the best blogging software on the market. I get the sense, though, that they haven't done much experimenting with other blogging applications. I happen to like Blogger because it links to Google, is user friendly, and has easily customizable templates. Has anyone tried both applications? How do they compare? Are there other, even better, applications that one might try?

The revenge of the blog

A brief review of a William F. Buckley Jr. book in today's Globe and Mail (yes, we did manage to grab a Starbucks copy of the paper before they sold out) says that for forty years Buckley used his Notes & Asides column in the National Review to get back at the people who criticized him. "Buckley always had the last word," says reviewer H. J. Kirchhoff.

Most of us, of course, don't have our own magazines to use as vehicles for answering our critics. But we do have the blog. We too can now have the last word. Never again will we have to suffer in silence or sit wondering for days if the paper will actually publish our polite rebuttal as a letter to the editor. Blogs are so empowering, don't you know.

By the way, the title of Buckley's anthology, now in paperback, is Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription. Not only does it include Buckley's original responses to his critics, but also comes with additional commentary, which Kirchhoff describes as "often hilarious." Gotta find a copy.

Is the Globe headed for extinction?

The Globe and Mail is our favourite Canadian newspaper, always has been. We like it because it's a writers’ newspaper, featuring some of the best scribes in the country. For years we had a subscription to the print edition. When the paper failed to arrive on our doorstep three days out of the six, however, we finally cancelled it. A circulation manager actually urged us to do so, if you can believe that. “Can’t guarantee home delivery any more,” she said. “Great difficulty finding reliable carriers, you understand.” Not to worry, we thought. There are two Globe boxes within easy walking distance of our home in West Hillhurst. We can still have the paper with our morning tea after we stretch our legs and get a little fresh air.

Six weeks ago, we noticed that both Globe boxes seemed to be eternally empty. Not just on Saturdays, when only the early birds catch the worms, but on every day of the week. We know the paper is good, but it can’t be THAT popular. Three weeks ago, the boxes were removed. Not just the boxes near our home, but all the boxes in Kensington. That meant we now had to hike eleven blocks to the nearest Starbucks to pick up a copy, if there was still one left. Still possible, we thought, but not such an appealing prospect when the temperature dips to twenty below.

This past Saturday, there wasn’t a Globe to be found at Starbucks. There wasn’t a Globe to be found anywhere in Kensington. Is the print edition of the Globe headed for the same fate as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Christian Science Monitor? Don’t tell us we should get the National Post instead. We've already seen that paper.

Reviewing the reviewer

The reviewer’s name is H. V. Nelles. That’s how his name is spelt. I mention this because my name is misspelt in his review of The Good Steward, published in the Literary Review of Canada. Yes, I have a thing about this. In the second of only two specific references to me in a piece running to more than one page, my surname is given as “Bennan.” A minor gaffe, granted, but it speaks to the credibility of this LRC review.

Prof. Nelles is a leading academic historian. He holds the L. R. Wilson professorship in Canadian history at McMaster University. In that capacity, he accuses me of falling short in my research. “Regiments of documents in various archives are left undisturbed,” he writes. Regiments? In which archives, pray tell? Prof. Nelles knows from my endnotes that I probed the fonds at the University of Calgary, Glenbow Museum, University of Alberta, and the Provincial Archives of Alberta. Given that my stated mission was to shed light on the life of an Alberta public figure who zealously guarded his privacy, where else would he have me look?

Nelles says “larger questions about Social Credit, public policy, and comparative provincial development remain unbroached.” Guilty as charged, say I. I never set out to write yet another tome about one of the most scrutinized political movements in Canadian history. I undertook to write the first popular biography of the radio evangelist who served as premier of Alberta for twenty-five years.

And that speaks to the larger problem here. One of the serious shortcomings of Prof. Nelles’s review is that it singularly fails to acknowledge the difference between what storytellers do and what scholars do. Storytellers write for a general readership; scholars write for each other. Pierre Berton was fond of pointing this out. He was a storyteller, one of the best we’ve ever had. I would not presume to put myself in his league. Yet the academic reviewers used to say to Berton: “We know all this stuff. Why are you repeating it?” It never seemed to occur to them that the vast majority of Berton’s readers were unaware of the details he uncovered in his research. The details may have been old hat to the scholars, but they certainly were not familiar to those readers who vaulted The National Dream to the top of the Canadian bestseller lists.

Before they read the book, did my readers know that Ernest Manning once put forward a plan to explode a nuclear bomb in the Athabasca oilsands to extract the bitumen from the sands? Did they know that the American oilman who won the first contract to commercially develop the oilsands secretly financed Manning’s radio program, Back to the Bible, for more than a decade? Likely not. Yet Prof. Nelles accuses me of simply replaying the old tunes, “pounded out in a rhythm as familiar as rugged hymns.”

Don’t get me wrong here. I truly appreciate the importance of scholarly investigation. I could not have written my book without all the good digging done by the academics. But, to reprise this particular old tune, I submit that Prof. Nelles should have conceded the obvious: That I write for people who do their reading in places other than archives and specialized libraries.

Literary Review of Canada -- Part 2

I have received a copy of the Literary Review of Canada, thanks to the kindness of Alastair Cheng, assistant editor and associate publisher. Responding to my last blog posting, he e-mailed me a complimentary PDF of the issue in question. More later about the review itself ...

Literary Review of Canada

A fellow author in Toronto tells me The Good Steward was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada. "It's a bit negative," he said. "The reviewer says you should have spent more time in the archives."

Intrigued, I tried to find a copy of the LRC in Calgary. I looked in bookstores and on newsstands. Nothing. I tried the periodicals section of the Calgary Public Library. Nothing. Nor, needless to say, could I find it in any of the major bookstores in San Francisco, where I vacationed recently. The Borders store on Union Square has a full rack of literary publications from all over the world, including Granta and Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing. But it doesn't have the Literary Review of Canada. "Can't say I've ever heard of it," said the clerk.

I checked the LRC website. It offers a year's subscription to the magazine for $59 CDN. Hmmm, let me think about that for a while. For a long while. The website also says I can download a PDF version of the issue in question for $6.50 CDN, and that I can pay through PayPal. But here's the rub: The LRC PayPal configuration is "not recommended for Netscape or Safari browsers."

I have a Mac. The Safari browser comes as part of the software package. It serves me well for all of my on-line purchases. Except, apparently, if I want to buy a copy of the LRC. So where to go now?

Bring your ruler

Some readers want to know. What do I think of the review, the cover story, in the March 2009 edition of Alberta Views magazine?

Let me quote from the late Jack McClelland. "Don't read reviews," he used to tell his authors. "Measure them!"

I measured the piece in Alberta Views. Five pages, including pictures, plus the cover picture. That works out to more than 9% of the entire magazine. Not bad.

Disregarding McClelland's advice, I then read through the review, checking for errors of fact, if not interpretation.

In the very first sentence, the reviewer, Alex Rettie, gives 1997 as the year of Ernest Manning's death. It was actually 1996 -- Feb. 19, 1996 to be precise.

Further on in the first paragraph, Rettie says Manning spent 10 years in the Canadian senate. It was actually 13 years.

In the final paragraph, the reviewer says there has been "very little critical response, even in Alberta, to Brian Brennan's The Good Steward." Well, let's see now. It received reviews in the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Lethbridge Herald, FastForward, Alberta History. Who did we miss?

The reviewer did, however, spell my name correctly. At least he got that right.

History buffs in Lethbridge

About 60 dedicated history enthusiasts came out on a cold and snowy February night in Lethbridge to attend the annual banquet of the Lethbridge Historical Society at the Galt Museum and Archives. The Lethbridge Herald gave advance notice of the event by running a review of The Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning Story. "A fascinating look at Alberta's growth from one of Canada's have-not provinces to the economic powerhouse it remains today," wrote reviewer Dave Sulz. I gave my little talk about Manning, signed a few books, and gathered a few personal anecdotes about Manning that I will gratefully use in future presentations.

Still selling well

I'm pleased to announce that The Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning Story is still on the Calgary Herald's bestseller list, checking in at No. 6 this week. Over the past few months, I have had lots of opportunity to talk to various community groups about the book, and that has been very rewarding for me. This past week, for example, I did a presentation for about 100 seniors at the Glenbow Museum and, this coming Tuesday (February 24), I will be heading down to Lethbridge to speak at the annual banquet of the Lethbridge Historical Society. It may have to do with the times we live in, but it seems to me that more and more people want to know how politicians dealt with the fallout from the Great Depression. There are lessons to be learned from the way Ernest Manning handled this problem.

Can't find my books?

If you're like me, and love to spend time combing the stacks of a great independent bookstore like City Lights in San Francisco or the now dearly departed Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan (with its iconic sign, "Wise Men Fish Here"), I am pleased to tell you that the great independents in Calgary and Edmonton, including Pages, Owl's Nest, Audreys and Greenwoods', are always well stocked with a good selection of my titles. People tell me they can never find my books in Coles or Chapters-Indigo, even though the computers at these chain stores say the books are supposedly on their shelves. Shop at the independents, I say. You will never be disappointed. You can also order my books directly from my publisher by clicking here. But there's nothing to beat the enjoyment of going to a good, independent bookstore, where the staff are always friendly and knowledgeable, and bringing home more books than you originally intended to buy.

Library orders

The Calgary Public Library has just ordered eighteen copies of The Good Steward. Library patrons have already submitted requests for thirteen of them. Copies are also on order at the Edmonton Public Library, the Chinook Arch Regional Library System, the St. Alberta Public Library and Strathcona County Public Library. The word is getting around. Click here to find out which branches of the Calgary Public Library have ordered The Good Steward.

Good-news weekend

It's been a good-news weekend for The Good Steward. The Edmonton Journal picked up the Catherine Ford review from the Calgary Herald (see below) while the book, after dropping to the No. 9 spot last week, rebounded to No. 2 on the Herald's local bestseller list. I'll never understand how bestseller lists work -- a literary agent told me once that certain booksellers have been known to manipulate them so they can move surplus stock -- but in the interests of self-promotion I'll take advantage of them whenever I can.