André Pratte is the editor-in-chief of La Presse. His newest book, Wilfrid Laurier, is part of the Extraordinary Canadians series, published by Penguin Canada and edited by John Ralston Saul, that aims to provide historical insight into our own times.
There are ways in which biographies, interesting ones at any rate, act as reference points; for better or worse, they turn a life (whether typical or atypical) into a marker for a particular historical moment, or use it to summarize events too complex for readers to grasp in other ways. Though this is not their only effect, it is a compelling one.
Chester Brown is an award-winning cartoonist and a two-time Libertarian Party of Canada candidate, but these days it’s his life as a john that’s getting the most attention. In his recent autobiographical graphic novel, Paying For It, he tells us about the twenty-three prostitutes he has been with since deciding to pursue paid sex in 1999.
Sylvia Weisler, age thirty-three, published writer of a book of poetry, is tackling a new subject in earnest. Her next book will be about newspaper-based personal ads, she has decided.
How many kids can you shoot?” asks Lt.-Gen. the Honourable Roméo Dallaire (ret’d), fixing me with a penetrating blue stare. “Even under the mandate of protecting other people? Or under the international law of self-defence?”
"I like snapshots,” Gillian Sze says brightly. There is a plate of charmingly small cookies between us, and she is taking a picture of them with her phone. "I like trying to crystallize moments or little details. But then again, maybe all poets are trying to do that."
There is a whole branch of philosophy about the Just War, but Dimitri Nasrallah remains sceptical. “Ultimately, war is chaos,” the Montreal author says. “The vast majority of people are caught in the middle. They’re waiting for the shelling to die down so they can go to the store, hoping that the electricity doesn’t cut off long enough for their food to go bad or that a bullet doesn’t come through their window.”
The conventional wisdom is that history is told from the perspective of the victors. But in Canada the “winning” side doesn’t always control the narrative.
She had eyes you could get lost in and the kind of voice bankers leave their wives for, so when she asked me if I would take the case, how could I refuse? It didn't hurt that there was some money in it for me, too. The case? To dig into the life of a man who'd been dead for forty-two years.
