Non-Fiction Books

In October 1983 Ken Dryden gave us what was called the best non-fiction book ever written about hockey – The Game . In that same month Roy MacGregor published what was hailed as the best novel ever written about hockey – The Last Season . In 1989 these two writers teamed up to write another extraordinary book: inspired by Ken Dryden’s major CBC-TV series on hockey, Home Game takes us all the way from street hockey to the showdowns between Canada and the Soviets. On publication, Home Game shot to the top of the bestseller lists, establishing itself as must reading for every hockey fan. Not only was this lavish book with over 95 full-colour photographs popular among ordinary Canadians: book reviewers loved it. From the Hardcover edition.

Road Games is a passionate, engrossing and authoritative chronicle of the extraordinary 1992-93 NHL season, one that ended with an inquiry into whether or not the Ottawa Senators deliverately "tanked it" to secure their first overall draft pick of hockey's newest sensation, Alexandre Daigle. This was the season that Mario Lemieux's involvement in a sordid scandal was forgotten when he overcame cancer to win the scoring title; Doug Gilmour emerged as one of the game's finest players; and European stars Selanne, Bure, Mogilny and Fedorov rose to preeminence, while the North American hockey heroes-Gretzky, Lemieux, and Lindros-endured a season marked by injury, sickness, disturbing controversy and moving comeback.

Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award “A truly magnificent book.”— Calgary Herald It’s the great Canadian icon: a frozen creek, a backyard rink, a father passing something precious on to his child—the love of a game. There is nothing quite so Canadian as hockey, and nothing quite so evocative in hockey as the relationships between Canadian hockey players and their fathers. Here are the personal tales of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey and Marty McSorley, told as the four NHL stars take their fathers on a hockey tour of Europe. Here are the memories of hockey’s grand families: Gordie, Mark and Travis Howe; Bill, Kevin and Gord Dineen; Murray, Ken and Michael Dryden. Here is Brett Hull’s story of the famous father who was never home. But The Home Team is about more than famous names. It is the story of the father and son left weeping in the stands at the end of a disappointing draft day. It is the story of a minor league coach and his house league son. This book is about hockey. It is also about where we live and who we are: a book for all fathers and sons in Canada.

Everyone talks about our schools. Newspaper editorials worry about slipping educational standards. Business complains about poor training for the work force. Television programs talk about violence in school halls. Educational reports study problems and issue strategic documents. Parents attend parent-teacher interviews twice a year. Yet nobody – except for the teachers and the kids – seems to know what really goes on there. Ken Dryden decided to find out. From September 1993 until June 1994, he attended a high school, folding his 6'4" frame as inconspicuously as possible into a seat at the back of the room, moving from class to class when the bell rang. He watched, while everyone got used to his presence, and he took notes. The result is a documentary about the life of a typical Canadian school – in this case a Mississauga, Ontario, high school with a wide range of students drawn from sixty countries. We follow a number of these students, getting to know a dozen of them well, and we follow half a dozen teachers, including the principal. We see the ups and downs in the students’ academic lives, and – like the teachers – we understand much more when the parents come for interviews. We come to care for all of them and understand better a system that can only punish kids who skip class by suspending them, and that can’t fire bad teachers. We are taken inside the teachers’ world, too. We follow them as they prepare for class, watch them teach, sympathize when they lose their temper at someone who strolls in fifteen minutes late, or when they have to give a student who really tried hard a mark of zero. The book clearly demonstrates that our schools are different than we think, and prone to suffer from the world’s problems and complications. Homework stands no chance set against the fast money of an evening job. But, as always, teachers do well teaching kids like them who want to learn – and not so well with the average kids, the ones beyond the front row. In this intimate look at the way a school really works, Ken Dryden tackles what he sees as the education debate’s retreat to a safe, unthinking – and ultimately useless – black and white ground of issues and policies at the expense of people. Ultimately he discovers that good teachers teach people and not just subjects. As gripping as a fine novel, In School is an exciting achievement – a thought-provoking look at our schools and our society, and at how we can make them better.

Many Canadian parents are familiar with the painful tradition of the seven a.m. practice. It is enacted weekly across the country – hours before most sane people think of rising from their beds – as long-suffering mothers and fathers bundle sleepy children into the family car or minivan, then drive their budding athletes to the arena, the pool, the field, the gym… Roy MacGregor knows the joys and frustrations of cheering on a sporting child. He has, in particular, become known as an expert on the subject of fathers, sons, and the game of hockey, where parent and child often find a rare opportunity to meet on common ground and forge a relationship mediated by their love of the sport. But Roy MacGregor also has some first-hand experience on the subject of fathers, sons, and ear-piercing; fathers, daughters, and the pre-teen dance. In the funny, sometimes hair-raising stories collected in The Seven A.M. Practice , in which he describes life at home with his own four children, Roy MacGregor brings his gently affectionate eye to the relationship of parent and child in every aspect of their lives. With bemused good humour, MacGregor charts the highs and lows of being a parent – from the cherished time when he is the centre of his child’s life to the sad day when it dawns on him that he is being gently nudged ever further to one side.

From the National Post, Montreal Gazette, and Ottawa Citizen comes this loving, poignant, and spectacular tribute to Canada’s premier politician, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. When on September 28, 2000, at the age of 80, Trudeau passed away, Canadians said goodbye to the sole figure who had dominated their hearts, minds, and imaginations, for forty years. Hailed as Canada’s "spirit of the age", Trudeau had become a calendar for the largest generation ever to pass through Canadian society. He was a Canadian institution, a face as familiar as any Canadian landscape. As Roy Macgregor writes, he was "much like his own country" with his expansiveness, diversity, charm, and wit. In this commemorative volume, you’ll find breath-taking photographs of Trudeau’s life and death, stirring words from those who loved him, and so much more: - Introduction by Roy MacGregor - Justin Trudeau’s Eulogy - Sacha Trudeau’s Reading - Peter C. Newman’s "An Appraisal" - Jacques Hebert’s Eulogy - Robert Fulford’s "The Contrarian Viewpoint" - Condolences - Tributes - 6 photo essays - And much more A stirring and stunning tribute that celebrates one of the greatest men of our age.

In February 2002, the greatest hockey teams this country could muster headed to Salt Lake City to compete in the Winter Olympics. Our men and women hoped to go all the way to the finals, but it had been fifty long years since the Canadians had won Olympic gold. In the past, they had come close – it was just that luck always seemed to be against them. This time, however, their chances to end the long drought were good. The women looked set for a medal – although the all-powerful American team stood between them and the ultimate prize. The Canadian men faced strong opponents, too, but prospects were good for the all-star team assembled by the great Wayne Gretzky. And this time, both teams had a secret weapon. So secret, in fact, they didn’t even know it existed. At first. Like all good secrets this one was too good not to pass along. Under the surface at centre ice, Trent Evans had hidden a Canadian loonie. The expert ice maker had been invited down from Edmonton to help install the ice for the Games, and this was his little good-luck charm for our Olympic hockey teams. Perhaps, he figured, the guys could use some “home ice” advantage. A Loonie for Luck is the true story of that loonie and the magic it wove at Salt Lake City. It follows Wayne Gretzky, Trent Evans, and the men’s and women’s teams through their time at the Games. And it pays tribute to the role of superstition and chance in hockey – a part of the sport not always acknowledged, but one that brings real magic to the game. With the close co-operation of Wayne Gretzky and Trent Evans, Roy MacGregor tells the inside story of how the coin came to be in Trent Evans’ pocket and then buried under centre ice. He tells how, throughout the Games, the loonie was in danger of being uncovered as the secret began to spread, and how, as the tournament progressed, with the players in need of every break they could get, the good luck miraculously held. This true story, brilliantly illustrated by Bill Slavin, is full of suspense, humour, and charm. It will delight every Canadian who felt a surge of pride for our athletes at Salt Lake City.

We think of the cottage or cabin as a place where we can be our truest, most authentic selves. For those lucky enough to own one, just knowing it awaits can sustain the soul through the workday grind. In Escape, Roy MacGregor explores the powerful hold the wilderness, and the thought of our place in it, has on our imaginations. He weaves together chapters of personal history, telling of his family’s deep connection to the lakes and forests of central Ontario, and chapters that detail the evolution of the idea of wilderness in Canada and the history of “Cottage Country.” He shows that the Canadian wilderness meant freedom for many early settlers escaping privation and oppression in Europe. It meant a chance to create a paradise on earth to some early Utopians, and it meant a chance to profit from the desperate or gullible, such as at Cannington Manor in Saskatchewan and Brother Twelve’s City of Refuge on Vancouver Island. In more recent times, the wilderness and the cottage have represented an escape from a technologically driven and hectic civilization – although too often we take the trappings of our urban lives with us to the detriment of our intended refuge. In cottage country, MacGregor suggests, we may be loving our wilderness to death. This is a thoughtful, evocative, and often moving book about an essential part of the Canadian psyche by one of our best-loved writers. From the Hardcover edition.

Who are we? In Canadians, one of Canada’s most intelligent and beloved writers maps our national psyche in a wonderful and ambitious work. Canadians is an entertaining portrait of this country and its people, through its history, popular culture, literature, sport, landscape, and weather. In his pursuit of the Canadian national identity,MacGregor has travelled far and wide, taking our pulse, telling our stories. A sparkling blend of historical, anecdotal, and reflective writing converges in a narrative that is extraordinarily learned in its perceptions and light in its delivery—all trademarks of this remarkable writer’s work.

From Canada’s beloved award-winning journalist and bestselling author comes a collection of essays, new and previously published, on man’s best friend. In the course of 20 years of column writing about everything from politics to hockey and everything in between, Roy MacGregor has learned firsthand that the columns with the greatest reader impact have been those about the family dog. Roy has collected these columns and written many more on everything from puppy love to the sorrow of losing a pet, as experienced by Roy and the dogs he’s known and loved.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE OTTAWA BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION Roy MacGregor's lifelong fascination with Tom Thomson first led him to write Canoe Lake , a novel inspired by a distant relative's affair with one of Canada's greatest painters. Now, MacGregor breaks new ground, re-examining the mysteries of Thomson's life, loves and violent death in the definitive non-fiction account. Why does a man who died almost a century ago and painted relatively little still have such a grip on our imagination? The eccentric spinster Winnie Trainor was a fixture of Roy MacGregor's childhood in Huntsville, Ontario. She was considered too odd to be a truly romantic figure in the eyes of the town, but the locals knew that Canada's most famous painter had once been in love with her, and that she had never gotten over his untimely death. She kept some paintings he gave her in a six-quart basket she'd leave with the neighbours on her rare trips out of town, and in the summers she'd make the trip from her family cottage, where Thomson used to stay, on foot to the graveyard up the hill, where fans of the artist occasionally left bouquets. There she would clear away the flowers. After all, as far as anyone knew, he wasn't there: she had arranged at his family's request for him to be exhumed and moved to a cemetery near Owen Sound. As Roy MacGregor's richly detailed Northern Light reveals, not much is as it seems when it comes to Tom Thomson, the most iconic of Canadian painters. Philandering deadbeat or visionary artist and gentleman, victim of accidental drowning or deliberate murder, the man's myth has grown to obscure the real view—and the answers to the mysteries are finally revealed in these pages.

Roy MacGregor has been called "the best hockey writer in the country," and we finally have a collection of his very best hockey writing, revised and updated. For nearly 40 years Roy MacGregor has brought hockey, our national sport, alive on the page. From tales of the game's greats (Guy Lafleur, Jean Beliveau, Marcel Dionne) to today's stars (Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Daniel and Henrik Sedin), his magazine and newspaper coverage has revealed so much about these and so many other personalities, in moments of promise, victory and defeat. While many of these stories play out on the ice, some of the most compelling take place on the home front (Mario Lemieux's battle against cancer, the many tribulations of Bob Gainey), and MacGregor's prose shines especially when focused on the human side of a sport defined by superhuman feats of speed, aggression and power. Wayne Gretzky's Ghost is a personal book, and also a book of challenging ideas: that Wayne Gretzky, through no fault of his own, was the worst thing to happen to hockey; that CBC 's Hockey Night in Canada has lost sight of what it is; that goaltending has become a position out of all proportion to what was intended. And who could offer a better perspective on the game than a writer who, playing as a youngster, had to face an onrushing phenom from Parry Sound named Bobby Orr, or who spent a year ghostwriting a national newspaper column for the Great One himself? When it comes to hockey, Roy MacGregor has seen (and in some cases, done) it all.

One of our favourite chroniclers of all things Canadian presents a rollicking, personal, photo-filled history of the relationship between a country and its canoes. From the earliest explorers on the Columbia River in BC or the Mattawa in Ontario to a doomed expedition of voyageurs up the Nile to rescue Khartoum; from the author's family roots deep in the Algonquin wilderness to modern families who have canoed across the country (kids and dogs included): Canoe Country is Roy MacGregor's celebration of the essential and enduring love affair Canadians have with our first and still favourite means of getting around. Famous paddlers have been so enchanted with the canoe that one swore God made Canada as the perfect country in which to paddle it. Drawing on MacGregor's own decades spent whenever possible with a paddle in his hand, this is a story of high adventure on white water and the sweetest peace in nature's quietest corners, from the author best able (and most eager) to tell it.

Expanding on his landmark Globe and Mail series in which he documented his travels down sixteen of Canada's great rivers, Roy MacGregor tells the story of our country through the stories of its original highways, and how they sustain our spirit, identity and economy—past, present and future. No country is more blessed with fresh water than Canada. From the mouth of the Fraser River in BC, to the Bow in Alberta, the Red in Manitoba, the Gatineau, the Saint John and the most historic of all Canada's rivers, the St. Lawrence, our beloved chronicler of Canadian life, Roy MacGregor, has paddled, sailed and traversed their lengths, learned their stories and secrets, and the tales of centuries lived on their rapids and riverbanks. He raises lost tales, like that of the Great Tax Revolt of the Gatineau River, and reconsiders histories like that of the Irish would-be settlers who died on Grosse Ile and the incredible resilience of settlers in the Red River Valley. Along the Grand, the Ottawa and others, he meets the successful conservationists behind the resuscitation of polluted wetlands, including Toronto's Don, the most abused river in Canada. In the Mackenzie River Valley he witnesses the Dehcho First Nation's effort to block a pipeline they worry endangers the region's lifeblood. Long before our national railroad was built, rivers held Canada together; in these sixteen portraits, filled with yesterday's adventures and tomorrow's promise, MacGregor weaves together a story of Canada and its ongoing relationship with its most precious resource.