Thinking of My Friend, Lt. General Roméo Dallaire

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Enduring PTSD Ten Years Later

Sunday Morning Update: Lt. General Roméo Dallaire, about whom I’ve been writing in recent days, was a guest for an excellent interview with Michael Enright on CBC Sunday Edition today. Please find the link here.

 

With Lt. General Roméo Dallaire’s flareup of PTSD this week, at the sister blog to this one, The Great Gray Bridge, I’ve written a full post about my experience publishing his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Here’s the last paragraph:

With the 20th anniversary of the genocide approaching next year, and four recent suicides of Canadian veterans of the Afghan War, Dallaire had a traffic accident this week due to severe insomnia and sleeplessness he’s been enduring as these events prey on him. He was uninjured but shaken by the crash. The same day he made a statement of apology to his colleagues in the Canadian Senate, ironic since so few others in that body have been anywhere near as forthright in admitting their own missteps.

I invite you to read the whole post.

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Thinking of Toronto Today, and Friends There

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CN Tower

Though I live in NYC, I have a kind of sibling-city relationship with Toronto, to which I travel each June for the NXNE festival, and which I’m connected to via the CBC and Internet radio; musical acts I follow; authors I’ve published with; and book biz colleagues over a long time, many of whom are good friends. The escalating situation involving their prevaricating mayor, Rob Ford, has compelled fascination among locals and many outside of Canada for weeks and months, since Gawker and the Toronto Star both reported that Ford was seen by reporters on videotape, smoking from a crack pipe. Late last week, TO Police Chief Blair revealed that his service had recovered a digital file of the tape, which had been missing for months (Ford had denied it ever existed.) At last, things may be peaking today, with Ford’s belated admission earlier that he had indeed smoked crack, supposedly “in a drunken stupor.” Right now, at 4:15 Tuesday, Election Day in NYC, I’m still listening to CBC Radio One from the Toronto newsdesk, as Ford has said he’ll be making one more statement on this day. The on-air people are vamping, just trying to fill up the time while City Hall, or more particularly, Rob Ford, has everyone waiting.

An interval just passed during the writing of this post, as 30 minutes ago Ford came out and gave a statement that was entirely a recapitulation of all his recent evasions and self-pitying refusals to step down. He says he is not stepping down, or even temporarily stepping aside from his office. Please note, the photo above shows the view toward downtown Toronto that I had from my hotel room the last time I stayed there, at the Alexandra Hotel on Ryerson Avenue, a quiet street located between Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street on the east and west, and Queen Street and Dundas Street on the north and south. Nice view, huh? That’s CN Tower in the distance on the left.

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#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s “The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie”

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Lonely End of the Rink#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie. Very excited to begin reading my copy of the new book by my friend, Canadian broadcaster Grant Lawrence, which just landed in my mailbox this afternoon. The book, which chronicles his uneasy relationship with the Canadian national sport, was officially launched last night with an event in Vancouver, BC. Grant loves to meet with booksellers and readers and is one of the hardest working authors I’ve ever observed. On his website you can find details on the extensive book tour he’s taking, with stops in many Canadian cities between now and December 12.Lonely End back cover

I loved Grant’s first book Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other Stories from Desolation Sound, a memoir of the many summers he’s spent in the wilds of coastal British Columbia, in the environs of a family cabin on the vividly named Desolation Sound. It went to #1 on the BC Bestseller List, won the BC Book Prize for the 2010 Book of the Year, an award given by booksellers, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. I’m hoping for similar success for his new book, which I will begin reading this weekend.Adventures in SolitudeGrant at Radio 3 picnic
[cross-posted at my other blog The Great Gray Bridge]

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Upcoming NYC Launch of Daniel Canty’s “Wigrum: An Inventory Novel,” a Typographical Treat

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WigrumHey Canadians and other NYC friends-I’m going to be at Mellow Pages Library in Brooklyn tonight as local rep for Talonbooks of Vancouver, BC. Details:

Talonbooks invites you to the launch of Wigrum
a novel by Daniel Canty
translated by Oana Avasilichioaei
with illustrations by Estela López Solís
and graphic and editorial design by Daniel Canty and Feed

with guest readers Michael Ruby
American Songbook (Ugly Duckling Press, 2013)
and Brandon Downing
Mellow Actions (Fence Books, 2012)

Brooklyn
October 23, 2013
Doors open at 8:00 PM
Mellow Pages Library
56 Bogart Street
mellowpageslibrary.tumblr.com

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