Blog
It was announced this morning that I have received the Pierre Berton Award for 2017, aka the Governor General's History Award for Popular Media (try saying that three times with your mouth full).
I'll be in Ottawa in a couple of...
Last week CBC Radio called to invite me onto a noon call-in segment to discuss the re-naming of Siwash Rock in particular and the question of place names in general. Being preoccupied with rehab (see below) I could not accept the invitation but if I had I might have suggested to listeners that they ask themselves: What would Major...
This space has been silent lately as I recover from knee replacement surgery. Rehab is a fulltime job.
Back soon. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving from the wet coast.
The Ormsby Review has just published my review of a new book about history, car culture and landscape in British Columbia. Check it out here.
While I was writing my biography of Louis Taylor, Vancouver’s longest-serving mayor, I was used to having him called many things. Scoundrel, socialist, corrupt, light-weight. One thing no one ever called him was visionary, yet it turns out perhaps that’s what he was.
Taylor was a big fan of the American social theorist Henry George. In 1879 George published Progress and Poverty, one of the best-selling books of the 19th...