Writers’ Trust turns spotlight on political books

Spurred by the recent federal election, The Writers’ Trust of Canada has partnered with Samara, a non-profit organization that seeks to strengthen citizen engagement in Canada’s democratic system, to launch a project called The Best Canadian Political Books of the Last 25 Years.

In a press release, the WTOC describes the project as an opportunity to “highlight books that have captured the Canadian political imagination and contributed in a compelling and unique way to how Canadians understand a political issue, event, or personality” — and they want everyone to join in.

The public is encouraged to nominate their top three titles in Canadian politics via Samara’s online nomination form before June 23. A longlist will be announced July 1 (Canada’s most patriotic of day of the year, of course).  Throughout the month of July, Canadians will again be encouraged to vote and comment on the list, with the winning books announced Aug. 1.

WTOC and Samara have asked a few notable Canadian political writers and activists to nominate their favourite books. Here are a some of the titles already in the ring:

Anna Porter’s Nominees:
• The Player: The Life & Times of Dalton Camp by Geoffrey Stevens
• Harperland: The Politics of Control by Lawrence Martin
• Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism by Paul Wells

Terry Fallis’s Nominees:
• King John of Canada by Scott Gardiner
• Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography by Chester Brown
• Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume II: 1968–2000 by John English

Tim Cook’s Nominees:
• The Worldly Years: Life of Lester Pearson, Volume II: 1949–1972 by John English
• Memoirs: 1939–1993 by Brian Mulroney
• Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World into the 1990s by J. L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer

Event photos: Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, Margaret Atwood, John English, and more at Politics and the Pen

On March 10, The Writers’ Trust of Canada held its Politics and the Pen fundraising dinner at Ottawa’s Fairmont Château Laurier. At the event, author John English was presented with the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing (which is sponsored by CTVglobemedia) for the second volume of his Trudeau biography, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1968–2000 (Knopf Canada). This year marks the 10th anniversary of the prize. (All photos by Jake Wright/Courtesy of The Writers’ Trust of Canada)

Justin Trudeau, federal MP and, obviously, son of the late subject of English’s prize-winning bio.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and his wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar.

CBCers (former and current) Peter Mansbridge, Senator Pamela Wallin, and Don Newman.

Politics and the Pen co-chairs Patrick Kennedy and Charles King.

Laureen Harper (wife of PM Stephen) and Liberal MP Bob Rae. (You see? Books do bring people together.)

Clare Carey, wife of the British High Commissioner, Margaret Atwood, and Jacqueline LaRocque, manager of public policy at GlaxoSmithKline.

Former deputy PM (and the evening’s co-host) Anne McLellan abandons Ottawa air-kiss protocol and moves in to hug prize-winner John English while MP Jay Hill (the evening’s other host) either awaits his turn or looks on nervously.

Charles Taylor Prize nominees discuss the writing process

On Friday night, Bravo! hosted the four Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction nominees at the Masonic Temple (also known as MTV studios) in Toronto. Here’s what each of the authors had to say about their books:

Daniel Poliquin, René Lévesque: “I had just been nominated for the Giller Prize two years ago, and I felt unemployed, because all the hoopla was over and now I had this new challenge to work on a new book from scratch, and it was simply exhilarating. I had to first write it in French, and then I thought I would translate myself, but I found that too boring. So I said, I’m going to write it in English, and that’s what I did. So I’ve become, in the process, a bilingual writer – although the editors at Penguin will tell you I have a huge problem with prepositions.”

Kenneth Whyte, The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst: “Hearst has been completely overwritten, over-analyzed, and psychoanalyzed. A couple of the biographers actually hired psychoanalysts to help them with the character. I wanted to get to him fresh, and I wanted to get to him through his work. He spent his life working hard, and I thought that would be the most effective way to get at who he was. So I spent a lot of time with his newspapers, the stuff he actually produced on a day-to-day basis.”

Ian Brown, The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son: “The book is really an attempt to come to terms with what [my son, Walker] has, our search to find out what it was, how to deal with it, how to keep him alive. But more importantly, what his life was worth. It’s such a difficult life, for him especially, but also for everybody around him, and we tried to figure out what the value of his life was, what his inner life was like, whether I could somehow find his voice.”

John English, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968–2000: “We’re all biographers, and I think we’re all asking the same question: what was the inner life of this individual? In the case of Pierre Trudeau, he so deliberately seemed to try to conceal it. He had such an obsession with privacy, as anyone who reported on him at the time will know. And yet, what was curious for me was that he kept these papers that were so revealing, in terms of his own past, his feelings, his passions.”

The full discussion will be aired on Bravo!’s Arts & Minds on Jan. 30 at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. and on Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. The award itself, which comes with a $25,000 prize, will be given out on Feb. 8.