Review: A Neurosurgeon’s Challenge

 Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery Henry Marsh St Martin’s Press, New York, 2014. Reviewed By Don MacLean Consider, if you will, the delicate surgical task of removing a pineocytoma, which is defined as “an uncommon, slow growing tumour of the pineal gland.” The patient is

Ottawa Writers Dominate Prestigious Trillium Book Award

 This year Ottawa writers dominated the Trillium Book Award shortlist. Four of the five finalists in the French category and two of the three finalists in the poetry category were Ottawa based! Past winners of the prestigious literary award include Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro. “This year’s Trillium Book Award finalists continue to reflect the breadth, depth

Freedom and Darkness in Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton

 Salman Rushdie begins his brilliant new memoir Joseph Anton (Knopf Canada, 2012) by describing a phone call from a BBC journalist in February 1989 in which she asks what it’s like knowing that he’s going to be killed. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, she went on to tell him, had issued a fatwa

Well, That’s The Kind of Life It’s Been — Lloyd Robertson at the Ottawa Writers Festival

 On October 26, Knox Presbyterian was filled with people excited to once again hear the familiar voice of former CTV News chief anchor Lloyd Robertson. Robertson appeared to do a talk about his impressive career as the longest-serving news anchor in Canadian and international history. Over his 59-year career in broadcasting, Robertson has