Pieman - The Papa D Story is the story of one man's journey to self during a special time in his life. A time that fell into place when he learned to let go and trust his intuition.It is also a business adventure towards the end of his working life, with plenty of obstacles to overcome. It might have never been a success if he hadn't opened his mind and accepted that things can go ‘right’ sometimes.It was a time when he let the magic happen, and found himself on a journey s...

Bill Bryson has the rare knack of being out of his depth wherever he goes - even (perhaps especially) in the land of his birth. This became all too apparent when, after nearly two decades in England, the world's best-loved travel writer upped sticks with Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al. and returned to live in the country he had left as a youth.Of course there were things Bryson missed about Blighty but any sense of loss was countered by the joy of rediscovering some of the...

As its title implies, In the Beginning There Was Chaos follows John and Elly Patterson as they tackle the everyday joys and sorrows--and surprises and frustrations and challenges--that arise when raising a young family. In her second For Better or For Worse treasury, Lynn Johnston takes readers back to the 1980s, when Elly leaves her column for a job at the library. As Elly chases her professional goals, she struggles with spending less time at home. Meanwhile, John provi...

*The basis for the wonderfully funny and moving TV series developed by Amy Poehler*Dostadning, or the art of death cleaning, is a Swedish phenomenon by which the elderly and their families set their affairs in order. Whether it’s sorting the family heirlooms from the junk, downsizing to a smaller place, or using a failsafe system to stop you losing essentials, death cleaning gives us the chance to make the later years of o...

Hamilton Spectator columnist Paul Benedetti’s essays paint a wonderfully funny portrait of family life today.Paul Benedetti has a good job, a great family, and successful neighbours — but that doesn’t stop him from using it all as grist for a series of funny, real, and touching essays about a world he can’t quite navigate.Benedetti misses his son, who is travelling in Europe, misplaces his groceries, and forgets to pick up his daughter at school. H...

Author and playwright Dan Needles has long delighted readers and audiences alike with his insightful and laugh-out-loud perspective on small-town life, published in such bestselling books as Wingfield's World (Random House, 2011), Wingfield's Hope (Key Porter, 2005), With Axe and Flask (McFarlane, Walter and Ross, 2002) and Letters From Wingfield Farm (Key Porter, 1988).In 1988, Needles and his wife left the city to start a family in a country co...

No matter where people live on the BC coast, says Howard White, they have certain shared experiences: frustration with rain and ferries, familiarity with gumboots, bumbershoots, seagull droppings and barnacles in the wrong places. But each little community clings to its own sense of uniqueness and considers itself the true West Coast. As a case in point, White offers fifty funny sketches of life as he has come to know it in sixty-odd years of living along that hundred-mile stretch of monso...

2017 long-list finalist, Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour WritingIn Hard Knox, seasoned columnist and consummate everyman Jack Knox offers up his uniquely hilarious views on Canadian life as seen from the western fringes of the country—in particular from the “Island of Misfit Toys” as he aptly calls his Vancouver Island home. This treasure trove of west-coast wit and wisdom touches on everything from “smug anti-Americanism” to extreme weather to flagrant p...

Reflections on country life on Canada's eastern coast: "Gentle humor and prose as clear and lilting as the song of the hermit thrush at dusk." —Deborah Carr, author of Sanctuary: The Story of Naturalist Mary MajkaSara Jewell has lived at eighteen different addresses—but there was one that remained constant: Pugwash Point Road in rural Nova Scotia. She was nine years old the first time her family vacationed in the small fishing village about an hour from th...

**Winner of the 2018 Taste Canada Awards - Culinary NarrativesVikram Vij, one of Canada’s great chefs, shares his story of the trials and triumphs in building a world-renowned food empire**Fragrant with the smells of cumin, turmeric, fennel, and cloves, Vij reveals the story of Vikram Vij, one of Canada’s most celebrated chefs and entrepreneurs. Co-owner of the world-famous Vij’s Restaurant in Vancouver, his story is a true rags-to-riches tale of a college dropout ...

Need an idea for what to do on a date? Dinner and a movie is fine once in awhile. But variety and new experiences heighten our attention to make time together more enjoyable and more memorable.Date Ideas describes over 100 things to do on a date, many of which are out of the ordinary. A variety of ideas are given. The emphasis is on simple, inexpensive activities that give you and your date a chance to get to know each other.The book is written especially for dating couples...

Burned-out after years of doing development work around the world, William Powers spent a season in a 12-foot-by-12-foot cabin off the grid in North Carolina, as recounted in his award-winning memoir Twelve by Twelve. Could he live a similarly minimalist life in the heart of New York City? To find out, Powers and his wife jettisoned 80 percent of their stuff, left their 2,000-square-foot Queens townhouse, and moved into a 350-square-foot micro-apartment” in Greenwich Village. Dow...