His book, Pilgrim in the Palace of Words, was matched with a Balthasar Riesling from Germany.

Last night I found myself at a reading by another author at an adorable little wine bar in Leslieville. The owner is starting a monthly book club. I was telling her about Glenn’s event and she loved the idea. Hopefully we’ll be able to bring this idea to Toronto next.

What reading rituals do you have? Are there certain songs you like to listen to while reading? What wine goes best with your favourite book?

At Dundurn, we publish the Quest Biography series, profiling prominent Canadians. I started browsing through the biography section of our website to see who was missing.

Mary Pickford? June Callwood?

Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with Hazel McCallion. I grew up in Brampton, neighboring McCallion’s Mississauga. While I don’t completely agree with her politics, I find her to be an intriguing and strong woman. Not only has she served as Mayor for 31 years, she’s also talked a man down from suicide, walked away after being hit by a car, and has been a strong advocate for women in sports (especially hockey!). There are definitely a few stories in there.

And, while I’m completely against vanity license plates in most situations, McCallion definitely deserves hers:

MAYOR 1

So, let’s take this to the comments. Which famous Canadian woman needs to have a Quest biography? Who do you find fascinating.

The first day that I started seems so long ago; yet, at the same time, the past 3 months have gone gone past in a flash (I still can’t seem to remember to write 2010).

So, for my one year post, the top 6 memorable things about my first year at Dundurn (in chronological order):

1. Mahtab Wins the Silver Birch Award

I couldn’t have asked for more fun for my first mid-day field trip. Erin and I set out in the morning to videotape the readings and awards. Despite the rain, the Harbourfront Centre was crowded and with mini book lovers. I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the kids and was jealous that I didn’t get to attend this rock concert for books when I was a young bibliophile. Mahtab’s sequel, The Silver Anklet, is out now and my fingers are crossed for another nomination next year.

2. Bookcamp

Before I had even started working here, I had signed up for Bookcamp. As I saw the description come across my twitter stream, I knew it would be my kind of heaven: “A conversation about the future of books, writing, publishing, and the book business in the digital age”. I learned so much and met so many fantastic people. I’m looking forward to this year’s event and hope to pitch a session of my own this year to share some of the things I’ve learned at Dundurn.

3. Blood and Groom Launch

One of the books I had the most fun with this year was  Blood and Groom. Jill Edmondson was so much fun to work with and I was constantly blown away by her creative ideas for promotion; both offline (tattooed flowers!) and on (I was thrilled to see her FaceBook page reach 1000 fans today!). The entire staff had a great time attending the wedding-themed launched party — and many of us were the last to leave the bar! I’m excited that Dundurn will be adding another title to the Sasha Jackson series and I’m already looking forward to seeing how Jill will top the last book!

4. Chocolate Fountain!

Dundurn had a hugely successful Christmas party this year with lots to celebrate. We had a great year with lots of wonderful books and authors. Our amazing publicist Karen arranged for some yummy food and wine, and our offices were so packed with people that it was hard to move. Our chocolate fountain was discussed all afternoon on twitter, with the (embarassingly mispelled) hashtag #chocolatefountainmagesty trending in Toronto publishing circles. Also, I had a lot to celebrate personally, having just received a promotion from Web Marketer to Manager of Digital Development.

5. KIRBC

Like most people, I wanted to get into publishing because I was in love with books. And the books are great — I think my collection has doubled over this past year. But if I were to say the best part of my job today, instead of the books my answer would be the community. Everyone is so open, so friendly, and so smart. The publishing community is close-knit in Toronto and between book launches, conferences, YPC nights, and BPPA we all see a lot of each other. Through some new publishing besties, I was invited to join the Keepin’ It Real Book Club, which is always the highlight of my month.

6. Tools of Change in New York City

Most would love a trip to New York but there are few who are even more excited to spend 3 days in the Mariott Hotel discussing XML, eISBNs, ePub, and untangling eBook contracts. Falling in the second camp, I am definitely in the right job. I came back from NYC with lots of great ideas and I can’t wait to get started and make this year even better than the last.

I’ve known many amazing people in my life that have both been adopted, or adopted children themselves.

Jenna wrote about her family’s experiences earlier, and recently the author of Labours of Love got in touch with us to let us know about her inspiring new project.

With the publishing of Labours of Love: Canadians Talk About Adoption, I have begun a new journey in the Canadian adoption community. The numbers of children in Canada’s foster care system is about 100,000 and rising daily. Over 25,000 of these kids are currently available for adoption, ranging in ages from infants to teens. This seems so unnecessary to me, especially while the media pays an inordinate amount of attention to celebrity and international adoption.

I have decided to focus my efforts on domestic adoption in Canada , and am getting involved with the Adoption Council of Canada to assist in helping improve those statistics. It will take education, awareness, funding, and getting people who have been personally touched by adoption, and are passionate about the issue, to help us. These kids are our future, and if they are not given loving permanent homes, and families to rely on, they will ‘age out’ of the system, and thus will have less chances of a successful and happy future.

Labours of Love profiles 20 adoptive families from across the country, as well as adoption professionals, who for years have been advocating for change in Ontarios and Canadas adoption system. Their voices have lent themselves to a new report, Raising Expectations, that was released just this past August. It is the result of a year-long study ordered by the McGuinty government to study infertility and adoption ( as separate issues) in Ontario, with a view to accessibility and affordability. The 240 page document is incredibly detailed and thorough, and the recommendations on the adoption side are excellent!

It remains to be seen whether the government acts – and when.

In the meantime these kids are waiting , and we are going to act by holding the first annual 5k AdoptWalk in Port Credit, Ontario, this Sunday October 18, 2009. Going forward in 2010, this will be a national event to be held in every province on the same weekend. This year the funds raised will be divided between the Adoption Council of Canada and The Adoption Council of Ontario, all in efforts to help the adoption community and Canada’s Waiting Children .

We’d love to see you there, or have your support in donating to the walk! It will only take a little from all of us to help find these children what they desperately need – and deserve – a forever family.

Please think about it.

For more info see www.adoption.on.ca or be in touch with me at www.laboursoflove.ca

Deborah.

Do you plan on attending? Send us your photos and your own adoption stories

In addition to the exhibitionistic thrill of showing off your good taste in literature – and the possibility of who might see – it makes those moments when you put your book down that much more special when you can look around and see things a little differently with your fresh knowledge.

I’ve always agonized over bringing the perfect book with me on holiday. What’s the best thing to read in London or Paris? Mexico? The stories told in those books always seem to melt into my own travel experience, and rereading them later always returns forgotten memories of past travels.

But, why do I only do that on vacation?

There are so many books written about the places that we visit each day. Part of the inspiration in our BookCrossing experiment was to return the books to where they came from. A well-described setting makes it obvious that the author walked through those same streets, crafting the same book that you’re now reading – with the hope that one day you’d read it.

So to start this off, our authors are sending us photos of them, with their local books, in their local bookstores. You eat local, buy local, why not read local?

The first to join in is Gerry Boyce, author of Belleville.

And we’re adding more all the time on our Read Local Map.

When you pick up your book and find the right setting to read it in, add a photo to our Facebook page. We’d love to see where you take them.

Read the stories around you. There are lots of them. Don’t save that magic for a special trip.

I walked over to see that a shelf had collapsed, shattering all of my bottles. Vinegars, Oils, and even Fish Sauce all mixed together on the floor, making the room smell like a really disgusting salad. Spending an hour wiping up the gross mixture and picking glass from under the fridge was about the least enjoyable thing to do after a 6 hour drive.

After complaining about it to Beth when I came in this morning, she joked, “Maybe it was a ghost.”

Actually….

I live in an old victorian house in Parkdale. After we’d been living there for a few months, my landlord stopped in and casually asked me if I’d met Edith yet. I assumed it was a neighbor and said that I hadn’t.

She then went on to explain to me that Edith was the ghost of a woman who used to live in the building. She told me about a few of her own encounters, which was enough to creep out a skeptic like myself.

So, my question is? What would it take to convince you that your house was haunted? Do any of you have your own ghost stories?

Richard Palmisano, How do I know if I have a ghost or not?

Being sick, I spent all day yesterday in bed watching TV. And as a huge CBC fanatic, I caught a lot of their coverage of the Endeavor Shuttle launch. Thinking about our upcoming book, Canadians in Space, I was really drawn in by their focus on this as the first time that two Canadians have ever been in space at the same time.

I was a space fanatic as a kid. I was terrified of UFO’s and I thought that for sure we’d be living on Mars by the time I was a grown-up. We went to the Kennedy Space Center to see a shuttle launch when I was in Florida (which was rained out, much to my disappointment) and my parents bought my brothers and I astronaut ice-cream in the gift shop.

It’s amazing the difference a generation makes, as CBC shows in a flashback to an interview with a young Ontario girl in 1969:

“Would you like to go to the moon?” CBC reporter Walt Lacosta asks a young girl in this charming 1969 interview.
“Yes,” she responds without hesitation.
When questioned if she thinks she’ll ever make it there, the young girl smiles and responds with a simple “no.”
“Why not?” Lacosta asks.
“Because I’m not a boy,” she says shyly but definitively.

Currently, Canadian Julie Payette is orbiting the earth on the International Space Station – and I hope every little girl in Ontario knows that they don’t have to be a boy to be an astronaut.

When I first heard about BookCrossing, I thought it was a great idea and I was so excited to try it myself. This week, I finally had the chance to!

As they explain on their website:

BookCrossing is earth-friendly, and gives you a way to share your books, clear your shelves, and conserve precious resources at the same time. Through our own unique method of recycling reads, BookCrossers give life to books. A book registered on BookCrossing is ready for adventure.

Leave it on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym — anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel. Track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

We followed the directions on the site to register our new mystery book, Grave Doubts. We decided to release it at Hart House, since it’s mentioned in the book and the main character takes frequent walks down Harbord Street and University circle.

We left lots of information on the books to lead them back to the BookCrossing site and here, at Defining Canada. We’re excited to see the journey that our books will have, and hope that whoever finds them will let us know.

Since Hart House is such a stunning building, we brought along our new camera and made a short film to promote our new BookCrossing experiment and the Quin and Morgan detective series.

What do you think?

Peter Herrndorf – today’s President and CEO of the National Arts Centre (title changed from Director General used in Southam’s day) comments on the importance of good contacts in government to get things done at federal cultural agencies and the connections he developed, especially with former Finance Minister Mitchell Sharp, the elder statesman who was the right hand to Prime Minister Chretien, als with and the former deputy minister of Canadian Heritage and, later Clerk of the Privy Council (the most powerful job in the Canadian public service), Alex Himelfarb.

[audio:08 Track 08.mp3]

Herrndorf speaks on the importance of having a national cultural life

[audio:09 Track 09.mp3]

Herrndorf comments on the climate of the times for the arts in Canada today

[audio:10 Track 10.mp3]

Earlier:

Interviews with G. Hamilton Southam

Interviews on the National Arts Centre

We hope you’ve enjoyed these audio interviews. For more information on Art and Politics, visit our website at: http://www.dundurn.com

To learn more about the National Arts Centre, see: http://www.nac-cna.ca/

Yesterday, in celebration of the launch of Art and Politics, we brought you an interview with G. Hamilton Southam.

Today we’ll continue this series with conversations with Marcel Masse, Marti Maraden, and Robert Lepage.

On political patronage – The Hon. Marcel Masse was the minister responsible for culture on the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney.  The Conservatives had been out of power for a long time and the question of political patronage meant many unqualified people were appointed to positions for political reward but with no qualification for the job they received. Some appointed to the NAC board were no exception.  Many years later Mr. Masse, who was extremely politically partisan himself, lamented the system

[audio:04 Track 04.mp3]

Marti Maraden – appointed Director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre in 1998 and who served for seven years, comments on what she found as theatre people’s public perception of the NAC and what they really felt

[audio:05 Track 05.mp3]

The brilliant Quebec theatre director Robert Lepage was invited to become the Director of French Theatre at the NAC in the early nineties and came full of  dreams and illusions about what he could do.  Jean Gascon his predecessor as Director of Theatre had also dreamed of combining French and English theatre interests. Here’s what Lepage thought when he was appointed

[audio:06 Track 06.mp3]

A chance to try out new technology in relation to live performance was one of the attractions for Lepage. High Definition Television was high on the agenda.  While the project ultimately failed, the Metropolitan Opera over twenty years later demonstrated that it is a good idea as a money-maker for the arts. Sadly it did not fly at the NAC.

[audio:07 Track 07.mp3]

Earlier: Interviews with G. Hamilton Southam

Tomorrow, a discussion with the current President and CEO of the NAC, Peter Herrndorf.

For more information on Art and Politics, visit our website at: http://www.dundurn.com

To learn more about the National Arts Centre, see: http://www.nac-cna.ca/