In Heroes, Peter C. Newman gives us incisive analysis of dozens of Canadians, past and present, who have defined this country, drawing on fifty years of writing. He writes about iconic Canadians such as Terry Fox, Margaret Atwood and June Callwood. From the political ring, he discusses the legacies of Pierre Trudeau, Christina McCall and Lester B. Pearson, among others. And from the world of business, Newman includes some of the most active entrepreneurs on the planet, including Jimmy Pattison and Paul Desmarais. The grand literary master at the top of his game shares the inside stories of these pivotal characters whose lives and times set examples for all of us.
The #1 national bestseller now revised and updated with a new Epilogue. Now aged 75, Peter C. Newman at last tells the story of his stranger-than-fiction life. Try to keep up as we follow his many lives: as a pampered child in a Czech chateau; a Jewish kid in short pants being machine-gunned by Nazi fighter planes on the beach at Biarritz, en route to the last ship to escape from France in 1940; as a refugee on an Ontario farm; as an outsider on a scholarship at Upper Canada College; as a Financial Post journalist, then an author whose Renegade in Power made Canadian politics dramatic and disrespectfully exciting for the first time; as the man who revealed the secrets of the rulers of the Canadian business world in The Canadian Establishment, and other huge business success stories, including The Establishment Man, on Conrad Black; or the millionaire who turned his back on business books and tackled Canadian history (Company of Adventurers and other triumphs), in a career where his work has dominated the bestseller lists in politics, business, history, and current affairs. In the midst of all this were his years at the Toronto Star and Maclean’s where, as editor, he took the magazine weekly – a huge accomplishment. He is still a legend there, where his columns continue to run. He knew and wrote about every prime minister from Louis St. Laurent to Paul Martin and every prominent Canadian – hero or villain – in between. Yet his most interesting character is – Peter C. Newman. Incredibly, this central figure known to millions of Canadians sees himself as a perennial outsider. In personal terms, the rich little Czech boy whose nannies never stayed talks frankly about his marriages and the women he has known before his ultimate marriage to his beloved Alvy. His enthusiasms – from jazz to the Canadian Navy, not to mention his adventures on his beloved sailboat – make for a rich portrait of an astonishingcharacter, one who never stops being controversial.
Peter C. Newman’s poison pen has lodged itself in the viscera of the Canadian elite. In Mavericks, he has selected his most evocative writing about those Canadians who run against the grain on the grandest scale, including Conrad Black, Garth Drabinsky, the Eaton boys, Louis Riel, Robert Campeau and Peter Nygard. In the world of politics, he takes on Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, René Lévesque, Bill Vander Zalm and Lucien Bouchard. He also includes a vignette about John Diefenbaker from his book Renegade in Power, which Robert Fulford at Saturday Night said “transformed political books and to some extent political writing in this country.” Mavericks, together with its companion volume, Heroes, makes up the ultimate Newman, capturing his best and most provocative words during a career that spans more than fifty years.
Izzy Asper was a true visionary and a self-made billionaire. In the kind of intimate detail that made his other books mega bestsellers, Peter C. Newman profiles one of the most charismatic and powerful Canadian tycoons of the past quarter century. A serial risk-taker with a fever in his blood, the always controversial Asper grew a tiny television station, operated out of a converted supermarket, into the CanWest empire. Under Asper’s guidance, CanWest became Canada’s most profitable television network, one that comprised Global Television, and more than 60 newspapers—including the National Post—and was run mainly out of Izzy’s briefcase from his beloved hometown of Winnipeg. Izzy was the quintessential entrepreneur, constantly in flight and flux, each of his improbable ventures feeding on the next. Only his family occupied higher ground than his business interests, yet he combined the joys of home life with his killer instincts at work. Both were essential to his character. In the end, Izzy Asper was addicted as much to the game as to its rewards. What made him so special was his ability to create warm, electric moments among his friends and loyalists, yet inspire fear in his critics and enemies. Izzy is Canadian business history at its best, a masterful portrait of the man who was, for decades, the country’s leading media mogul.
It is impossible to appreciate Canada in the mid- and late-1960s without reading The Distemper of Our Times. Newman's skilful selection of evidence, his grasp of personality and the flair and pace of his writing style bring the disparate events of that turbulent era into a cogent narrative that will retain its drama and urgency for future generations.
Esteemed Canadian author Peter C. Newman recounts the dramatic journey of the United Empire Loyalists—their exodus from America, their resettlement in the wilds of British North America, and their defense of what would prove to be the social and moral foundation of Canada. In 1776, tensions in the British colonies were reaching a fever pitch. The citizenry was divided between those who wished to establish a new republic and those who remained steadfast in their dedication to the British Empire. As the tensions inevitably boiled over into violence, fault lines were exposed as every person was forced to choose a side. Neighbours turned against each other. Families divided. Borders were redrawn. The conflict was long and bloody, and no side emerged unscathed. But there is one story that is often overlooked in the American Revolutionary canon. When the smoke from the battles had settled, tens of thousands of individuals who had remained loyal to the crown in the conflict found themselves without a home to return to. Destitute, distraught, and ostracized—or downright terrorized—by their former citizens, these Loyalists turned to the only place they had left to go: north. The open land of British North America presented the Loyalists with an opportunity to establish a new community distinct from the new American republic. But the journey to their new homes was far from easy. Beset by dangers at every turn—from starvation to natural disaster to armed conflict—the Loyalists migrated towards the promise of a new future. Their sacrifices set the groundwork for a country that would be completely unlike any other. Neither fully American nor truly British, the Loyalists established a worldview entirely of their own making, one that valued steady, peaceful, and pragmatic change over radical revolution. The Loyalists toiled tirelessly to make their dream a reality. And as the War of 1812 dawned, they proved they were willing to defend it with their very lives. In Hostages to Fortune, Peter C. Newman recounts the expulsion and migration of these brave Loyalists. In his inimitable style, Newman shines a light on the people, places, and events that set the stage for modern Canada.
The Secret Mulroney Tapes is an outrageous and intimate portrait of a Canadian prime minister, as told in his own words. There has never been a political book like this, and there will almost certainly never be another. Peter C. Newman, the author of books about John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, as well as 2004’s number-one bestselling memoir, Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power, has done it again. He has written twenty-two books that have sold two million copies, and earned him the title of Canada’s “most cussed and discussed” political commentator. Here, his no-holds-barred profile of Canada’s most controversial – and most reviled – prime minister breaks new ground. Compiled from years of candid, taped conversations with Mulroney and the people closest to him while he was in power, the sometimes uproarious and often disturbing interviews – 7,400 pages of transcripts totalling 1.8 million words – have been sealed until now. Stunningly indiscreet and savagely frank, Mulroney is the first prime minister to be so nakedly outspoken. Yet he is also revealed as a witty Irish charmer, ready with a quick line to raise a laugh, no matter how impudent or profane, a man as warm in private as he was defensive in the public eye. Mulroney names the names and spills the beans about what really goes on in Ottawa, which he describes as a “sick” city that runs on “goddamned incest”: “They’re all married to one another. They’re shacked up with one another. Their wives are on the payroll of the CBC. It’s just awful.” Lucien Bouchard, his one-time soulmate, he calls “bitter and profane” and “extraordinarily vain.” He writes off his constitutional foe, former Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, as an “unprincipled son of a bitch.” His disgust for the press is as monumental as his sense of being misunderstood, and in his eyes the Ottawa press corps are “a phony bunch of bastards” who don’t give him credit even when the world applauds him for being “one of the three men who played the most important role in the collapse of the Berlin Wall.” Out of The Secret Mulroney Tapes emerges a startling picture of the politician whose reign shocked and appalled and yet also revolutionized this country. No other prime minister in Canadian history aroused a stronger emotional response than Brian Mulroney. This book provides Canadians with a unique insight into the bold politician who changed their country like no other.
Peter C. Newman, Canada's most "cussed and discussed" political journalist, on the death spiral of the Liberal Party. The May 2, 2011 federal election turned Canadian governance upside down and inside out. In his newest and possibly most controversial book, bestselling author Peter C. Newman argues that the Harper majority will alter Canada so much that we may have to change the country's name. But the most lasting impact of the Tory win will be the demise of the Liberal Party, which ruled Canada for seven of the last ten decades and literally made the country what it is. Newman chronicles, in bloody detail, the de-construction of the Grits' once unassailable fortress and anatomizes the ways in which the arrogance embedded in the Liberal genetic code slowly poisoned the party's progressive impulses. When the Gods Changed is the saga of a political self-immolation unequalled in Canadian history. It took Michael Ignatieff to light the match.
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was a man who sought to integrate life and holiness. He believed that the spiritual life needed to be lived in an active and dynamic way, touching a person's fundamental attitudes and actions. Although Newman rejected the title of spiritual director as such, it is obvious from his correspondence that directing others through various facets of the Christian life was one of his dominant concerns. Surprisingly, comparatively little has been written about Newman's idea of spiritual direction. This book investigates Newman's understanding of spiritual direction during his life as a Roman Catholic, 1845-1890. It examines the major areas in which Newman gave spiritual direction through an analysis of the correspondence from his Catholic years. It also explicates those principles of Newman's own spiritual life that found expression in his direction of others. Newman had a mammoth apostolate of correspondence. His Letters and Diaries have been edited and published in a series of thirty-two volumes, embracing more than twenty thousand letters. The first ten volumes deal with Newman's Anglican period; the remaining twenty-two volumes cover his Catholic period and are the primary source for this book. These volumes have been studied chronologically in order to determine and extract the major areas in which Newman gave spiritual direction to others, and to investigate the stages of development in his spiritual advice.
It is impossible to appreciate Canada in the mid- and late-1960s without reading The Distemper of Our Times. Newman's skilful selection of evidence, his grasp of personality and the flair and pace of his writing style bring the disparate events of that turbulent era into a cogent narrative that will retain its drama and urgency for future generations.
Shaping the destiny of Canada, the merchant founders of the Hudson's Bay Company tamed the wilderness as they built the world's largest private commerical empire. A brilliant story chronicling the unsung heroes of North American history.
It is one of the world's great fortunes, the empire founded by Sam Bronfman and carried on through his family, a kingdom worth more than $7 billion nurtured on bootleg alcohol and sustained through decades of deals, scandals, legal explosions and intrafamily warfare. At its heart is the Seagram Company Ltd., the world's largest distilling operation, responsible for more than one million bottles of liquor per day sold in the U.S. alone, but its reach stretches far beyond that--to oil companies, hotels, mines, factories and real estate all over the world. Except that they are almost certainly richer and without a doubt more secretive, the Bronfmans have become the Rothschilds of the New World, and here at last is the extraordinary story of their lives, times and turbulent fortunes, chronicled by best-selling journalist Peter C. Newman. -- From publisher's description.
A social, political, and economic revolution has forged a profoundly different Canadian society in the closing decade of the 20th century. In the manner of his seminal history of the Quiet Revolution and the Pearson years, The Distemper of Our Times, Peter C. Newman details the tempestuous transformation of Canadian reality in the 1990s. The Canadian Revolution looks at the politicians, poets, tycoons, and performers who have made the history that matters most. Newman brings these often-unrecognized pivotal moments into sharp focus, highlighting key political figures like Pierre Trudeau and Preston Manning and the very different visions of Canada that have struggled for ascendance in the past decade.
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