Fortune Favours a Bieler is the colourful story of Philippe Bieler’s life and his long journey through the eventful twentieth century and beyond. It begins with his escape from war-torn Europe in 1941. Hand in hand with a number of prominent trailblazers, he went on to carve out a career in industry, banking, farming, and even politics. The tale transitions from aluminum in Canada to cranberries in Quebec and vineyards in France. Frequent failures are compensated by good cheer and some impressive successes. Bieler is a descendant of Swiss woodsmen and the son of a senior civil servant at the League of Nations. Born in 1933, he belongs to the silent generation, the cohort following the greatest generation and preceding the baby boomers, known for their thrift, respectfulness, loyalty, and determination. His outspoken mother and well-connected father raised him to be bold enough to grasp the fate he desired, a challenge he took up with vigour. He studied engineering at McGill University in Montreal and returned to his native Switzerland to pursue an MBA. He served as CEO at a number of industrial corporations, but he preferred his many ventures as an entrepreneur – and now, in his latest act, as an author, writing from his sheep farm in Wales. Fortune Favours a Bieler looks back on a century of abundant luck and opportunity for those who would seize it, through the life of one of its fortunate and passionate leading lights.
The Bieler family's vast collection of wartime letters and photographs tell intimate, firsthand stories of five young brothers and their parents. In Onward, Dear Boys, Philippe Bieler skilfully weaves together his own voice with those of his grandparents, his father, and his uncles into a story of war, immigration, and family life. Settling in the province of Quebec, then divided into French-speaking Catholics and English-speaking Anglicans, was a struggle for these devout, francophone Calvinists, but with the unexpected declaration of war in 1914 came an even greater challenge. In 1915 three of the five Bieler boys volunteered with the Princess Patricia Regiment, and in 1916 the fourth son followed. The eldest, Jean, became an assistant to Colonel Birkett, commander of the McGill-financed Canadian Hospital in Boulogne, and the second-eldest, Etienne, was promoted to lieutenant of an artillery brigade. The other two were privates who fought in battles including Sanctuary Wood, the Somme, Vimy, and Passchendaele, and in 1917, the fourth son, Philippe, died at the front. Upon their return to civilian life, the surviving brothers became leaders in government, science, and the arts : the eldest as Deputy Finance Director of the League of Nations, the second as a colleague of Sir Ernest Rutherford in the research of the atom, and the third as President of the Federation of Canadian Artists. The youngest, Jacques, who was too young to go to war, was an instigator of the CCF party, a precursor to the NDP. Enlivened by a wealth of family archival material, Onward, Dear Boys is a poignant story of the experiences of war and its impact on a family of new Canadians during the first decades of the twentieth century.
In this Prix Femina–winning memoir, a writer at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo recounts surviving the deadly terror attack on their office. On January 7, 2015, two terrorists claiming allegiance to ISIS attack the Paris office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The event causes untold pain to the victims and their families, prompts a global solidarity movement, and ignites a fierce debate over press freedoms and the role of satire today. Philippe Lançon, a journalist, author, and a weekly contributor to Charlie Hebdo is gravely wounded in the attack—an experience that upends his relationship to the world. As Lançon attempts to reconstruct his life on the page, he rereads Proust, Thomas Mann, Kafka, and others in search of guidance. It is a year before he can return to writing, a year in which he learns to work through his experiences and their aftermath. Disturbance is not an essay on terrorism nor is it a witness’s account of Charlie Hebdo. It is an honest, intimate account of a man seeking to put his life back together after it has been torn apart. “A powerful and deeply civilized memoir.” —The New York Times
This will help us customize your experience to showcase the most relevant content to your age group
Please select from below
Login
Not registered?
Sign up
Already registered?
Success – Your message will goes here
We'd love to hear from you!
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.