FIRST-PERSON SINGULAR

Off the Record by Peter Mansbridge, Simon & Schuster, $39.99. Who can forget the distinctive voice of Peter Mansbridge as he delivered the news of the day on CBC until recently? He personified on-air journalistic dignity and decency, and the public broadcaster hasn’t been the same after his retirement.

Off the Record is an engaging first-person dive into the life and career of one of Canada’s most trusted journalists.

Mansbridge tells us he never attended a journalism college. In fact, he was a school drop-out working at Transair in Churchill, Manitoba, when a CBC manager offered him a spot to host a late-night musical program – after hearing him make an announcement at the airport.

He embraced the opportunity.

He had zero experience in broadcasting, and there was no one at CBC’s short-staffed outpost in Churchill to guide him. So he tuned in to broadcasts from across Canada, the US and the UK to pick up the basic skills of what to do and say on air.

Less than twenty years later, he became the chief correspondent and anchor of The National.

These are his stories. He walks us through some of the momentous times in our lives.

The fall of the Berlin Wall.

The horror of 9/11.

Encounters with Canadian prime ministers from John Diefenbaker to Justin Trudeau.

And a memorable one with Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Vatican with his wife Cynthia Dale.

With flashbulbs popping in the background, the Archbishop manoeuvred the conversation around to why we were in Rome, knowing full well what that would mean.

“Peter and Cynthia are here on their honeymoon, Your Holiness. The just got married on the weekend.”

The Pope took the cue. Standing in front of us he said a few phrases in Latin, smiled, and placed his hand lightly on our heads.

The audience was over. As we left the room, I looked at Cynthia for guidance.

“What was that?” I asked.

“He just blessed our marriage.”

The lens is turned on Mansbridge. And he takes himself lightly, without pretensions, and with dollops of humour.

Off the Record is as much Peter Mansbridge’s story as it is, in broad strokes, of Canada.

PROS AND CONS

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead, Doubleday Canada, $36. From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, a fast-paced read with heists, shakedowns and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

Ray Carney, an apparently upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture had a past he was trying to distance himself from and in his present, “was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked”.

Of course, those who are watching the television series The Underground Railroad based on his book of the same name expect a social novel about race and power. And Whitehead delivers. As readers learn, along with Carney, the power of inflection in one’s choice of words.

The first time Carney came to the Row on business, the white clerks pretended not to see him, attending to hobbyists who came in after him. He cleared his throat, he gestured, and remained a black ghost, store after store, accumulating the standard humiliations, until he climbed the black iron steps to Aronowitz & Sons, and the proprietor asked, “Can I help you, sir?” Can I help you as in Can I help you? as opposed to What are you doing here? Ray Carney, in his years, had a handle on the variations.

The distance between Ray the striver and Ray the crook narrows. It was Wednesday night, family supper, both sides of him at the table, the straight and the crooked, breaking bread.

A family saga, a crime novel, a morality play...Harlem Shuffle is all of these.

The way Ray saw it, “living taught you that you didn’t have to live the way you’d been taught to live”.

A SEARCH FOR HOME

Border Lines: Poems of Migration, edited by Mihaela Moscaliuc and Michael Waters, Everyman’s Library, $19.95. In this remarkable collection – the first of its kind – poets from around the world give eloquent voice to the trials, hopes, rewards, and losses of migration.

With more than a hundred poets representing sixty nationalities, Border Lines presents an intimate and uniquely global view of the experiences of immigrants. Among them, Imtiaz Dharker’s How to Cut a Pomegranate, the lines of which echo the longing for home in the deepest parts of our hearts.

And Shampa Ray’s My India:

...This Ikea lucky bamboo only 99 p

Durga announces from her hallway

I smile and close my door

Seal a distant railway sound

And in this silent Scotland

I hear a language all my own.

YEARNING

What We Carry by Kalyn Fogarty, Alcove Press, $22.99. Cassidy Morgan’s life has followed a carefully laid track: top education, fulfilling career, marriage to the love of her life.

But a late term miscarriage threatens to derail everything and Cassidy begins to question everything – her identity and particularly what it means to be a mother. Unable to move past her guilt and shame, she realizes there’s more to fix than a broken heart. A deeply moving read.

TWISTS IN THE TALES

Beasts and Beauty Dangerous Tales by Soman Chainani, Harper, $21.99. Some parents find traditional fairy tales disturbing. The content can be seen as misogynistic or racist and the degree of evil, well, outright scary.

Others argue against reading too much into what are, essentially, tales you read to kids while getting them ready for bed. Soman Chainani falls firmly in the first category. He’d had it with “lily-white heroines and dark-skinned witches and bland, handsome princes” and came up twists in the tales.

In Beasts and Beauty, young readers aged 10 and up will discover Red Riding Hood in which the prettiest girl in town is marked for death by wolves each spring; and Snow White, the story of the only Black girl in the kingdom. Sleeping Beauty features a young prince who is consumed by a demon’s nocturnal visits and Peter Pan presents a grown-up Wendy. And Hansel and Gretel is actually a cautionary tale about Rishi and Lakshmi.

The tales are chilling and unexpected and this reviewer would recommend a first-read for parents who’ve raised their kids on the original versions.

NO GREATER BOND

A Grandparent’s Love, arranged by Jackie Corley, Hatherleigh Press, $16.50. There’s an old Hindi saying, Mool se sood zyada pyara hota hai. Which translates as the  interest is more valued than the principal amount.

While it can be used in many life situations, it is most often cited to describe the love a grandparent feels for a grandchild. Child being the principal amount, and the grandchild, the interest!

I was fascinated to see many versions of this sentiment in the collection of over 200 quotations celebrating the boundless joy of this very special relationship.

If I had known that grandchildren were going to be so  much fun I would have had them first.

Or, this gem from Erma Bombeck: Grandparenthood is one of life’s rewards for surviving your own children.

And Gore Vidal: Never have children. Only grandchildren.

There are quotes that make you laugh out loud, like this one from Albert Einstein: You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

And ones that make you go awww: One of the most powerful handclasps is that of a new grandbaby around the finger of a grandfather (Joy Harg-rove).

A little book that will make every grandparent smile and remind others of their grandparents.

TURNING A NEW LEAF

The Leaf Detective by Heather Lang, illustrated by Jana Christy, Calkins Creek, $24.99. We had already been to the moon and back but nobody had been to the top of a tree – before 1979, most scientists studied rain forest treetops through binoculars.

With this extraordinary revelation, Heather Lang takes her young readers on an adventure with Margaret Lowman, the leaf detective. An inspiring story of a female scientist.

BRAMPTON LIBRARY TEEN REVIEW

By GANESH RAMANATHAN

 Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga, Anansi, $22.95. Seven Fallen Feathers by investigative journalist Tanya Talaga is a powerful account of the death of seven indigenous teenagers from Northern Ontario between 2000 and 2011.

Each of the fallen feathers represents one indigenous teenager, who had to leave their reserves to pursue education in far away Thunder Bay because there were no serviceable schools nearby. 

Talaga, of indigenous descent, is an award winning journalist and her research on these cases is meticulous. She brings the story to life by skilfully weaving their lives, personalities, deaths, families, and the evidence of each inquest together.

At times, the multiple characters confused me, but the book makes it clear  how systemic racism has greatly afflicted indigenous lives. It gives context about the history of indigenous peoples in Canada, starting with the settling of colonists and inequitable treaties to residential schools, and indigenous communities living on reserves with unclean water, poor sanitary facilities, flammable houses, unequal funding, and overall, not having the resources available in developed countries. 

I suggest anyone who wants a deep understanding about the cruel history of indigenous problems in Canada should pick it up!

• Ganesh Ramanathan is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.