Oake details son’s struggles with addiction

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This article was published 18/01/2025 (595 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anyone who has ever watched a hockey game or the Olympics in Canada in the last three decades will be familiar with Winnipeg-based broadcaster Scott Oake.

Fresh off his appointment to the Order of Canada in December 2024, Oake is launching a book detailing his late son Bruce’s struggles with addiction and his eventual death in 2011 at age 25.

Oake’s memoir For the Love of a Son: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Hope, written with Edmonton’s Michael Hingston, chronicles Bruce’s spiral into addiction and the subsequent work Scott and wife Anne (who died in 2021) put into creating the Bruce Oake Foundation and eventually opening the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre.

Oake launches For the Love of a Son on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location, where he’ll be joined in conversation by Shelagh Rogers. For an interview with Scott Oake about his new book, see Tuesday’s Free Press.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

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While Nellie McClung is often the first name that comes to mind when it comes to the women’s suffrage campaign in Canada, her close ally Lillian Beynon Thomas proved just as key in achieving the vote and more.

In his book She Won The Vote For Women: The Life and Times of Lillian Beynon Thomas, published by Great Plains Press, Manitoba-born Robert E. Hawkins details Thomas’ work as a columnist for Prairie Farmer (and the Manitoba Free Press), her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement and her move to New York with husband Alfred Vernon Thomas during the First World War.

He launches the book on Thursday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location in an event hosted by the Council of Women of Winnipeg.

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Winnipeg author Maureen Fergus tries on a new genre, and a new pen name, with the first book of a fantasy/romance trilogy for young adults.

Fergus, author of books for younger readers such as the Weenie Featuring Frank & Beans series, kicks of an epic romantic adventure in Prophecy, the first book of her series The Fractured Kingdom under the pen name M.L. Fergus. the second book, Odyssey, is slated to be published in May, while Destiny will hit the shelves to close things out in September.

Fergus launches Prophecy at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Friday at 7 p.m., where she’ll be joined in conversation with the store’s Sabrina Simmonds.

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Six books are in contention for the Philip K. Dick Award, administered by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, given to a title of “distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States” in the the previous calendar year.

Dick wrote seminal sci-fi novels such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was adapted into the film Blade Runner, as well as The Man in the High Castle, adapted into the Amazon Prime TV series of the same name.

The finalists for this year’s award, which will be presented in mid-April, are City of Dancing Gargoyles by Tara Campbell, Your Utopia: Stories by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur), Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado, The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain by Sofia Samatar, Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky and Triangulum by Subodhana Wijeyeratne.

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Toronto feminist publisher Second Story Press has announced an ownership change, with longtime publisher and co-founder Margie Wolfe stating she is stepping down (although will still be involved with acquiring titles, securing international rights and more).

The publisher, founded by Wolfe, Liz Martin, Lois Pike and Carolyn Wood, will be helmed by Phuong Truong, who will step up from the role of general manager after 20 years at Second Story.

Wolfe became a member of the Order of Canada in 2022 for her work in publishing and advocating for social justice. Among recent Second Story titles are Katherine Leyton’s Motherlike, Renée D. Bondy’s (Non)disclosure and Winnipeg author Michael Hutchinson’s middle-grade novel The Case of the Pilfered Pin, part of Hutchinson’s Mighty Muskrats series of books.

books@freepress.mb.ca