Here Be Dragons

Zusatztext Occasionally a book comes along that expands the human story to include history! political analysis! anecdote! gossip! self-critical autobiography and! most importantly! humour. Rarely is such a book written in an elegant style. Peter C. Newman's Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People! Passion and Power manages to showcase the last fifty years of Canadian political theatre! and Newman himself as a commentator on that theatre! both humorously and elegantly. Dragons is a big! ambitious book arguably the best of the many that Newman has written. 2004 Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize Jury We owe Peter C. Newman a large debt of gratitude for his riveting new memoir. Roy MacGregor in the Globe and Mail Far from being dry or dull! Here Be Dragons is scintillating! the sort of book one wants to read in a single sitting. It ends all too soon. Quill & Quire Brisk! humorous! astute! and brimming with interest. . . . A must-read.\ London Free Press Racy! readable . . . a sensational smorgasbord of stories. Halifax Daily News A disarming and reflective autobiography! candid and revealing to the point of self-laceration. Toronto Star A work of genuine wit and insight. Rex Murphy His pointed! deeply affecting memoir deserves the applause of a grateful nation. Ottawa Citizen Informationen zum Autor Peter C. Newman Klappentext 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. Zusammenfassung 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 t...

Autorentext
Peter C. Newman

Klappentext
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.

Leseprobe
CHAPTER EIGHT

as prime minister, John Diefenbaker always kept the red norad hotline telephone on prominent display in his East Block office. “Why, I can get the American president at any time!” he would boast to visitors. After Lester Bowles “Mike” Pearson took office in the spring of 1963, he removed the emergency instrument from its prominent location and hid it carelessly behind a curtain. When it suddenly began to ring one winter morning during Cold War tensions, he ­couldn’t find it. He had been interrupted in mid-­conversation with his External Affairs minister Paul Martin, and the two men began chasing each other around the room like a pair of Keystone Kops. “My God, Mike,” gasped Martin, as they failed to locate the source of the sound. “Do you realize this could mean war?”

“They ­can’t start a war,” puffed the optimistic Pearson, “if we ­don’t answer the phone.” As it turned out, the caller was a confused Bell subscriber who wanted to speak to “Charlie” and had mistakenly dialled the most highly classified number in the country.

That little vignette summed up the stewardship of Mike Pearson, Canada’s ace diplomat, who wore a dented political crown uneasily from April 1963 to April 1968. To this day, he is revered as having been unfailingly civil, engagingly friendly, and likeably unpretentious. Up close, however, his government had a different hue. Despite being groomed by a long career in the elite foreign service, Pearson was chronically ill prepared for power and despite its many accomplishments, the daily record of his government was a series of mishaps that threatened to blunder into farce.

Speaking of farce, I was the first to publish the norad hotline incident. I approached Pearson later, who confirmed my account’s veracity, so I asked him whether he had ever actually used the emergency telephone. “Certainly,” he replied, and even remembered the date. “On April 21, 1967, I was being d…

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