New Releases by Roy Macgregor

La légende de Tom Thomson est l’arbre qui cache la forêt. Et Roy MacGregor, qui a grandi à l'ombre du parc Algonquin, voulait percer le mystère. Au coeur de ces histoires au sujet du célèbre peintre se trouvait Winnie Trainor, une parente de Roy MacGregor. Winnie était la « vieille fille » trop excentrique pour être un personnage romanesque, même si l’on savait bien que Tom Thomson avait été amoureux d’elle. Par ailleurs, Thomson s’était fait des amis dans le Nord de l’Ontario, mais aussi des ennemis. Il aimait boire un coup. Il partait à l’aventure en canot des journées durant. Il était également perçu comme un séducteur. Était-il bon à rien et coureur de jupons ou, plutôt, gentleman visionnaire ? Noyé ou victime d’un homicide ? Dans L‘étoile du Nord, MacGregor explore ces mystères, qui n'ont de cesse de nous fasciner, même un siècle plus tard.

One of Canada's greatest journalists shares a half century of the stories behind the stories. From his vantage point harnessed to a tree overlooking the town of Huntsville (he tended to wander), a very young Roy MacGregor got in the habit of watching people—what they did, who they talked to, where they went. He has been getting to know his fellow Canadians and telling us all about them ever since. From his early days in the pages of Maclean's, to stints at the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, National Post and most famously from his perch on page two of the Globe and Mail, MacGregor was one of the country's must-read journalists. While news media were leaning increasingly right or left, he always leaned north, his curiosity trained by the deep woods and cold lakes of Algonquin Park to share stories from Canada's farthest reaches, even as he worked in the newsrooms of its southern capitols. From Parliament to the backyard rink, subarctic shores to prairie expanses, MacGregor shaped the way Canadians saw and thought about themselves—never entirely untethered from the land and its history. When MacGregor was still a young editor at Maclean's, the 21-year-old chief of the Waskaganish (aka Rupert's House) Crees, Billy Diamond, found in Roy a willing listener as the chief was appealing desperately to newsrooms across Ottawa, trying to bring attention to the tainted-water emergency in his community. Where other journalists had shrugged off Diamond's appeals, MacGregor got on a tiny plane into northern Quebec. From there began a long friendship that would one day lead MacGregor to a Winnipeg secret location with Elijah Harper and his advisors, a host of the most influential Indigenous leaders in Canada, as the Manitoba MPP contemplated the Charlottetown Accord and a vote that could shatter what seemed at the time the country's last chance to save Confederation. This was the sort of exclusive access to vital Canadian stories that Roy MacGregor always seemed to secure. And as his ardent fans will discover, the observant small-town boy turned pre-eminent journalist put his rare vantage point to exceptional use. Filled with reminiscences of an age when Canadian newsrooms were populated by outsized characters, outright rogues and passionate practitioners, the unputdownable Paper Trails is a must-read account of a life lived in stories.

Expanding on his landmark Globe and Mail series in which he documented his travels down sixteen of Canada's great rivers, Roy MacGregor tells the story of our country through the stories of its original highways, and how they sustain our spirit, identity and economy—past, present and future. No country is more blessed with fresh water than Canada. From the mouth of the Fraser River in BC, to the Bow in Alberta, the Red in Manitoba, the Gatineau, the Saint John and the most historic of all Canada's rivers, the St. Lawrence, our beloved chronicler of Canadian life, Roy MacGregor, has paddled, sailed and traversed their lengths, learned their stories and secrets, and the tales of centuries lived on their rapids and riverbanks. He raises lost tales, like that of the Great Tax Revolt of the Gatineau River, and reconsiders histories like that of the Irish would-be settlers who died on Grosse Ile and the incredible resilience of settlers in the Red River Valley. Along the Grand, the Ottawa and others, he meets the successful conservationists behind the resuscitation of polluted wetlands, including Toronto's Don, the most abused river in Canada. In the Mackenzie River Valley he witnesses the Dehcho First Nation's effort to block a pipeline they worry endangers the region's lifeblood. Long before our national railroad was built, rivers held Canada together; in these sixteen portraits, filled with yesterday's adventures and tomorrow's promise, MacGregor weaves together a story of Canada and its ongoing relationship with its most precious resource.

If you could travel through time, who would you want to meet? Lucas Finnigan eats, sleeps and breathes hockey. With his friends Edge, Swift and Crunch, Lucas plays on his hometown’s rink, dreaming of the day when he knows he’ll make the NHL. But lately money has been tight at home, and, after a major growth spurt, Lucas is forced to wear hand-me-down gear that doesn’t quite fit right. Now he’s not sure he’ll ever make it to the Hall of Fame like his hockey heroes. And that’s not the only problem. With the community arena’s chiller on the fritz, and replacement parts too tough to come by, it looks like Lucas and his friends may be doomed to a season on a plastic rink—or worse, no hockey at all! But with a magical discovery, and some help from one of hockey's greatest players (who was a kid once, too!), their final skate might turn into their first great adventure . . .

One of our favourite chroniclers of all things Canadian presents a rollicking, personal, photo-filled history of the relationship between a country and its canoes. From the earliest explorers on the Columbia River in BC or the Mattawa in Ontario to a doomed expedition of voyageurs up the Nile to rescue Khartoum; from the author's family roots deep in the Algonquin wilderness to modern families who have canoed across the country (kids and dogs included): Canoe Country is Roy MacGregor's celebration of the essential and enduring love affair Canadians have with our first and still favourite means of getting around. Famous paddlers have been so enchanted with the canoe that one swore God made Canada as the perfect country in which to paddle it. Drawing on MacGregor's own decades spent whenever possible with a paddle in his hand, this is a story of high adventure on white water and the sweetest peace in nature's quietest corners, from the author best able (and most eager) to tell it.

Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award “A truly magnificent book.” —Calgary Herald It’s the great Canadian icon: a frozen creek, a backyard rink, a father passing something precious on to his child—the love of a game. There is nothing quite so Canadian as hockey, and nothing quite so evocative in hockey as the relationships between Canadian hockey players and their fathers. Here are the personal tales of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey and Marty McSorley, told as the four NHL stars take their fathers on a hockey tour of Europe. Here are the memories of hockey’s grand families: Gordie, Mark and Travis Howe; Bill, Kevin and Gord Dineen; Murray, Ken and Michael Dryden. Here is Brett Hull’s story of the famous father who was never home. But The Home Team is about more than famous names. It is the story of the father and son left weeping in the stands at the end of a disappointing draft day. It is the story of a minor league coach and his house league son. This book is about hockey. It is also about where we live and who we are: a book for all fathers and sons in Canada.

The Screech Owls are invited to compete in a four-day skills competition in Detroit. Along with another team, they will be participating in a reality show called Goals & Dreams. They're staying at a fancy hotel, being showered with hockey swag, given Hollywood nicknames, and posing for the film crew -- Hockeytown doesn't look bad at all! That's until they meet the other team and start noticing how differently they're being treated. Are the producers engineering certain tensions and situations to pump up the show? The Screech Owls don't like to be manipulated . . .

9-year-old Gabe (Gabriella) Murray lives and breathes hockey. She's the youngest player on her new team, she has a nifty move that her teammates call "the Gabe," and she shares a lucky number with her hero, Hayley Wickenheiser: number 22. But when her coach hands out the team jerseys, Gabe is stuck with number 9. Crushed, Gabe wants to give up hockey altogether. How can she play without her lucky number? Gabe's grandmother soon sets her straight, though--from her own connection to the number 9 in her hockey-playing days to all the greats she cheered for who wore it, she soon convinces Gabe that this new number might not be so bad after all. A lovely intergenerational tale and a history of the storied number 9 in hockey, The Highest Number in the World is a must-have for any hockey fan.

The Screech Owls have never had such a wonderful surprise. A famous Russian billionaire has offered to pay and fly the whole team to his country. He wants the Owls to visit his homeland so the Russians can learn from the Screech Owls' style of play. The team will play in a tournament while they are there, but even before their first practice on Russian ice, Sarah is taken off the snowy streets. Her kidnappers want ten million rubles in exchange for her safe release! The billionaire wants to pay for Sarah's safe return, but Travis and his teammates decide to take matters into their own hands.

The Screech Owls are in Boston for the Paul Revere Peewee Invitational. Nish decides to drop out of school. If it worked for Ben Franklin, it will work for him. Sarah becomes increasingly concerned about Samantha's attraction to a group of protesters demanding that the New England Aquarium "Free the Penguins." When the girls learn that the protesters have far more in mind than speeches and waving placards, the Owls have to act fast to save the lives of thousands of sea creatures.

Travis Lindsay, his best friend, Nish, and all their pals on the Screech Owls hockey team, are on their way to New York for an international peewee tournament. Excitement builds in the team van on the way to Lake Placid. First there are the entertaining antics of their trainer, Mr. Dillinger - then there's the prospect of playing on an Olympic rink, in a huge arena, knowing there will be scouts in the stands. But they have barely arrived when things start to go wrong. Their star center, Sarah, plays badly from lack of sleep. Next Travis gets knocked down in the street. And then someone starts tampering with equipment. It looks as if someone is trying to sabotage the Screech Owls. But who? And why? And can Travis and the others stop the destruction before the decisive game of the tournament?

When the Screech Owls travel to New York City for the Big Apple International Peewee Tournament and a New Year's Eve party in Times Square, they learn that terrorists plan to disrupt the New Year's celebration.

In town to compete in a hockey tournament, the Screech Owls explore the historic sites of San Antonio between games and investigate when they discover that a secret and nefarious plot is in the works to destroy the Alamo.

The Screech Owls have come to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to play in the world’s biggest minor league hockey tournament — more than 500 teams gathering from all over the world! Little does Nish realize, as he befriends the hilarious, daring mascot, that he is about to embark on the most terrifying adventure of his lifetime.

Someone is out to steal the Stanley Cup - and only the Screech Owls stand between the thieves and their prize! Travis, Nish, and the rest of the Screech Owls have come to Toronto for the biggest hockey tournament of their lives - only to find themselves in the biggest mess of their lives. First Nish sprains his ankle falling down the stairs at the CN Tower. Later, key members of the team get caught shoplifting. And during a tour of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Travis overhears two men plotting to swipe the priceless Stanley Cup and hold it for ransom! Can the Screech Owls do anything to save the most revered trophy in the land? And can the team also rise to the challenge on the ice and play their best hockey ever?

While recovering from a concussion, Travis stumbles upon a polot to steal the Stanley Cup.

Felix Batterinski grew up tough in Northern Ontario. After enjoying brief fame as an "enforcer" for the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers, he finds himself eking out a living as a player-coach in Finland. But a controversial play spells the end of his comeback bid, and Felix begins a tragic descent into disillusion and despair.

Roy MacGregor has been called "the best hockey writer in the country," and we finally have a collection of his very best hockey writing, revised and updated. For nearly 40 years Roy MacGregor has brought hockey, our national sport, alive on the page. From tales of the game's greats (Guy Lafleur, Jean Beliveau, Marcel Dionne) to today's stars (Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Daniel and Henrik Sedin), his magazine and newspaper coverage has revealed so much about these and so many other personalities, in moments of promise, victory and defeat. While many of these stories play out on the ice, some of the most compelling take place on the home front (Mario Lemieux's battle against cancer, the many tribulations of Bob Gainey), and MacGregor's prose shines especially when focused on the human side of a sport defined by superhuman feats of speed, aggression and power. Wayne Gretzky's Ghost is a personal book, and also a book of challenging ideas: that Wayne Gretzky, through no fault of his own, was the worst thing to happen to hockey; that CBC's Hockey Night in Canada has lost sight of what it is; that goaltending has become a position out of all proportion to what was intended. And who could offer a better perspective on the game than a writer who, playing as a youngster, had to face an onrushing phenom from Parry Sound named Bobby Orr, or who spent a year ghostwriting a national newspaper column for the Great One himself? When it comes to hockey, Roy MacGregor has seen (and in some cases, done) it all.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE OTTAWA BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION Roy MacGregor's lifelong fascination with Tom Thomson first led him to write Canoe Lake, a novel inspired by a distant relative's affair with one of Canada's greatest painters. Now, MacGregor breaks new ground, re-examining the mysteries of Thomson's life, loves and violent death in the definitive non-fiction account. Why does a man who died almost a century ago and painted relatively little still have such a grip on our imagination? The eccentric spinster Winnie Trainor was a fixture of Roy MacGregor's childhood in Huntsville, Ontario. She was considered too odd to be a truly romantic figure in the eyes of the town, but the locals knew that Canada's most famous painter had once been in love with her, and that she had never gotten over his untimely death. She kept some paintings he gave her in a six-quart basket she'd leave with the neighbours on her rare trips out of town, and in the summers she'd make the trip from her family cottage, where Thomson used to stay, on foot to the graveyard up the hill, where fans of the artist occasionally left bouquets. There she would clear away the flowers. After all, as far as anyone knew, he wasn't there: she had arranged at his family's request for him to be exhumed and moved to a cemetery near Owen Sound. As Roy MacGregor's richly detailed Northern Light reveals, not much is as it seems when it comes to Tom Thomson, the most iconic of Canadian painters. Philandering deadbeat or visionary artist and gentleman, victim of accidental drowning or deliberate murder, the man's myth has grown to obscure the real view—and the answers to the mysteries are finally revealed in these pages.

Pour la saison estivale, les membres des Carcajous troquent leur bâton de hockey pour une crosse. Alors que Sim cherche une histoire macabre pour réaliser un film d'horreur, lui et ses amis apprennent que leur entraîneur a été quelques années plus tôt soupçonné d'avoir tué son fils. Cette affaire n'a d'ailleurs jamais été résolue...

Celebrating ten years and more than one million books in print! The third four-in-one edition to celebrate ten years of an award-winning, bestselling series. #9: Nightmare in Nagano The Screech Owls can't believe their good luck! They are flying thousands of miles to Nagano, Japan, the host city for the 1998 Winter Olympic Games - and they'll be playing in Big Hat, the Olympic arena. The attractions of Japan are quickly forgotten, however, when the mayor of Nagano is murdered at the tournament's opening-night banquet. Who would want such a nice man dead? And what has it got to do with the Screech Owls? . . . And what is the source of Nish's new superhuman powers? #10: Danger in Dinosaur Valley Summer has come early to the town of Drumheller, Alberta. Drumheller is the "Dinosaur Capital of Canada," home of the fierce Albertosaurus - cousin to Tyrannosaurus rex - whose ancient bones were discovered here more than one hundred years ago. One day when Nish returns from mountain biking, he claims he almost became breakfast for a living, breathing Albertosaurus! Of course his friends don't believe him, but when Travis, Sarah, and their teammates go for their own ride in the hills, they come back with a monstrous story that makes international headlines. #11: The Ghost of the Stanley Cup The Screech Owls have come to Ottawa to play in the Little Stanley Cup peewee tournament. Mr. Dillinger is also taking them to visit some of the region's famous ghosts: the ghost of a dead prime minister; the ghost of a man hanged for murder; the ghost of the famous painter Tom Thomson. At first the Owls thought this was Mr. Dillinger's best idea ever, until Travis and his friends begin to suspect that one of these ghosts could be for real. #12: The West Coast Murders The Screech Owls' journey to Vancouver had begun as an innocent hockey road trip. They had come to play in the new "Three-on-three" shinny tournament. But when the team headed out to sea to watch the first whales of the season return to the West Coast, the dream trip turned into a horrifying adventure. Two bodies - one a dolphin, one a man - bobbing in the tide. And when Nish stared down at the floating, twisting body of the man and announced "We know him!" the Screech Owls also knew they were in the middle of a baffling mystery. Screech Owls books have won the Our Choice Award and the Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award. They have been endorsed by the Canadian Toy Testing Council and shortlisted for the Silver Birch Award, the Red Cedar Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Ottawa-Carleton Award, and the Palmarès de Communication-Jeunesse.

Celebrating ten years and more than one million books in print! New four-in-one edition! The first four Screech Owls mysteries are now collected in one volume: #1 — Mystery at Lake Placid #2 — The Night They Stole the Stanley Cup #3 — The Screech Owls' Northern Adventure #4 — Murder at Hockey Camp Screech Owls books have won the Our Choice Award and the Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award. They have been endorsed by the Canadian Toy Testing Council and shortlisted for the Silver Birch Award, the Red Cedar Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Ottawa-Carleton Award, and the Palmarès de Communication-Jeunesse.

Mrs. Robinson's class is nursing an injured screech owl back to health so that it can return to the wild, but when the owlet disappears, Travis, Nish, and Sarah begin an investigation.

From Canada’s beloved award-winning journalist and bestselling author comes a collection of essays, new and previously published, on man’s best friend. In the course of 20 years of column writing about everything from politics to hockey and everything in between, Roy MacGregor has learned firsthand that the columns with the greatest reader impact have been those about the family dog. Roy has collected these columns and written many more on everything from puppy love to the sorrow of losing a pet, as experienced by Roy and the dogs he’s known and loved.

In this delightful dockside reader, one of Canada's great writers of the outdoors celebrates the Canadian cottage experience. Written in journal form, The Weekender takes us through a typical year -the pleasures, great and small, and the occasional pains-of cottage living. From that first, essential opening-day plunge into a still-frigid lake to the last leap in at the summer's end, and everything in between, The Weekender reprises some of MacGregor's classic writings from Cottage Life, The Globe and Mail, and the National Post, and includes some new material, too. It's the perfect read for the cottage lover in all of us, a book to return to again and again, in summer and all year long.

Every year, Bump longs to play in the annual family hockey game--the Christmas Classic--started by his grandfather, and finally he is tall enough to join in the tradition, which continues to go on, year after year.

The Owls are all grown up, and now they’re returning home to play an exhibition game in the town’s new arena. But deep trouble has also come to Tamarack. The Screech Owls are all grown up. Ten years have passed, and Travis, Sarah, Nish, and their friends have gone theirseparate ways, most of them scattered far and wide from their old home town. Travis is a teacher. Sarah is captain of the women’s Olympic hockey team. Data runs a computer business with Fahd. Wilson is a police officer. And Nish? Nish is in Las Vegas, a valued member of the aerial stunt team The Flying Elvises. When the people of Tamarack decide to name their new sports complex The Sarah Cuthbertson Arena, it is the perfect time for all the old friends to reunite and play an opening night exhibition game. But as the Screech Owls start to return, trouble also comes to Tamarack. The unspoiled town faces disaster in the form of a new gambling casino, and it seems that the powerful developers will stop at nothing to get their way. Not even murder.

The Screech Owls have come to Salt Lake City for the Peewee Winter Games – with the championship game to be played on the same ice surface where the Canadian men and women won Olympic hockey gold! Nish has plans to run his own competition: the Gross-Out Olympics, featuring everything from taping players to dressing room walls with duct tape to the “Snot Shot” – seeing how far they can fire a jellybean using only their noses. He also has a team contest to see who can figure out the Great Nish Secret and guess what the nuttiest Screech Owl of all has buried at centre ice for good luck. But that secret pales once the Owls find out something strange – something terrifying – is going on in the tunnels deep beneath the magnificent hills surrounding the Olympic site.

It’s summer, and Rachel Highboy, Jesse’s hockey-playing cousin from James Bay, has come to Tamarack to join the Screech Owls on a week-long canoe trip into the wilds of Algonquin Park. At the same time, the rookie hero of this year’s Stanley Cup final is in a light plane that goes missing somewhere in the area. It is eerily like the story of Bill Barilko, the legendary Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman who disappeared when his plane crashed deep in the Ontario bush in 1951, just four months after he scored the Stanley-Cup-winning goal! When some of the team – including a terrified Nish – become separated from the others and find themselves lost in the deep woods, strange things begin to happen. A wolf comes each night to stand by the campfire. A mysterious stranger pays a visit. And a shocking discovery has Rachel and the Screech Owls wondering if they’ll make it out alive!