Most Popular Books by Roy Macgregor

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 October 1983 Ken Dryden gave us what was called the best non-fiction book ever written about hockey - The Game. In that same month Roy MacGregor published what was hailed as the best novel ever written about hockey - The Last Season. In 1989 these two writers teamed up to write another extraordinary book: inspired by Ken Dryden''s major CBC-TV series on hockey, Home Game takes us all the way from street hockey to the showdowns between Canada and the Soviets. On publication, Home Game shot to the top of the bestseller lists, establishing itself as must reading for every hockey fan. Not only was this lavish book with over 95 full-colour photographs popular among ordinary Canadians: book reviewers loved it.

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.

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.

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

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.

Winner of The CAA–Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography The 2000 Ottawa-Carlton Book Award The (U.S.) Rutstrum Award for Best Wilderness Book In 1929, at the age of twenty-two, Duncan MacGregor, the son of a lumberman, great-grandson of a voyageur, and an avid reader and baseball fan, headed off into the largest tract of preserved bush in the world: Ontario’s Algonquin Park. When he got there, he was home for the rest of his life. From the true nature of fishing to the harsh realities of raising a family in the woods, from the role of fear in the bush to the small nuances of family relationships, A Life in the Bush is painted on a canvas both vast and richly detailed. A story that captures the tough physical demands, the rich life of the senses, and the unselfconscious freedom that comes from living apart from town and city. In this beautifully crafted memoir of his father, Roy MacGregor paints an intimate portrait of an unusual man and spins a spellbinding tale of a boy’s complex relationship with his father. He also evokes, perhaps for the first time in Canadian literature, the bush the way bush people see it, an insider''s view of life in the totemic Canadian wilderness.

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 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 . . .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

The Screech Owls find themselves in a difficult situation when they are abducted with their new friend Slava Shadrin, a star hockey player who is wanted by the Russian mob