{"id":4882,"date":"2012-11-14T08:50:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-14T16:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2012-11-14T09:05:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T17:05:26","slug":"dead-on-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/11\/14\/dead-on-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead-on writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

An anthology of obituaries sounds like it would be just right for what\u2019s shaping up to be another gloomy Victoria autumn, but it turns out there\u2019s nothing morbid about Tom Hawthorn\u2019s Deadlines: Obits of Memorable British Columbians.<\/em> The focus of this collection is life, not death, and a colourful cast of real-life heroes and antiheroes that runs the gamut from local notoriety to international celebrity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Although Hawthorn himself is the first to admit that obit writing is the journalistic equivalent of trawling Wikipedia, he\u2019s made an art form of it, crafting front-page-quality human-interest pieces of the stuff once relegated to the classifieds. He\u2019s even won awards for it. (Plaques shaped like tombstones. Cute, right?)<\/p>\n

Deadlines <\/em>is a great read for any local history buff. And even if history\u2019s not your thing, it\u2019s still worth skimming. Each obit is no more than a few pages, and a diverse range of perspectives ensures that there\u2019s bound to be something you\u2019re in the mood for. Curious about notable entertainers? Innovators? Villains? (Well, villain\u0143singular. There\u2019s just one lone serial killer profiled in the pages of Deadlines.<\/em> But he sure was scary.)<\/p>\n

Murderer (and corrupt politicians\u0143we have a few of those, too) aside, this book is a great source of bragging rights. Besides all the world-class athletes, artists, and intellectuals BC has churned out, the rest of the world also has BC to thank for James Bond. That\u2019s right\u0143Patrick Dalzel-Job, the man whose sheer badassery inspired Ian Fleming, settled in BC and was stationed at Esquimalt with the Canadian navy.<\/p>\n

Just as refreshing as Hawthorn\u2019s crisp writing style is the fact that this is a history book that\u2019s not all white men. Granted, it\u2019s still mostly <\/em>white men, but there are several women featured in Deadlines,<\/em> as well as a handful of Aboriginal and immigrant personalities whose stories offer an unsettling glimpse of our province\u2019s segregation-happy past.<\/p>\n

Hawthorn approaches each entry with respect and enthusiasm, and the result is engaging prose that makes the reader wish these people were still around.<\/p>\n

Except the serial killer. He can stay right where he is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anthology of obituaries sounds like it would be just right for what\u2019s shaping up to be another gloomy Victoria autumn, but it turns out there\u2019s nothing morbid about Tom Hawthorn\u2019s Deadlines: Obits of Memorable British Columbians. The focus of this collection is life, not death, and a colourful cast of real-life heroes and antiheroes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-issue","category-november-14-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4882"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4885,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882\/revisions\/4885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}