Keon And Me

Hockey is the lens through which we see our lives—how we measure right and wrong, how we understand our hopes and fears. So it was for Dave Bidini in 1974, the last year Dave Keon played in Toronto. In a new grade in a new school, Bidini found himself the victim of a bully—a depredation he could understand only by thinking about what the Leafs dauntless captain went through game after game. Throughout his twenty-two-year career, Keon was only in one hockey fight, in his last game as a Leaf on April 22, 1974. It was on this day that the eleven-year-old Bidini decided to fight back, an occasion that the writer looks back on with breathtaking courage and honesty. But while Bidini would remain a blue-blooded Leafs fan into adulthood, Keon became estranged from the franchise with which he’d won four Stanley Cups, two Lady Byngs, and the first ever Conn Smythe Trophy in 1967.

The strengths of Bidini’s two best-loved books, On a Cold Road and Tropic of Hockey, music and travel to unlikely places, come together in this account of his search for rock ‘n’ roll. When it looks as if the Rheostatics are breaking up after more than twenty years together, Dave Bidini is left feeling adrift from his moorings and decides to go on a very long road trip, playing solo and finding out about the state of rock ’n’ roll around the world. Accompanied much of the way by his friend Al, who also has a solo act, Bidini sets out for London, England, his springboard for travel to Finland, Russia, China, Sierra Leone, and Ghana, punctuated by trips to Newfoundland and Gananoque in Canada, and to New York City. What Bidini finds is that the rock ’n’ roll machine has not yet flattened the globe, as each place has taken what suits it from the West’s dominant music and ignored the rest. Metal may have had its heyday in North America, but it still suits the quiet Finns just fine as a soundtrack for suicidal thoughts. In China, where Bidini plays with the Rheos-Not-Rheos as part of the Maple Rhythm Festival, he has to coach the crowd sitting quietly in plastic chairs how to clap rhythmically. In Russia, where live rock still lurks in hard-to-find places, the British band Smokie is far more popular than even the Rolling Stones, and the first Western band Mongolian audiences wanted to hear live was Boney M. In Africa, Bidini finds out just how far rock has wandered from its roots, and in Newfoundland, just how true it has stayed. Peopled with hosers, the über-hip, and the profoundly baffled, and brimming with tales of playing in strange venues to bemused locals and the odd drunk, Around the World takes readers on an unforgettable, ear-opening swing through the world of rock ’n’ roll.

North Americans are some of the least healthy people on Earth. Despite advanced medical care and one of the highest standards of living in the world, one in three Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime and 50% of US children are overweight. This crisis in personal health is largely the result of chronically poor dietary and lifestyle choices. In Whitewash, Joseph Keon unveils how North Americans unwittingly sabotage their health every day by drinking milk, and shows that our obsession with calcium is unwarranted. Citing scientific literature, Whitewash builds an unassailable case that not only is milk unnecessary for human health; its inclusion in the diet may increase the risk of serious diseases including: prostate, breast, and ovarian cancers osteoporosis diabetes vascular disease Crohn's disease. Many of America’s dairy herds contain sick and immunocompromised animals whose tainted milk regularly makes it to market. Cow's milk is also a sink for environmental contaminants, and has been found to contain traces of pesticides, dioxins, PCBs, rocket fuel, and even radioactive isotopes. Whitewash offers a completely fresh, candid and comprehensively documented look behind dairy's deceptively green pastures, and gives readers a hopeful picture of life after milk.

When Sime killed Gen, it was the normal way of things--after all, Gens weren't really people, were they? They existed only to provide Simes with life-giving selyn. And then Risa Tigue, a Sime, injured and needing selyn, stumbles on the trail of a gen named Sergi ambrov Keon. Sergi is a companion, a Gen who can control the transfer of Selyn without harming either Sime or Gen. In Risa, Sergi sees the potential for that rarest of beings, a Channel. But can Risa survive the transformation--and even if she can, can Simes and Gens learn to live together peacefully? This is the legendary romance of Risa and Sergi. Sime Gen, Book Seven.

David Bidini, rhythm guitarist with the Rheostatics, knows all too well what the life of a rock band in Canada involves: storied arenas one tour and bars wallpapered with photos of forgotten bands the next. Zit-speckled fans begging for a guitar pick and angry drunks chucking twenty-sixers and pint glasses. Opulent tour buses riding through apocalyptic snowstorms and cramped vans that reek of dope and beer. Brilliant performances and heart-sinking break-ups. Bidini has played all across the country many times, in venues as far flung and unalike as Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto and the Royal Albert Hotel in Winnipeg. In 1996, when the Rheostatics opened for the Tragically Hip on their Trouble at the Henhouse tour, Bidini kept a diary. In On a Cold Road he weaves his colourful tales about that tour with revealing and hilarious anecdotes from the pioneers of Canadian rock - including BTO, Goddo, the Stampeders, Max Webster, Crowbar, the Guess Who, Triumph, Trooper, Bruce Cockburn, Gale Garnett, and Tommy Chong - whom Bidini later interviewed in an effort to compare their experiences with his. The result is an original, vivid, and unforgettable picture of what it has meant, for the last forty years, to be a rock musician in Canada.

Every night in hockey arenas across Canada and the United States, modern-day gladiators drop their gloves and exchange bare-fisted blows to the bloodthirsty roars of the paying public. Tens of millions of people a year, including children, watch and cheer on the fighters. Some players are paid handsomely; others barely a living wage. But either way, these fighters are lauded, valued, and considered to be essential to the game. That is, until their playing days are over. Hockey enforcers spend their lives fighting on ice to protect their teammates and entertain their fans, but when their playing days are over, who’s left to fight for them? Major Misconduct scrutinizes a highly dangerous and controversial cultural practice. The book dives deep into the lives of three former hockey fighters who, years after their playing days ended, are still struggling with the pain and suffering that comes from bare-knuckle boxing on ice. All of these men believe they may be living with the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy. They may have had their shot at pro hockey glory, but none of them is rich or famous, and the game has left them with injuries and trauma. They have experienced estrangement, mental health issues, addiction, and brushes with the law. And they’ve stared death in the face. The debate surrounding fighting in hockey is hotly contested on both sides. This daring and revelatory book explores the lives of those who bare-knuckle boxed on ice for a living and investigates the human cost we’re willing to tolerate in the name of hockey fighting.

Deeply personal yet incredibly witty, this memoir about Grant Lawrence’s relationship with hockey passes back and forth between tales of his life and a fascinating history of hockey, complete with lively anecdotes about the many colorful characters of the NHL. Through Lawrence’s early life, he struggled with the idea of hockey. An undersized child who wore thick glasses and knee-braces, he understood what it was like to be in the attack zone of the hockey-obsessed jocks at his school. For Lawrence, bullying and the violent game of hockey seemed to go hand-in-hand. Yet he was also enamored with the sport and eventually learned that playing goalie on a hockey team isn’t all that different from playing in a band, and that artistically-minded wimps can find just as much joy in the game as their meathead counterparts.