Non-Fiction Writers Pour Their Hearts Into Topics That Matter To Them -- And To Us

By its very nature, Canadian non-fiction can never offer the thematic unity often found in CanLit. But every year writers pour as much passion as any novelist or poet -- and considerable literary skill -- into topics that matter to them. The best also deserve our consideration. Some recent highlights:

Passion is certainly the defining emotion of Alan Young's Justice Defiled. A Toronto law professor, criminal lawyer, media commentator and self-proclaimed defender of "hookers, druggies, gamblers and minor criminals," Young calls his book a "professional suicide note." (He may well be right about that, considering he takes as his guiding light the famous declaration of Shakespeare's Dick the Butcher: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.") Young's tone of moral outrage never wavers. There are far too many lawyers, he argues, precisely because the Criminal Code is obscenely bloated. Why, asks Young, does the code contain a section on "theft in general" and 59 other sections on specific types, including "theft from oyster beds?" It is, in fact, ridiculously easy to become a criminal in Canada: simply get caught waterskiing at night. That might be dangerous and even negligent, but it would be better dealt with through bylaw regulation than the same array of legal procedure as an accusation of murder.

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