Keith Spicer - Life Sentences

"Keith Spicer has operated as the Canadian Zelig over the past 40 years -- the mysterious character in all the photographs, the key player no one quite knows what to make of or where he's going to pop up next. He has long been our great national dreamer -- in both official languages, of course -- and his wild optimism for all things Canadian is matched only by his love for this sometimes impossible country. Life Sentences is a treasure: a gift to the nation from one of the nation's most gifted. Thank you, Keith, from a people driven to hold up a mirror to its face -- and puzzled by how often that glass has held a glimpse of you grinning back. Now we know why." - Roy MacGregor, columnist, Globe and Mail

"A wise, funny book and a glorious read. Spicer is our cerebral Falstaff and wandering, wondering Quixote. I've never met a a braver, more ideologically principled, more Canadian Canadian than this man Spicer." - Martin O'Malley, CBC Online columnist

"I think if we start with Keith Spicer flashcards in Canada's kindergartens and, you know, just keep re-enforcing the message through every year of a child's schooling -- that a Canadian journalist can be like Spicer, a Canadian civil servant can be like Spicer, a Canadian academic can be like Spicer, a global Canadian public person can be like Spicer . . . and, presto, you have Canadians everywhere realizing their country can be a really ha-ha funny, super-clever and, above all, original place." - Michael Valpy, columnist, Globe and Mail

"This book, like its inimitable author, is a delight. . . . In his public life, he has been a passionate and courageous player who helped Canada catapult form black and white to technicolour and from meat and potatoes to fusion. He's been up, he's been down but he has always been his own man … in many ways the personal microcosm of the country that boasts him one of its favourite sons." - Michael Adams, President, Environics Group of Companies