Hard Talk

Julie Rekai Rickerd is a Toronto-based broadcaster and public-relations
consultant.

Lawyer/politician/outspoken journalist/writer/broadcaster Rafe Mair has
not mellowed over the years. In this, his fifth book, the
multi-award-winning “champion of the little guy” continues to rail
and rant against the injustices he perceives around him.

Born and raised in British Columbia, Mair graduated from the University
of British Columbia Law School and practised law in Kamloops, B.C., for
16 years. He then represented Kamloops in Premier Bill Bennett’s
Social Credit provincial government, assuming the Cabinet posts of
Health and Education.

Since leaving politics, Mair has evolved into one of B.C.’s most
outspoken writers and broadcasters in the Jack Webster pit-bull mode. In
Hard Talk, no issue is taboo. The author tackles subjects as diverse as
fish farming, health care, Canada’s foreign policy, legal billing,
same-sex marriage, western antipathy toward central and eastern Canada,
Canada–U.S. relations, Quebec, the legacy of 9/11, and pedophiles. The
subjects of his many interviews have included baseball legends Don
“Perfect Game” Larsen, Tommy Lasorda, and Enos Slaughter;
politicians Pierre Trudeau, Kim Campbell, Joe Clark, and Preston
Manning; hockey greats Rocket Richard and Ken Dryden; and wheelchair
hero Rick “Man in Motion” Hansen.

This entertaining, though-provoking, and sometimes infuriating book
stimulates and inspires its readers to think seriously about “righting
the wrongs” in themselves, their community, their province, and the
country as a whole.