Pierre Berton: A Biography.

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Born in Whitehorse in 1920, Pierre Berton became well known as a journalist and media personality, and by 2004 when he died, he had also become one of Canada’s best known authors, with exactly 50 books to his credit.

As a writer, Berton was best known for his lively style, and in Brian McKillop, a historian at Carleton University, he has found a biographer worthy of him. McKillop has used extant archival sources, mostly at McMaster University, supplemented by interviews with the principals, including Berton himself, and consulted voluminous secondary literature to tell Berton’s story in 677 accessibly written, well-documented pages.

In it, readers will get answers to every conceivable question they might have had about Berton: How did he research his books? Or, how did he write them? They will also find answers to other questions they might not have had: Why did the names of all his children start with a P? Was he always faithful to his wife? What makes this book a cut above the usual biography is that McKillop never forgets he is a historian—and he is able to explain the events in Berton’s life within the context of their times.

There is, however, a sad fact that must not be forgotten—Berton was famous to the baby boom generation that read Maclean’s and the Toronto Star and later watched him on television. They also lapped up almost all of his books, including his last one on cats. But many he wrote—while widely popular in their time, such as The Comfortable Pew or The Smug Minority—were just that, popular in their time, and their time has passed.

The dust jacket of this book describes this as “the first biography of this extraordinary man.” It will likely also be the last, not only because it is definitive but because Berton will soon be forgotten. True, a few will turn to this book to learn about journalism and celebrity in the latter half of the 20th century, but most will rely on it not because it’s about Berton but because it is a model of the biographer’s craft.