Each Moment As It Flies: Writings by Harry Bruce

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The 61 short pieces collected under the title Each Moment As It Flies are a richly flavoured pot-pourri of author Harry Bruce’s reflections on a crowded, reflective lifetime. They have appeared, over the years, in such journals as Maclean’s, The Toronto Star, Atlantic Insight, and Quest, to name but a few, and they vary in length from one or two to five or six pages. In his musings, this gifted writer shares his work and his world, his family, his pleasures and pains, people he has met and admired (or not), youthful hopes and the satisfactions of maturity. He possesses a powerful sense of place and history; indeed, his alter ego, “Max Macpherson,” was for some years a popular guide to the byways of Toronto, his hometown. Now, he is just as persuasive a promoter of his new home, Halifax. This superb collection of his work is reminiscent, alas, of several once-proud journals now no longer being published. Harry Bruce’s essays, articles, and personal columns exemplify an endangered art form without which the Canadian publishing scene would be much the poorer.