Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics

H. Graham Rawlinson is co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most
Influential Canadians of the 20th Century.

This wonderfully fresh, funny book is the result of broadcaster Bill
Richardson’s winter drive across the country in search of the most
eccentric people he could find. It consists of a series of remarkable
profiles of some of Canada’s most unusual individuals who live—or
lived—“outside the circle’s centre.” We meet a psychic who lives
with ducks, a woman who models her life on Barbie’s, a cross-dresser,
a hermit, and many more.

Richardson’s profiles are deliciously ironic and filled with comic
detail, but they are also touching and sympathetic. In this highly
personal travelogue, the author shamelessly thrusts himself into the
action and emerges as the most fascinating eccentric of them all.