Essay collection by former Weekend staff writer recalls life in Canada's corners

Back in what seems more and more a "golden age" for Canadian magazines, Weekend Magazine sent writer Ernest Hillen across Canada writing "portraits" of Canadian lives in various corners of the country. It's hard to imagine a magazine today doing such a thing.

Now Oxford University Press Canada has gathered Hillen's essays together in a delightful collection called A Weekend Memoir. It will appeal to anyone who likes well-crafted magazine profile writing. The book includes a poignant forward by Roy MacGregor.

Hillen, who now lives in Cambridge, was a senior editor at Saturday Night magazine, a staff writer at Weekend and at Maclean's. He wrote two outstanding memoirs (very recently republished by Penguin Canada) called The Way of a Boy, and its sequel, Small Mercies: A Boy after War.