The Book Drunkard Literary Festival

Join us at Slabtown Cidery on November 9, 2022, at 7:00 pm  for an evening of remembrance and conversation between local hero, Ted Barris and Canadian award-winning author and humourist, Terry Fallis as they discuss Ted’s newest addition to the Canadian history catalogue, Battle of the Atlantic.

TED BARRIS has published nineteen books of non-fiction, half of them wartime histories. The Great Escape: A Canadian Story won the 2014 Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen in the Secret Raid against Nazi Germany received the 2019 NORAD Trophy from the RCAF Association. And Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire was longlisted for the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction.

The Battle of the Atlantic, Canada’s longest continuous military engagement of the Second World War, lasted 2,074 days, claiming the lives of more than 4,000 men and women in the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian merchant navy.

The story of Canada’s naval awakening from the dark, bloody winters of 1939–1942, to be “ready, aye, ready” to challenge the U-boats and drive them to defeat, is a Canadian wartime saga for the ages. While Canadians think of the Great War battle of Vimy Ridge as the country’s coming of age, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that proved Canada’s gauntlet to victory and a nation-building milestone.

TERRY FALLIS grew up in Toronto and earned an engineering degree from McMaster University. Drawn to politics at an early age, he worked for cabinet ministers at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa. His first novel, The Best Laid Plans, began as a podcast, then was self-published, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, was re-published by McClelland & Stewart to great reviews, was crowned the 2011 winner of CBC’s Canada Reads as “the essential Canadian novel of the decade,” and became a CBC Television series. His next two novels, The High Road and Up and Down were finalists for the Leacock Medal, and in 2015, he won the prize a second time, for his fourth book, No Relation. A skilled public speaker, Terry Fallis is also co-founder of the public relations agency Thornley Fallis.

About the Venue

Slabtown Cider Co.

Founded in 2017, Slabtown is a family-owned and operated cidery and orchard. Located on the Oak Ridges Moraine just south of Uxbridge and surrounded by forest, trails and rolling fields. Slabtown has been working very hard to revitalize over 90 acres of historic fields into one of Canada’s largest collections of unique heritage heirloom apple cider varieties.

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