• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

For more than a decade, the Globe and Mail has featured comprehensive obituaries of notable British Columbians by columnist Tom Hawthorn. He recounts the lives of the recently departed in an engaging style, finding anecdotes to illuminate personality, giving voice to those who no longer have one. These stories are not about death, but about life in all its sad, funny, exhilarating complexity.

Gathered here are the best, the funniest, the most memorable of the passing parade of characters who make life in British Columbia so remarkable. Here are athletes and authors, warriors and scholars, innovators and trailblazers.

You will meet the boxer Baby Face and a wrestler known as Mean Gene; the yodeling cowboy singer Alberta Slim and a geologist called Professor Midas; the last living member of the RCMP posse that tracked down the Mad Trapper of Rat River and a demon barber whose preferred murder weapon was alcohol. You'll go tracking with the the Cougar Lady of Sechelt, lift weights with the World's Strongest Man, and wince from the blows of police truncheons used against labour leader Steve Brodie on Bloody Sunday, much of the blood spilled that day his own.

You also will meet politicians of all stripes (including prison stripes).

Hawthorn bids adieu to a panoply of characters in obits that are colourful and touching. The exuberance of his writing makes this book one of the great nonfiction reads of the season.

Tom Hawthorn is an award-winning (and, on occasion, award-losing) journalist, writer and newspaper columnist whose byline has appeared in publications large (Reader's Digest, Canadian Geographic) and small (South Bend Tribune in Indiana and the Sanger Herald in California). He currently writes a twice-weekly column on British Columbia for The Globe & Mail. He also writes about sports and politics for the online magazine TheTyee.ca. He has won several prizes from the Society of Professional Obituary Writers whose tombstone-shaped plaques are on display at his home in Victoria, BC.

Tom Hawthorn's profile page

Deadlines: Obits of Memorable British Columbians

The particulars of a person's life are revealing of the era in which they lived. In this way, Deadlines depicts the history of Canada through the obituaries of over a dozen illustrious British Columbians who died between 2002 and 2010. Most of the information comes from articles in the Globe and Mail, expanded to contextualize these lives within the societal attitudes of the time. Hawthorn writes about Douglas Jung, the first Chinese Canadian to be elected to Parliament, describing Jung as a “marker in the history of race relations in Canada.” The oldest person in the book is scientist and philanthropist Cecil Green, who founded Texas Instruments. Another scientific achiever is Donald Hings inventor of the Walkie Talkie, a device that revolutionized the Canadian military. The individuals in this book encompass all ethnicities including those with Aboriginal heritage.