The Names of Things is a book about a man and a generation. Born to a working-class family in Toronto, David Helwig grew up in the haunted town of Niagara-on-the-Lake long before it became a fashionable summer destination for charter coaches of American tourists. David won a scholarship from General Motors to attend the University of Toronto and launched himself into theatrical productions at Hart House and mingled with such writers as John Robert Colombo, Henry Beissel, Edward Lacey, David Lewis Stein and Edna Paris.

After working in summer stock with young actors including Timothy Findley, Gordon Pinsent and Jackie Burroughs, he spent a couple of years in the suburbs of Birkenhead, then moved to Kingston where, in the 1960s he shared the world of little magazines with Tom Marshall and Michael Ondaatje and the world of prisons with the inmates he taught. In the 1970s he worked under John Hirsch at the CBC. He edited books for Oberon Press. He was part of the generation of young Canadian writers who believed they could achieve anything. He also shares a touching account of family life, of learning to be a father. Poetry, some of it never before published, catches the echoes of the life he lived. From childhood during the Second World War to becoming a grandfather at the millennium, this is the story of one man and his connections with the history of Canada in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Born in Toronto in 1938, David Helwig attended the University of Toronto and the University of Liverpool. His first stories were published in Canadian Forum and The Montrealer while he was still an undergraduate. He then went on to teach at Queen's University. He worked in summer stock with the Straw Hat Players, mostly as a business manager and technician, rubbing elbows with such actors as Gordon Pinsent, Jackie Burroughs and Timothy Findley.

While at Queen's University, Helwig did some informal teaching in Collins Bay Penitentiary and subsequently wrote A Book About Billie with a former inmate.

Helwig has also served as literary manager of CBC Television Drama, working under John Hirsch, supervising the work of story editors and the department's relations with writers.

In 1980, he gave up teaching and became a full-time freelance writer. He has done a wide range of writing -- fiction, poetry, essays -- authoring more than twenty books. Helwig is also the founder and long-time editor of the Best Canadian Stories annual. In 2009 he was named as a member of the Order of Canada.

David Helwig lives in the village of Eldon on Prince Edward Island, where he is the third Poet Laureate. He indulges his passion for vocal music by singing with choirs in Montreal, Kingston, and Charlottetown. He has appeared as bass soloist in Handel's Messiah, Bach's St Matthew Passion and Mozart's Requiem.

David Helwig's profile page

'In short, a fine memoir, both as a record of a long and dedicated career and as a document in the history of the generation of writers stirred into activity by Expo and the other events of forty years ago.'

Books in Canada

'It's hard to give an accurate description of a book that still haunts you weeks after you've finished the last page. The Names of Things leaves readers with the sense that they have received a deeper, subtler message than could be expected from a standard autobiography. Although the label ''memoir'' is firmed stamped on both the cover and title page, I would sum up this book with the author's own words: ''a rich brew of daily experience''.'

echolocation

'The time is coming when the generation of Canadian writers that began publishing in the 1960s and flourished in the 1970s will start to pour the coffee on the campfire. Already their numbers have thinned a bit. Those still active are fading into respectability: the land of Festschrifts and honorary degrees, of diminishing pensions and persistent disease. In the future story of this drift towards infinity, David Helwig's memoir The Names of Things could well become a significant primary document.'

New Brunswick Reader

'The remarkable part of Helwig's story is that he has made a living all these years in the service of words and images. A writer can write in any number of media, and Helwig has done it all: novels, stories, poems, reviews, journalism, radio, television, generally managing to get paid for it all. It was easier at one point. For some years he was published by big commercial publishers, but in the early 1990s he was dropped by Penguin and became once again a small press author. Like the guy who does your drywalling (if you're lucky), Davis Helwig is a working stiff who does a job you'll be happy with.'

UofT Bookstore Review

'This is a highly compelling and highly satisfying memoir that gives as much information about Helwig as there probably is, much of it in the way of him deflecting the focus off himself and onto others. If I were to list the books that David Helwig has published, there would be little space for anything else; there is much for Helwig to be immodest about. Still, the strength of this three hundred page document comes from the fact that this is a memoir by a quiet, modest and engaged writer, with some sixty-odd years of experience behind him. Whether you care for his writing or not, I would almost call this essential reading; a ''writing life'' that focuses on the life.'

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