As chief parliamentary correspondent for CTV News, Craig Oliver is one of Canada’s most recognized and respected journalists, a newsman who has reported on the major political figures and news stories of our times with passion, insight, and bracing candour.

He brings those same qualities to this many-layered memoir of an extraordinary professional and personal life. The only child of two alcoholics, he spent his childhood and adolescence in the homes of strangers. A chance summer job with the local CBC station launched his broadcasting career, taking Oliver from Prince Rupert, B.C. to Ottawa, Washington, and Central America. He witnessed up close the follies, foibles and occasional brilliance of the men and women who shaped our history over four decades.

At the same time, Oliver pursued a personal passion for Canada’s wilderness rivers. For 30 years, he and a close company of companions—all political and media figures, from Tim Kotcheff and John Macfarlane to Eddie Goldenberg and Pierre Trudeau—paddled some of the remotest waters in western and northern Canada.

Most surprising is the revelation that this comfortable television performer has been legally blind for a decade.