Forty-six years later those words still ring true: there has since been no book that has brought to life early Calgary the way that Eye Opener Bob does. Perhaps more importantly, it's perhaps the closest we'll ever get to Robert Chambers Edwards—"Eye Opener Bob"—the irrepressible editor of Calgary's most singular newspaper, and the city's most singular denizen.
Bob Edwards was a true Canadian original, the prototypical hard-drinking, pull-no-punches editor of the Calgary Eye Opener—at the time the largest paper between Vancouver and Toronto, with a circulation of over 30,000 copies. A paper with the power to elect or dethrone governments, to bring the mighty CPR to reform its ways, and to skewer the pretensions of society like few before or since. Eye Opener Bob brings this fascinating character to life in all his glorious self-contradictions.
MacEwan arrived in the city at just the right time to write Eye Opener Bob—the old Sandstone City hadn't yet been whitewashed over by the new money from the Leduc gusher, and there were still living people who had known Edwards. MacEwan ferreted out their stories as only he could do, combined the interviews with hard research, and the result is Grant MacEwan's best book by a country mile.
Out of print for twenty years, Eye Opener Bob is ready to be discovered by a new generation of readers across the country.
Eye Opener Bob can be enjoyed on its
own or as a companion piece to the new compilation of Edwards's
writing, Irresponsible
Freaks, Highball Guzzlers, and Unabashed Grafters: A Bob Edwards
Chrestomathy.
Other titles by Grant MacEwan available through Brindle & Glass:
A
Century of Grant MacEwan: Selected Writings
Frederick Haultain:
Pioneer Statesman of the Canadian Northwest
Colonel James
Walker: Man of the Western Frontier
This book is printed on ancient
forest-friendly paper.
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