If a movie were to be made of Craig Oliver's life story, the veteran CTV newsman wouldn't mind if Brad Pitt got the job.

"Do you think he'd work?" asked the bemused icon, who turns 73 on Nov. 8.

In one way, yes.

In 1992, Pitt starred in a film called "A River Runs Through it." Life lessons that were learned on the river played a huge role in that tale. That is equally as true in Oliver's new memoir, "Oliver's Twist: The Life and Times of an Unapologetic Newshound."

Oliver vividly recounts several canoe trips taken over his 50-year career into Canada's Far North. Oliver didn't travel into the wild alone. His buddies in the "Rideau Canal and Arctic Canoe Clue," which Oliver founded, included former Liberal MP John Godfrey, former Liberal Cabinet minister Allan Rock and former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

"Trudeau was a great travelling companion," said Oliver, CTV News' chief political correspondent.

"The biggest surprise about Trudeau was that he wasn't arrogant. Not one bit. He could also build the best fires you've ever seen," he said.

Those nostalgic river trips taught Oliver a lot about life and how to manoeuvre it.

"You do not run a rapid; you negotiate it, just as life itself is a series of negotiations," Oliver writes. "Chart your own course and trust the compass. But heed the counsel of those who have done this trip before you."

This survival instinct -- in and out of the woods -- is unmistakable throughout Oliver's memoir.

Oliver pulls few punches in this book about his rocky start in life. In fact, his move from the streets of Prince Rupert, B.C. in the 1940s to the top of Canada's news game is a rags-to-riches tale Charles Dickens would envy.

Oliver's father was a bootlegger who did jail time. His mother drove a cab and ran a seedy motel where she kept a revolver in a desk drawer.

Both parents were alcoholics, and when their marriage failed they farmed their young son out as a boarder to various households in Prince Rupert in need of extra cash.

"My earliest memories are of drunken verbal bouts between my parents, shouts of ‘chippy' and ‘whore,' followed by the sounds of shattered glass, physical struggles and cries of pain," Oliver writes in the 331-page memoir.

Oliver's sadness at these childhood events is hard to miss. Yet no shred of apology or self-pity colours this book.

"It was the only childhood I had," Oliver said today on Canada AM -- the CTV morning show he founded in 1972.

"I was never abused. I was lonely. I lived in my imagination to some degree."

That imagination became something of a rudder in Oliver's life, guiding him on in the worst of circumstances.

"I did feel all that old pain again as I started to write. But you have to face the facts, even if they're not pretty," said Oliver.

"That's one of the reasons why I never liked Pierre Trudeau's memoir. You never got a sense of who this man really was. I didn't want to do that," he said.

"Oliver's Twist" recounts it all: His friendships and fights with Ottawa's powerful; his failed first marriage and Oliver's mid-life embrace of casual relationships.

"My pattern with women was well established by this time," Oliver writes.

"I had no problem with physical intimacy, but emotional commitment was a different matter. As soon as a relationship ripened into a demand for closeness, the inner voice told me to run."

Today, Oliver is happily married to Anne-Marie Bergeron.

"If I had to do it all over again I'd still want to be a newsman. But it's not an easy choice if you want to have a family or have any kind of meaningful relationships in your life," said Oliver.

Oliver, who is also legally blind, hopes that young reporters will take another lesson to heart.

"Learn to listen to people," said Oliver. "It's changed my life."

CTV's Craig Oliver will answer readers' questions during a live chat on CTVNews.ca on November 2 at 1 p.m. ET. Sign up for a reminder.