Orca calf that was trapped in B.C. lagoon for weeks swims free
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
Canadian authors Mary Lawson and Rachel Cusk are among 13 authors in the running for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction.
The two homegrown novelists were named on the long list Tuesday for the 50,000-pound (C$87,000) prize.
Lawson, who grew up in an Ontario farming community, earned her second Booker nod for her tale of life in a northern town, “A Town Called Solace.”
She last made the long list for 2006's “The Other Side of the Bridge.”
Saskatoon-born, London-based Cusk is a contender for her cottage-set psychodrama, “A Second Place.”
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers' careers, and was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English published in the United Kingdom.
Also in the running is Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, with 'Klara and the Sun,“ a novel about love and humanity narrated by a solar-powered android.
It is the fourth Booker nomination for Ishiguro, who won the prize in 1989 for “The Remains of the Day.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Richard Powers is nominated for “Bewilderment,” about an astrobiologist and his neurodivergent son. Powers won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2019 for eco-epic “The Overstory,” which was also a Booker Prize finalist.
Other previous Booker contenders on this year's list include South Africa's Damon Galgut for his story of racism and reckoning, “The Promise”; British writer Sunjeev Sahota for “China Room,” which travels between England and India.
Two American first novels are among this year's contenders: Patricia Lockwood's social media-saturated story “No One is Talking About This” and Nathan Harris' bestseller “The Sweetness of Water,” set in the U.S. South at the end of the Civil War.
The list also includes “Great Circle” by American writer Maggie Shipstead, British novelist Francis Spufford's “Light Perpetual,” British/Somali author Nadifa Mohamed's “The Fortune Men,” South African novelist Karen Jennings's “An Island” and “A Passage North” by Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam.
Historian Maya Jasanoff, who is chairing this year's judging panel, said many of the novels “consider how people grapple with the past - whether personal experiences of grief or dislocation or the historical legacies of enslavement, apartheid, and civil war.”
“Many examine intimate relationships placed under stress, and through them meditate on ideas of freedom and obligation, or on what makes us human,” she said. “It's particularly resonant during the pandemic to note that all of these books have important things to say about the nature of community, from the tiny and secluded to the unmeasurable expanse of cyberspace.”
A six-book shortlist will be announced Sept. 14, and the winner will be crowned Nov. 3 during a ceremony in London.
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
King Charles III’s doctors are 'sufficiently pleased' with his cancer treatment and he is expected to return to public-facing duties, Buckingham Palace announced on Friday.
After the Assembly of First Nations' national chief complained to Air Canada about how staffers treated her and her ceremonial headdress on a flight this week, she says the airline responded by offering a 15 per cent discount on her next flight.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
The current overall public health risk posed by the H5N1 bird flu virus is low, the World Health Organization said on Friday, but urged countries to stay alert for cases of animal-to-human transmission.
Philadelphia 76ers All-Star centre Joel Embiid has been diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis he says has affected him since before the play-in tournament.
An idyllic 453-acre private island is up for sale off the west coast of Scotland and it comes with sandy beaches, puffins galore, seven houses, a pub, a helipad and a flock of black-faced sheep.
An investigation is underway after a Regina police officer was accidentally shot by a fellow officer’s gun during the search of a house early Friday morning.
A pair of Montreal designers' work has now been viewed over 41 million times. Taylor Swift dons a Victorian throwback black gown in her latest music video, 'Fortnight', designed by UNTTLD due Simon Belanger and Jose Manuel Saint-Jacques.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.