Adults

Join the North Shore libraries for a community-wide book club event! 

North Shore Reads — a collaboration between North Vancouver City Library, North Vancouver District Public Library, and West Vancouver Memorial Library — presents an evening with Brett Popplewell in conversation with Marsha Lederman. Popplewell will discuss his 2023 national bestseller Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past. 

When journalist Brett Popplewell first heard about Dag Aabye, an aging former stuntman who lived alone in a school bus on a mountain, running day and night through blizzards and heat waves, he was intrigued and bewildered. Captivated by the seemingly implausible tale of a wild super-athlete aging more slowly than the rest of us, he was determined to meet the apocryphal white-haired man who was pushing the boundaries of the human mind and body beyond what anyone could dream was possible.

What Popplewell witnessed on a secluded mountain perch led him on a six-year odyssey to uncover the true story of the 81-year-old man. Outsider takes readers on a remarkable journey from Nazi-occupied Norway to Argentina and British Columbia. The book chronicles how a child born under mysterious circumstances during World War II finds his way onto the big screen in Goldfinger, is heralded as the world’s first extreme skier, and is later driven into the wilderness. Both joyful and tragic, Outsider presents a bold challenge to our notions of aging, belonging and human accomplishment.

North Shore Reads invites you to a dynamic conversation between Brett Popplewell and Marsha Lederman. Our program will begin with a traditional Indigenous welcome from Tsitsáyxemaat Rebecca Duncan of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nation.

About the presenters

Brett Popplewell is a bestselling author and associate professor of journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. He has written for Bloomberg Businessweek, Mother Jones, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Sportsnet, Maclean's and The Walrus, among other publications. A winner of multiple National Magazine Awards in Canada, his work has also appeared in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best Canadian Essays.

Marsha Lederman is an award-winning journalist and author. A staff columnist with The Globe and Mail, she was previously The Globe’s Western Arts Correspondent. Her memoir Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2022. Born and raised in Toronto, Marsha now lives in Vancouver.

Tsitsáyxemaat Rebecca Duncan is from the Squamish and Musqueam First Nations of the Coast Salish Peoples. Rebecca has devoted her life to preserving the Squamish Language along with her Cultural teachings that have been handed down to her from her late Papa and his Papa and so on and so on since the beginning of time. Rebecca is a remarkable storyteller, weaver, traditional cook, language teacher, singer, and dancer. “No matter where you are from, it is so important to know your history, your ties to the land, and your culture. Welcome to unceded Coast Salish Territory, our history is your history!!!”

Other related events

In connection with the event on Jan. 17, the North Shore libraries will host additional programs and book discussions for community members to further engage with the book:

North Vancouver District Public Library

• Book Circle – Parkgate Library, Tuesday, Jan. 16 at 2 p.m.
• Written in the Snow: A History of Mount Seymour – Wednesday, March 20 at 5:30 p.m. 

North Vancouver City Library 

• Book Circle – Saturday, Jan. 20 at 2:30 p.m. 

Registration required. Register on nvcl.ca.

Join Anthea Penne, author of Old Stones, as she reads excerpts from her novel and discusses the research behind it.

At the end of the Second World War nearly 50,000 women emigrated to Canada from Britain and the continent.  For those women, the Atlantic crossing marked the beginning of a great adventure:  a new country, a new life and a new husband.  But those transcontinental marriages often created a dual heritage for the children of the unions, making "home" difficult to define. In Old Stones, the gap between Anthea’s privileged English and provincial Canadian backgrounds is made achingly clear in family stories from both continents. An unsentimental look at a war-time union, Old Stones is an inquiry into one woman's very different backgrounds as well as a candid examination of a family's cultural divide.

Registration required. Register online or call 604-929-3727, ext. 8166. Contact Vanessa at gillv@nvdpl.ca for more information.

This event takes place in the Enid Dearing Meeting Room at Parkgate Library.