Joe Strummer

  • My Favourite Music of 2025

    My Favourite Music of 2025 Who says I can’t meet deadlines? Here’s my annual round-up of my favourite music of the year, and with hours to spare. This is not, I hasten to add, a best-of-2025 list; I am too old and not fond of many of the dominant musical trends to pretend this is anything more than just what I liked.  People who check out my playlist (Apple Music* or Spotify) every year—a practice that still baffles me—will recognize some of the artists here. Katie Crutchfield, who performs as Waxahatchee, is back for the umpteenth time, both as Waxahatchee…

  • My Favourite Music of 2024

    I contend that the last day of the year is the appropriate time to release an annual list of favourite songs. I mean, why rush something like this? I still haven’t had time to listen to everything I want to listen to (the new Cure album, for example, which I hear is great). Invariably, I’m late to albums that should make my list. Last year, it was Jess Williamson’s superb Time Ain’t Accidental. Good music takes time to marinate in your head. Think of all the times you heard an album—back in the days of albums, instead of playlists—and how often…

  • Windfall is Coming

    The fascinating, scandalous and true story of Viola MacMillan and the Windfall mining scandal Viola MacMillan had it all: success, money, and respect. Influence, even. But in 1964, after three decades in the mining industry, one of the most fascinating women in Canadian business history was the central character in one of the country’s most famous stock scandals. MacMillan, who started out as a prospector in the ’30s, had developed lucrative mines and put together big deals. But she still wanted “a major discovery.” Early in July 1964, shares in Windfall Oil and Mines, a company she and her husband…

  • My Favourite Music of 2023

    Sorry, my favourite-music-of-the-year post is shorter than usual because my book* is due in a month (and I’ve left the hardest parts to the end). But I did create a playlist, which you can listen to on Apple Music or Spotify, and that’s more useful because as the old saying goes, writing about music is like dancing about architecture. The playlist includes songs from boygenius, The Clientele, Indigo De Souza, Feist, Fenne Lily, Jason Isbell, Sufjan Stevens and many more. One selection comes from our this-shouldn’t-work-but-it-does department: on Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, Chan Marshall recreates the famous Dylan…

  • My Favourite Music of 2022

    Apparently, I need a deadline. On the other hand, waiting until the last minute gives me more listening time. Although I don’t pretend this is the best music of 2022, it is my favourite music of the year (as of right now). For whatever that’s worth. But if you find something here that you haven’t heard before, and you like it, then I haven’t completely wasted your time. This year, once again, my roundup is dominated by women. It’s also heavier in twang than usual. Some of the country sound came from unexpected places. There’s lots of it on Dragon New Warm…

  • Yukon Readings

    I will be doing a reading in support of Klondikers at the Whitehorse Public Library on May 5 and another event–with my friend Rick Taylor, author of Rivers Run through Us: A Natural and Human History of Great Rivers of North America–in Dawson City on May 11. The latter will be at the KIAC Ballroom and is a benefit for the Dawson City Museum and Archives.

  • My Favourite Music of 2021

    Some years, I have a hard time picking a favourite album. Not this year. Cassandra Jenkins’s An Overview on Phenomenal Nature came out in February and has been in heavy rotation ever since. She creates such a mood with these intimate and atmospheric songs and my love for this album hasn’t waned with all the listenings. Nothing came close to knocking it out of the top spot for me.  Listen to the My 2021 Faves playlist on Spotify Some other new discoveries this year include The Last Exit by Still Corners, which you may like if you’re into a little dream pop; Collapsed in Sunbeams by…

  • On the List

    December is the time for year-end book lists and some of them included Klondikers: • The Globe 100, the Globe and Mail’s list of “The books we loved in 2021”: “Falconer tells the riveting tale of a bunch of guys who travelled from the Yukon to Ottawa because they just wanted to play hockey. The frozen continent they crossed in 1905 was so treacherous that for days, the newspapers chronicling their passage lost track of them.” (Here’s the Globe‘s review of Klondikers.) • CBC Radio’s Day 6’s last-minute gift list:“For the first time in more than a decade as Day 6 books columnist, [Becky] Toyne is recommending a book about hockey.…

  • On Picking the Five Best Hockey Books

    On Picking the Five Best Hockey Books A new book website called Shepherd asked me to pick the top five hockey books. That was a hard assignment. I eventually narrowed it down to six and, in the end, I reluctantly dropped George Plimpton’s Open Net, a book I love. Anyway, here’s my list of the five best hockey books. It may be a little idiosyncratic, but maybe you will discover something to add to your reading list.

  • Watch the virtual launch of Klondikers

    Watch the virtual launch of Klondikers The virtual launch of Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey featured Tim Falconer and Ian Brown in conversation. You can watch it here: