music science

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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:

  • A reading of the Prologue from Klondikers

    A reading of the Prologue from Klondikers Get a sense of Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey with this video of me reading the Prologue.