WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD FOR nonfiction

An eloquent and haunting exploration of suicide in which one of Canada’s most gifted writers attempts to comprehend why his brother took his personal life. Which leads him to some other powerful issue: What makes boomers eliminating themselves at a lot better rate compared to the Silent Generation before them or the decades that have followed?

In the planting season of 2006, Don Gillmor travelled to Whitehorse to reconstruct the last days of his brother, about To the River: Losing My Brother David, whose truck and cowboy hat were bought at the edge of the Yukon River just beyond town the prior December. David’s family members, his second wife, and his close friends had different theories about his disappearance. Some thought David had run away; some thought he’d met with foul enjoy; but most believed that David, a talented musician who at the age of 48 was going to give up the night life for the day job, acquired intentionally walked into the water. Just as Don was going to paddle the river looking for traces, David’s body was found, six months after he’d gone in to the river. And Don’s canoe trip turned into an take action of remembrance and mourning.

At least David could today become laid to rest. But there was no relax for his survivors. As his sibling writes, ‘When people pass away of suicide, one of the things they keep behind is usually suicide itself. It turns into a country. At first I used to be a visitor, but eventually I became a citizen.’ In this tender, probing, surprising work, Don Gillmor brings back news from that nation for all of us who question why people get rid of themselves. And just why, for the first time, it isn’t the teenaged or the elderly who have the best suicide rate, however the middle aged. Specifically men.