Big Men Fear Me

Reviews

“Bourrie’s book positively sings ... [it] is thoroughly researched and the prose is clean and engaging ... McCullagh deserves to be known ... He made The Globe the dominant voice in English Canadian journalism. Bourrie’s biography does him full justice.” — Globe and Mail

“There are many threads to untangle here and Bourrie—journalist, academic, and lawyer—unpicks them all. Spanning the first half of 20th-century Ontario, [George] McCullagh’s life and times become an engrossing tale of ambition, politics and bipolar illness—it’s like little else we’re likely to read this year ... It was a tumultuous life, and Bourrie tells it with wit and humour.” — Toronto Star

“This is a joy of a biography ... Bourrie, a historian whose last book brought explorer Pierre Radisson to life, has done right by McCullagh, and not just with the marvellous title. Canada doesn’t like tall poppies. It didn’t end well. But what a ride it was.” — Heather Mallick, Toronto Star

“Mark Bourrie’s remarkable—and long overdue—biography of one of the most consequential and least remembered Canadians of the past century ... Bourrie toiled for years to resurrect [George McCullagh], but, I’m glad to say, he did not wipe away the carbuncles, boils, and blisters. His portrait of a man who once was among Canada’s most powerful figures is, to choose two apt terms, both melancholy and masterly.” — Literary Review of Canada

“Not only does he give us a portrait of a man who was central to a critical period in Canadian history, he illuminates the complexities of those years as well, in the process pulling back the rosy curtain of forgetfulness and nostalgia that has slowly descended over us in the years since to remind us of how fraught our politics and society were then. A truly great accomplishment!” — Ottawa Review of Books