Book Report: "The Island Walkers" by John Bemrose

It is 1965 in the small Ontario town of Attawan. Bannerman's mills, the largest employer in Attawan, Ontario, are taken over by Intertex, a textile conglomerate with an eye for cost cutting. After the first round of layoffs, a union organizer comes to Attawan, attracting suspicion from both management and workers, many of whom remember the disastrous results of an ill-planned strike in 1949. Alf, reluctant to jeopardize his standing as heir apparent to the foreman's job, …

…accorded some measure of story time, remain lesser subjects to revelation. Nevertheless, there is such an abundance of virtue in The Island Walkers that it is impossible to not be swept along the family's path of hardship, humour, horror and resignation. Bemrose does not avoid showing harsh realities in their raw nature. The Island Walkers is a near-perfect rendition of those moments in time when everything changes, and the world will never be the same.