For more than a decade, the Globe and Mail has featured comprehensive obituaries of notable British Columbians by columnist Tom Hawthorn. He recounts the lives of the recently departed in an engaging style, finding anecdotes to illuminate personality, giving voice to those who no longer have one. These stories are not about death, but about life in all its sad, funny, exhilarating complexity.

Gathered here are the best, the funniest, the most memorable of the passing parade of characters who make life in British Columbia so remarkable. Here are athletes and authors, warriors and scholars, innovators and trailblazers.

You will meet the boxer Baby Face and a wrestler known as Mean Gene; the yodeling cowboy singer Alberta Slim and a geologist called Professor Midas; the last living member of the RCMP posse that tracked down the Mad Trapper of Rat River and a demon barber whose preferred murder weapon was alcohol. You'll go tracking with the the Cougar Lady of Sechelt, lift weights with the World's Strongest Man, and wince from the blows of police truncheons used against labour leader Steve Brodie on Bloody Sunday, much of the blood spilled that day his own.

You also will meet politicians of all stripes (including prison stripes).

Hawthorn bids adieu to a panoply of characters in obits that are colourful and touching. The exuberance of his writing makes this book one of the great nonfiction reads of the season.