James Gray was an outspoken, engaging journalist for more than twenty years before he turned to writing books. Soon he became Western Canada's best-loved historian, author of the classic popular histories Booze, The Winter Years and Red Lights on the Prairies.
This book takes us from the depths of the Depression to the heady days of the post-war boom in the Fifties. Gray had a knack for being in the right place at the right time: covering the Turner Valley oil discoveries in 1936-7, the battle by women to get into the armed forces in 1940, and the influx of American oilmen into Alberta's oil and gas industry after the war.
With his dislike of hypocrisy, and his compassion for people of all kinds, Gray is a fine and honest reporter. The same qualities make Troublemaker! a fine and honest book.

JAMES GRAY was born in Whitemouth, Manitoba and raised in Winnipeg. He began his journalism career during the Depression, writing for several Western periodicals and as a member of the Ottawa press corps. He began writing autobiographical social histories of the Prairies in the 1960s, work that ultimately won him the Canadian National History Society's Pierre Berton Award. He died in 1998.

James Gray's profile page

"Vividly portrays a span of Western Canadian history."

Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

"A book of great immediacy and appeal - warm-hearted, wise, and extraordinarily revealing about ourselves."

Southam News Services

"Gray's eye was clear-eyed, and his memory remains sharp."

Ottawa Citizen