The Book of Ted: Epistles from an unrepentant redneck.

Ted Byfield, The Book of Ted: Epistles from an unrepentant redneck, Quality Colour Press, Edmonton, 1998, 269 pages, hardcover, $34.95

Ted Byfield was born in Toronto in 1928, and was a reporter in Ottawa, Timmins, Sudbury, and Winnipeg before becoming a history teacher in Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario. In 1973 he returned to publishing, founding first the weekly newsmagazine Alberta Report, then later also Western Report and British Columbia Report. They have a combined weekly circulation of 100,000. The Book of Ted contains seventy of his essays in these journals published from 1980 to 1997.

Byfield is the most perceptive and incisive weekly commentator in Canada. One reason is that he is a believing Christian, one who felt compelled to leave a tepid Anglicanism for Eastern-rite Orthodoxy. This outlook puts him in direct opposition to the vast majority of Canada's journalistic writers who represent the bland liberal ideology of the spiritual agnostic.

Byfield gives a refreshing counterpunch on such things as tax evasion, subjective history, capital punishment, coddling prisoners, taking competition out of boys' education, pacifism, euthanasia, the advantage of being a victim, Diana as heroine, censorship, permissiveness in education, alternative schools, universal equality, school standards, spanking children, pornography, abortion, "gay" pride, feminism, birth control, the churches and sex, the New Age movement, the CBC, canadianists, native self-rule, Central Canada vs. the West, metrification, the Senate, too much government, the civil service and Quebec, and a Western political party.

In addition to rejecting modern permissiveness, he favours strong family life and Christian standards of personal and civic morality. His essays are logical arguments, as clear as crystal, always witty. As the book's blurb says, "Ted Byfield is the finest columnist in Canada today."