Launch of THE EAST END RULES by Norman Nawrocki (with Anton Koschany)

Join us for the launch of Norman Nawrocki's THE EAST END RULES, A Van East Memoir. Featuring a conversation with Anton Koschany.

Fiction meets memoir in this coming of age and political awakening story set in the lively 1960s and 1970s in Vancouver’s gritty East End (a.k.a., East Van) long before it was gentrified. Through the eyes of a young East Ender, Joey, we see the first twenty-two years of Nawrocki’s intense life as a rabble-rousing student activist, journalist and community organizer. The East End had always been tagged by better off West Side residents as "the wrong side of the tracks," swarming with riff raff and the underclass. Joey offers an engaging counter narrative where the history and culture, dreams and challenges of this vibrant and beloved once predominantly poor working-class immigrant community are remembered and honoured. And where the influences of the city's flourishing radical counterculture, helped transform one immigrant son into a principled anarchist. Published by Black Rose Books (Montreal, 2026); distributed by University of Toronto Press Distribution.
“This exciting memoir evokes Nawrocki's personal experience and the atmosphere of the time, to create an authentic account of growing up in the East End of Vancouver during the sixties and seventies. A great read!”—Don Stewart, MacLeod’s Books, Vancouver
Norman Nawrocki is the author of 18 books and an internationally acclaimed musician, playwright, actor and producer with over 70 albums and dozens of theatrical productions to his credit. This is the first volume of his three-part semi-fictionalized memoir. The Montreal Gazette calls him “a legend . . . one of the most fascinating folks on the cityscape." The Globe & Mail says he's “a born showman;” his shows “subversively powerful," while The Toronto Star says he's, "A madcap Montreal artist-anarchist . . .there's no stopping Nawrocki! And who'd want to?"
For the Toronto booklaunch Nawrocki will be interviewed by an old childhood friend, Anton Koschany, an immigrant kid also raised and schooled in Vancouver's East End. He began his journalism career in that city. Koschany is the former Executive Producer of CTV’s award-winning current affairs program, W5, a former field producer with the CBC current affairs program, the fifth estate, CTV News Toronto bureau chief and Executive Producer for the network’s election coverage of provincial and federal elections. Koschany is a multiple award winner for his investigative journalism, including from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and the Canadian Association of Journalists. In 2020 the Academy awarded him the prestigious Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism.

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