Acknowledgements etc.

 

I would like to thank Nadia Hausfather who has long encouraged and enabled my research habit. I would also like to acknowledge Dru Oja Jay and Nik Barry Shaw for allowing me to draw from Paved with Good Intentions.

While writing this book I moved between Ottawa, Toronto, Montréal and East Africa. A number of individuals allowed me to stay at their places along the way: Rose Marie Whalley, Paul Tetrault and Sally Teich; Dan Rosen and Jessica Haber (as well as Evan and Denise) Araceli Gonzalez Reyes and Diego Hausfather; Angela Schleihauf, Nadia Hausfather and Tareq Shahwan.

I would also like to acknowledge my uncle Al Engler for looking over the manuscript and my father Gary for his endless help. I’d like to thank my wonderful partner Bianca Mugyenyi whose rigorous judgement greatly improved the manuscript.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the dozens of individuals (Nikki Baker, Scott Harris, Mark Haley, Peter Eglin ...) who’ve set up public events for my books. In a hostile media climate, their work makes it possible and worthwhile to continue researching and publishing. Their activism gives us hope for developing a genuinely justice-oriented Canadian foreign-policy.

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The English spelling of many African place names and other words has changed over the years. I have tried to use current commonly accepted “mid-Atlantic” spelling, but have respected historical use in quotes and titles.

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Writing using voice recognition software has been a wonderful solution to old hockey injuries worsened by repetitive strain. But along with beneficial health effects comes danger — speaking “continent” can easily be transcribed as “content”, for example — and cleaning up this technologically-induced minefield can be a daunting task for any editor. I take full responsibility for any such errors and apologize in advance to any upset readers.