If the case needed to be demonstrated, Ottawa historian Bryan McKillop's magnificent biography makes it clear: [Pierre Berton]'s energy was ferocious.

One might wonder if there were a need for a Berton biography. After all, Berton (who died in 2004 at age 84) wrote memoirs aplenty, ghosting his mother's along the way, and was the subject of countless media profiles. Nor is the writing life, particularly in the case of someone who spent so much of his life writing, necessarily all that interesting.

While his relationship with his longtime producer and publicist pushed the bounds of propriety and his membership in an oddly spelled organization called the "Sordsman's Club" is redolent of a predatory concept of masculinity, in McKillop's telling even as a cad Berton landed jam side up, beloved, retaining the affection and loyalty of both his family and the women he slept with.