North Shore Reads: Outsider

Join the North Shore libraries for a community-wide book club event!

North Shore Reads — a collaboration between North Vancouver City Library, North Vancouver District Public Library, and West Vancouver Memorial Library — presents an evening with Brett Popplewell in conversation with Marsha Lederman. Popplewell will discuss his 2023 national bestseller Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past.

When journalist Brett Popplewell first heard about Dag Aabye, an aging former stuntman who lived alone in a school bus on a mountain, running day and night through blizzards and heat waves, he was intrigued and bewildered. Captivated by the seemingly implausible tale of a wild super-athlete aging more slowly than the rest of us, he was determined to meet the apocryphal white-haired man who was pushing the boundaries of the human mind and body beyond what anyone could dream was possible.

What Popplewell witnessed on a secluded mountain perch led him on a six-year odyssey to uncover the true story of the 81-year-old man. Outsider takes readers on a remarkable journey from Nazi-occupied Norway to Argentina and British Columbia. The book chronicles how a child born under mysterious circumstances during World War II finds his way onto the big screen in Goldfinger, is heralded as the world’s first extreme skier, and is later driven into the wilderness. Both joyful and tragic, Outsider presents a bold challenge to our notions of aging, belonging and human accomplishment.

North Shore Reads invites you to a dynamic conversation between Brett Popplewell and Marsha Lederman. Our program will begin with a traditional Indigenous welcome from Tsitsáyxemaat Rebecca Duncan of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nation.