Fictional political satire, written in the form of tongue-in-cheek banter in a small-town prairie saloon. The result is a refreshing antidote to political correctness, sloppy thinking and lazy journalism. Synopsis: The Ranchmen s saloon in the Alberta hamlet of Manyberries, is home to some of the shrewdest political discussion in Canada. On the surface, a bunch of old-timers are sitting around drinking beer and complaining about taxes and the government. But first impressions are deceptive this is not mere tavern talk. Listen more closely and you ll find scalpel-sharp dissections of double-talk, political correctness, hypocrisy and lazy thinking. Nobody is spared: inept and uncaring governments, both federal and provincial; self-serving politicians demanding credit and glory without having earned it; everyday guys who always want more than their share and more than they give; and members of the media whose stock in trade is trivia at the expense of real news. And beyond the political parables, there is a unique menagerie of genuinely memorable characters. They ll drive you half mad with their double standards and crazy schemes, but they re irresistible in their humanity. By the end of the book you ll feel you know them better than your own family. If you read And God Created Manyberries and you are as old as I am, you may have a sense of deja vu. There are homespun belly laughs in every chapter. Reading it, I was taken back to the humour of Greg Clark and his Packsack column in the old Family Herald and Star Weekly...it s ribald, raucous and readable. --Pat Macadam, Ottawa Sunday Sun. I thank you for this. I laughed out loud, alone. And that s unusual....your really funny and also really telling vignettes from Manyberries (are) so similar to the Shawville, (Quebec) banter I relished, reported and recanted for 32 years living in that other - what shall I say - original Canadian town - it just makes me laugh out loud. I ve been exactly there - in Shawville. --Rosaleen Dickson, author, retired reporter/editor The book revolves around the fictitious conversations of ranchers and hunters as they relax in their favourite watering hole, the Southern Ranchman, located in Manyberries….the book is about conversations that happen every day around the country. --Gail Jansen, The Prairie Post Ron Wood was born in Midland, Ontario and became a Calgarian at age three in 1946 when his father relocated the family for business reasons. In 1963 he returned to Midland for a brief visit while on his way to Guelph where he planned to study veterinary medicine. During his brief stay there he was offered a job by the manager of CKMP radio. Wood flipped a coin and says, when it came up heads I took it as a sign that I should avoid things with tails and accepted the radio job. Nine months later he was offered, and accepted, an on-air job with CKPM radio in Ottawa. He arrived in Ottawa in the fall of 1964 and in February, 1965 was handed the Parliamentary Correspondent assignment for that radio station and several others owned by the same company. During the next few years he covered Parliament for CKPM and was designated Bureau Chief for United Press International Radio. He also worked as eastern Ontario stringer for the Globe & Mail and did voice-over work for commercials and documentaries. In 1967 he left radio for a job at what was then CJOH-TV News in Ottawa. In 1971 he was promoted to the position of Promotions Manager and then to Director of Creative Services, a position created for him and where he was responsible for on-air promotion, corporate public relations, commercial production, sales promotion and viewer community relations. In October of 1967, Wood married the beautiful and charming Michaele Jane Cassidy of Ottawa. They are the proud parents of Jennifer and Michael. In 1975, Ron Wood was headhunted by the federal civil service and accepted the position of Manager of Media Relations for the Metric Commission of Canada. They were doing the paperwork to make me the Director of Communications in 1978 and I started worrying about us getting trapped in Ottawa. We didn t want our kids to grow up thinking that Ottawa was the centre of the universe so I let word get around that I might be interested in returning to radio. CKXL Radio in Calgary called within days and flew me out for a chat and I agreed to become News Director and Editorialist. Wood worked at CXKL and sister station CHFM until 1989. During that period he won several regional radio awards and capped his career by winning the National Radio Awards Best Opinion/Commentary Broadcaster in Canada in 1989. In 1990 he signed on as Communications Adviser/Press Secretary to Preston Manning, Leader of the fledgling Reform Party of Canada and began commuting between Calgary and Ottawa after the general election of 1993. In 2001, Wood was invited by Official Opposition Leader John Reynolds to become his Executive Assistant and Communications Advisor, a position he accepte