Just Say Yes: A Memoir

Bob McDonald, host of CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, offers a personal and inspiring memoir of life-changing events in his early years through five decades in science journalism.

Revered science reporter and radio host Bob McDonald has devoted a decades-long career to turning our attention away from everyday perspectives and outward to the vast, intricate wonders of our planet and universe. Now, in this revealing and captivating memoir, he looks within, offering an intimate view of the path that brought him from a blue-collar background to his long-standing role as Canada’s foremost explainer of all things scientific.

It’s an engrossing and often jubilant story that allows McDonald to share powerful insights on overcoming fear of failure and tackling life-transforming challenges. Early on, he describes a childhood and youth plagued by difficulties in school that eventually convinced him to drop out of university. Yet, despite the academic obstacles, his love of science burned bright. Soon, through an innate stage sense and sheer enthusiasm, he landed a gig doing high-spirited demonstrations for the public at the Ontario Science Centre, which in turn led to self-produced TV spots.

And as each hard-won, never-certain success built on the last, he arrived at the role that would make him a national figure: the witty, engaging, passionately curious host of the perennially popular CBC Radio show Quirks and Quarks, reporting from the frontiers of scientific exploration and rubbing elbows with such luminaries as Chris Hadfield, Buzz Aldrin and Stephen Hawking. Told with all of McDonald’s trademark pace and humour, Just Say Yes is bound to please, surprise and inspire his numerous fans in entirely new ways.