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David J. MacKinnon

Biography

David J. MacKinnon

David J. MacKinnon is a Sorbonne graduate in history cum laude, a member of two law societies, and has translated for the international criminal tribunals of Rwanda, the Hague and Yugoslavia. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association of Legal Translators, and is co-founder and Director of the Long March to Rome, an indigenous-led mission seeking repeal of the Papal Bulls of Discovery. In earlier days, he worked as oil field roughneck, toilet factory worker, longshoreman and morgue attendant. He has walked the ancient Santiago de Compostela pilgrim’s trail and to Chartres several times. He has published two novels, LEPER TANGO and THE EEL, and a critically acclaimed translation of radio interviews of the French vagabond poet Blaise Cendrars in BLAISE CENDRARS SPEAKS.

David J. MacKinnon

Books by David J. MacKinnon

A Voluntary Crucifixion
by David J. MacKinnon - Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction

A VOLUNTARY CRUCIFIXION traces the story of 20th-century Canada through the MacKinnon clan and David J. MacKinnon's life. Disillusioned with the slow death of the soul promised by life at a major Montreal law firm, MacKinnon ripped himself untimely from the profession, making a personal vow to discover society “from the bottom up.” A VOLUNTARY CRUCIFIXION recounts the tale of MacKinnon's adventures and misadventures from post-Tiananmen Hong Kong to various ports of call in the Indian Ocean, offering his views on everything from censorship to indigenous issues, all of which reflect his life ethos that the key to life is to refuse to adapt, and to fight tooth-and-nail for every square inch of your freedom before others wrench it from you.

The Eel
by David J. MacKinnon - Fiction

Writer Jack Fingon realizes too late that his life of "intuition and attraction" has produced little to value, and nothing to remember. To settle a piece of unfinished business, Fingon devises a plan to fulfil the testamentary wish of French vagabond poet Blaise Cendrars --- to be buried in the Sargasso Sea where "life first burst from the depths of the ocean floor towards the sun."

Leper Tango
by David J. MacKinnon - Fiction

Franck Robinson --- forty-something, chaser of skirts (usually the low-end sidewalk variety) --- combs the streets of Paris in search of Sheba, whom he imagines to be the ultimate Parisian whore. Franck drifts from bordello to bar, and ultimately finds himself trapped by his own demons of alcohol and a fatal attraction.